“The work was everything I had hoped for...as intellectually alluring as it was emotionally powerful.” -Barry Pearson, Director, Kirkland Fine Arts Center, Co-Commissioner

DARWIN’S MEDITATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF L INCOLN

A QUARTET CONCERTO CONCEIVED AND COMPOSED BY

DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN (DBR)COMMISSIONED BY BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC (BAM) AND KIRKLAND FINE ARTS CENTER

www.dbrmusic.com | www.opus3artists.com

DARWIN’S MEDITATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF LINCOLN

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln—two ex-traordinary men—were born within hours of one another on the same auspicious day of February 12, 1809. If one traced the origin of the human species, the other set its destination in motion. In Darwin’s Meditation for The People of Lincoln, Haitian-American composer/musician Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) brings them face-to-face for a lush, orchestral event of historic pro-portions.

A grandly conceived work that employs the ex-pansiveness of a chamber orchestra conducted by Paul Haas, together with four arresting solo-ists—DBR (violin), Wynne Bennett (piano), Daniel Beaty (actor/playwright), and Emeline Michel (singer)—Darwin’s Meditation for The People of Lincoln sculpts the sound of liberation, survival, and legacy in the image of two of its most tire-less proponents.

The composition of the work is inspired and guid-ed by a musical and historical exploration of the island nation of Haiti. This unusual perspective illuminates new relationships between Darwin, Lincoln and Haiti and is thoughtfully and provoc-atively infused into all aspects seen and heard in this work.

Using original video by Yuki Nakajima, lights by Matthew Richards, and texts drawn from both Darwin and Lincoln, plus those of Obie Award-winning playwright Daniel Beaty, DBR creates a brilliantly imagined conversation between two historical giants—and a scintillating, spiritual, sonic vision of what it means to be free.

Directed by D.J. Mendel and DBRRunning time: 90min, no intermission Visit www.dbrmusic.com for more information.

Darwin’s Meditation for the People of LincolnA Quartet Concerto Conceived and Composed by Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)

DBR, violinWynne Bennett, piano

Daniel Beaty, actorEmeline Michel, singer

SymphoNYC conducted by Paul Haas

The Voice, a pocket play, written by Daniel BeatyLighting design by Matthew Richards

Video design by Yuki Nakajima

Directed by D.J. Mendel and DBR

Additional Credits:Maricela composed by Emeline Michel

Chans composed by Emeline Michel and Adrian LegagneurLa Dessalinienne (The Haitian National Anthem) composed by Nicolas Geffrard and Justin Lherisson

Additional orchestrations, arrangements, and music by Wynne Bennett and John YafféAdditional words and texts by Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, Barack Obama, Randall Robinson, Emeline

Michel, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Daniel BeatyScore and parts prepared by John Yaffé

Rika Iino, Producer Annie Burns, Production Manager

Chris Walsh, Lighting Supervisor

WHO’S WHO

Known for fusing his classical music roots with a myriad of soundscapes, Haitian-American artist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR) has carved a reputation as a passionately innovative composer, performer, violinist, and band leader. His unique hybrid style continues to capture new music lovers worldwide. From Australia’s Sydney Op-era House to Boston’s ICA Museum, DBR continues his worldwide tour premiering solo works and pulsing du-ets off of his debut international solo album etudes4violin&electronix (Thirsty Ear Recordings). As a composer, his dramatic soul-inspiring pieces range from orchestral scores and energetic chamber works to rock songs and electronica. All converged in DBR’s One Loss Plus, his multimedia premiere at BAM’s 2007 Next Wave Festival, which kicked off the festival’s three-year residency of DBR commissioned works. Recent premieres include: WE MARCH, a guitar concerto that premiered with Eliot Fisk and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; THE TUSCALOOSA MEDITATIONS, one of the first commissions of a Haitian-American composer by the University of Alabama com-posed in honor of Vivian Malone Jones, the first African American woman to attend UA; and Double Quartet: The Kompa Variations, an exploration of Haitian kompa music within a theme and variations form commissioned by and composed for the Providence String Quartet, premiering this year at the First Works Providence festival in Rhode Island. Other projects include the score for Carl Hancock Rux’s contemporary opera Makandal; ground-breaking fusion of contrasting cultures and instruments with Elan Vytal aka DJ Scientific in DBR’s Sonata for Vio-lin and Turntables; and ongoing collaborations with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Philip Glass, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and DJ Spooky. www.dbrmusic.com www.myspace.com/dbrmission

