UNDERSTAND

The bell represents a call to presence. 

The choice of white noise is two-fold: First, to refer to the psychically unmusical nature of hate and unrest, and to call that nature by the name of the population that created it…white noise.

I’d just moved in with my brother in Raleigh, North Carolina and our grandmother called every two days to remind me to put sheer curtains on my street facing bedroom window. She said, “You’re two, tall, good lookin’ Black men in the South and you can’t just have your windows open for anyone to see.” 

One night watching TV, my brother and I heard a thud on the front door and what felt like footsteps in the bushes. 

Given the murder of Breonna Taylor months earlier, and our new awareness of no-knock warrants, we now knew that we couldn’t just worry about walking down the street, we had to worry about sitting in our home.

This piece was born as a musical improvisation between myself and a close friend. We gave ourselves the assignment of improvising in the combined styles of Gospel and French Impressionism because I’ve always felt those two styles share the same soul. 

In the magic of improvisation, the entire song came out fully formed in one take. 

Igée’s chords are like Monet water lilies in motion. 

The melody is a stretched-out version of an old church tune that floated around my upbringing in Providence Baptist Church in rural Northern Virginia. 

Singing this third stanza I began to get a little nervous knowing that the key we were in meant that the last line of the song would be pretty high. 

And also the tempo we were in meant that the last notes had to be long. 

I’d later realize that the improvised text was actually a version of the prayer of St. Assisi:

Lord, make us instruments of Thy peace. 

Where there is hatred, let us sow love; 

where there is injury, pardon; 

where there is discord, unity; 

where there is doubt, faith; 

where there is despair, hope; 

and where there is darkness, light…

DAVÓNE TINES

Davóne Tines, Musical America’s 2022 Vocalist of the Year, is a pathbreaking artist whose work not only encompasses a diverse repertoire, from early music to new commissions by leading composers, but also explores today’s pressing social issues through work that blends opera, art song, contemporary classical, spirituals, gospel, and songs of protest, as a means to tell a deeply personal story of perseverance that connects to all of humanity. Davóne Tines is a winner of the 2020 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, recognizing extraordinary classical musicians of color, and the recipient of the 2018 Emerging Artists Award from Lincoln Center. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Harvard University where he also serves as a guest lecturer.