1/23/2022 – The MLK commemoration at Jacobs is an ideal nexus— an occasion that calls us to reflect and resolve and celebrate, with participants in all sorts of formations, from all parts of the School of Music. I’d been working to have excerpts read from Richard Wright’s recently-published essay “Memories of my Grandmother” ever since my friend Gina gave me the book last summer. The volume also contains a novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, a story both surreal and grim about a young black man randomly taken into custody, wrongfully accused and brutally interrogated by the police. When Wright submitted it for publication in 1942, right after Native Son had its public success, the publisher turned it away. 
This new complete edition pairs the novel with an essay that contextualizes it as a product of Wright’s consideration of his grandmother’s faith, and the “broken” texture of jazz and blues which ultimately allows for transcendent creativity. I’m quite grateful to the IU OVPDEMA for the funding, and Julia Wright at the author’s estate who granted permission for a performance highlighting passages from the essay (read by jazz faculty Greg Ward) in counterpoint with an improvised sax solo, played by Tom Walsh. New and old, spoken rhythms and sustained tone, carefully crafted and improvised in the moment. Their performance honored Wright’s work, and his tribute to his grandmother.