Daniel Beaty (Actor/Playwright) is an award winning actor, singer, writer, composer and poet. His critically acclaimed solo play Emergence-See! at The Public Theater received the 2007 Obie Award for Excellence in Off-Broadway Theater for Writing & Performing and the 2007 AUDELCO Award for Solo Performance. His newest play RESURREC-TION is presently having its world premiere and he’s also creating a new series for Showtime. www.danielbeaty.com

Wynne Bennett (Keyboardist/pianist/composer) has performed and recorded with such diverse artists as James Carter, Konstantin Lifschitz, Akim Funk Buddha, Pete Rock, Vannessa Daou, Slick Rick, Bill T. Jones, Little Brother, DBR, Drug Rug, and Mobb Deep. Wynne is currently performing internationally with the Tony Award winning choreogra-pher Bill T. Jones and his company, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, in Another Evening: I Bow Down, and was most recently commissioned to work on their latest work A Quarreling Pair.

Paul Haas (Conductor) is the founder and Artistic Director of Sympho, a groundbreaking concert production com-pany. His conducting engagements have included performances with the San Antonio Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and as Music Director of the New York Youth Sym-phony. Paul is a graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School (Bruno Walter Fellow with Otto-Werner Mueller).

Emeline Michel (Singer), known as the “Joni Mitchell of Haiti,” has emerged as the reigning queen of Haitian song. Her songs merge traditional Haitian rhythms with jazz, pop, bossa nova and samba. A captivating performer, versa-tile vocalist, accomplished dancer, songwriter and producer, Emeline sings in French and Haitian Creole, and her world-wide concerts and seven CD recordings have catapulted to international acclaim. www.emeline-michel.com

Makoto Kikuchi (Drums) was born in Japan and began playing drums at the age of 13. While at Berklee Col-lege of Music in Boston she studied with Joe Hunt, Kenwood Dennard, and Jon Hazilla, was awarded the Zildjian Award, and played at the legendary Wally’s Cafe. Jim Roberson (Bass) started performing professionally at the age of 16 with such notable names as John Bany, Don Stille, and Von Freeman. He studied at the New School for Social Research and Design and worked with Reggie Workman, Junior Mance, Chico Hamilton, Jane Ira Bloom, Jason Lindner and John Benitez. Current proj-ects include; Resolution 15, The Beaty Brothers Band, Lies Beneath, Loud Apt., Yayoi Ikawa Trio, Hollands, and the Misnomer(S). SymphoNYC (Orchestra) is a fellowship of young musicians from diverse and accomplished backgrounds who come together for the shared joy of musical exploration. They have brought audiences varied and engaging programs consisting of classical masterworks, world premieres and everything in between as they search for ways to bring new light to old works and new works to light. Members of the group have performed with many orchestras both in the United States and abroad and have been heard at such prestigious music festivals as Marlboro, Tanglewood, and Ravinia.

D.J. Mendel (Co-director) is a New York City based filmmaker and theater-maker. Best recognized as a regular actor in the work of Hal Hartley - with whom he has worked since 1998 - Mendel also performs frequently in the theater, and has directed a number of films. He has collaborated with theatrical avant-garde legend Richard Foreman, Cynthia Hopkins, Rosanne Cash, and Eileen Ivers among others. www.startherefilms.com

Yuki Nakajima (Video Designer) was born in Yokohama, Japan to an Okinawan descent family. She studied Art History in Tokyo (Keio University, B.F.A.), and Computer Art in New York (School of visual Arts, M.F.A.). She has worked on numerous projects for television shows for HBO, PBS, Showtime, HGTV, as well theater productions at The Kennedy Center (Washington D.C.), La Mama Theater (NYC), T:B:A by PICA and others. www.moonrabbitz.com Matthew Richards (Lighting Designer) designs lighting for theatre, opera, and dance nationally and interna-tionally. Matthew previously collaborated with Daniel Bernard Roumain on One Loss Plus. Credits include: Port Authority at Atlantic Theater Co., The Drunken City and Pen for Playwrights Horizons, Len, Asleep in Vinyl at Sec-ond Stage, Bay Street Theatre, The Old Globe, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Wolf Trap Opera, Yale Repertory Theatre and many others.

Christopher Walsh (Lighting Supervisor) would like to thank Matt Richards for this opportunity and continued support. Recent Credits: Bell, Book and Candle (Bristol Valley theatre), Edward II (The Secret Theatre). Chris also works full time for Lighting Workshop a Brooklyn architectural design firm.

Annie Burns (Production Manager) is originally from Albuquerque, NM and is a graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston. Annie studied sound engineering and arranging for big band and orchestra. When not on tour with DBR, Annie works as Producer for Sozo Media, an artist & events development, marketing, and production company; Administrator for Theater Resources Unlimited (TRU),= a theatre networking non-profit; and she runs her own rock artists and events management company, annie*rock. www.annierock.com

Rika Iino (Producer) grew up in Tokyo, Japan training as a classical pianist. Rika’s passion for event production and design began in 1996 while working in Tokyo as an assistant to the executive producer for the nationally televised Super Concert, with Natalie Cole, Kiri Te Kanawa, André Previn, and the NHK Symphony. In 2001, she launched SOZO MEDIA, a NY-based music and arts marketing and production consultancy serving artists and cultural institutions. Since 2004 Rika has served as business and marketing strategist for DBR, managing and pro-moting a myriad of touring, recorded, and commissioned projects.

Composer’s Notes on Darwin’s Mediation for the People of LincolnUpon the completion of One Loss Plus, my first commission for the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival (2007), Joe Melillo, Executive Producer, invited me to compose another work for the next festival and my thoughts were immediately drawn to Abraham Lincoln. The bicentennial of his birth was quickly approaching and before this, I had often considered musical settings of his words. As I be-gan to research Lincoln and consider what I might do, I found an historical website where a timeline of events for the year 1809 was proudly displayed. That timeline revealed that both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day, within hours of one another. Suddenly, I had found something ripe for a musical setting.

My initial thoughts about a theme to connect these two men centered on slavery, as they each strug-gled, in various ways, with both defining and liberating “man from man.” It appeared to me to be the most natural theatrical connection for this music-driven work, particularly as I am a Haitian-American of African descent. Darwin and Lincoln apparently never met, but one knew of the other and there were hundreds of letters between Darwin and his associates on slavery, the Civil War, and “our American de-scendants.” One of the first quotes I discovered from those letters illuminated Darwin’s view on slavery and I was initially captivated by the power and precision of these words: “Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter...It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.”

But as my reading and research continued, I realized there was an emotional arc sewn into the very fabric of these men’s lives, so much so, that my desire to explore this topic increased in both certainty and curiosity. I became fascinated with their struggles, their loss, and how those very personal struggles and losses were reflected in their professional writings. I began to discover the overlapping qualities, aspects, and sorrow of their lives. They both lost their mother at an early age; they had long, produc-tive and potent marriages; they suffered with physical and emotional problems; they lost young chil-dren and those losses affected their relationship with God and religion; they changed themselves and asked others to change with them; and of course, all of this was and remains reflected in their words. I was no longer able to remain solely interested in Darwin and Lincoln’s views on slavery. I began to imagine an ordinary conversation between these two extraordinary men, if only they had had the op-portunity to meet.

My dreams of a conversation between Darwin and Lincoln revealed a fascination with their words. Not only their published, historical texts, but also their private expressions on family, faith, legacy, and spirituality. The problem, with such a massive collection of available words and writings, was: Which words should I choose? My solution was to work with a playwright and create a play in which Darwin and Lincoln’s voices could merge to form a reflective conversation, using their words and writings as the source for the script. I was excited and eager to find a playwright to help me.

Coincidentally, around this time, I was invited by the playwright Daniel Beaty to compose incidental music for his play Resurrection. After seeing a showing of that work, it was clear to me that Daniel Beaty was the person I could trust to help me better articulate my vision. As we began our work, we were blessed to have Alison Cherry as our research assistant. She spent countless hours finding various quotes, letters, and other facts and figures on everything Darwin and Lincoln. Most remarkable during this period of research was my continuing and growing fascination with Haiti. I began to ask myself, “What was happening in Haiti in 1809?” I knew that Haiti had won its independence from France in 1801, and that Darwin’s Origin of Species and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation were written and published within three years of one another (1859-1862). But again I asked, “What was happening in Haiti?” The question compelled me to consider understanding our American values and sense of de-mocracy through the eyes of an island-nation, Haiti.

Consider this quote from Randall Robinson’s compelling, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President: “In 1779, twelve years before the start of the Haitian revolution, Henri Christophe at the age of twelve fought alongside the soldiers of George Washington with a group of eight hundred Haitian blacks and mulattoes in the American Revolution at the Battle of Savannah, where Haitians died in the cause of American Independence.”

Or Darwin’s own words, revealing his knowledge and admiration for Haiti: “I never saw any of the di-minutive Portuguese with their murderous countenances, without almost wishing for Brazil to follow the example of Haiti.”

Or Dr. Daniel L. Guillory’s account of Lincoln’s barber, a Haitian-born Springfield philanthropist: William de Fleurville was Lincoln’s barber for 24 years, his neighbor for a time, and the guardian of the Lincoln home when the family was in Washington. Born in Haiti in 1807, he immigrated to Baltimore in 1820 and learned the barbering trade. Successful and visible in the Springfield business community, “Billy the Barber” was also a flute and violin player [and] a considerable philanthropist in the growing frontier community.

Or Frederick Douglas, friend and confidant to Lincoln, years later serving as Special Envoy and Min-ister to Haiti in 1893: “Haiti...is trying to be a sister republic and anxious to have a government of the people...she is the one country to which we turn the cold shoulder.”

To me, Douglas’s “we” referred to “us” as Americans, and I felt compelled, as a Haitian-American composer in 2008, to address these gaps in our historical knowledge, and the proximity and relation-ship to, and debt that we as Americans owe, this “land of many mountains.” In my parent’s home, it was always made clear to me that Haitians and Americans had more in common than the differences I was taught in school; that Haitians and Americans shared a common history and an uncommon story; that Haitians and Americans fought for, and died in the name of, freedom; that Haitian mangoes were just as sweet as America’s apple pie; that we were and are brothers and sisters of revolution. It was clear to me that Haiti had to have the pride, place, and purpose, in this work, that England and America already enjoyed in the world. Suddenly, it was clear: Darwin’s Meditation for the People of Lincoln wasn’t about the world, but rather my view of it.

I asked the celebrated Haitian singer, Emeline Michel, to join the project and support my quest to add a Haitian perspective to the work. We began to assemble our texts: I wrote some additional words, included the Haitian National Anthem, added Creole words, and the lyrics of songs from Emeline’s music, as the first few drafts of our play began to take shape. As the work progressed, I began to no-tice how similar the words and thoughts were between Darwin and Lincoln and the Haitian National Anthem. At times, I wasn’t always certain whose words belonged to whom. Embedded in this confu-sion, was excitement and clarity. It was clear, that the most interesting theatrical solution might be a monodrama in which Darwin and Lincoln and Haiti are fused into a singular voice of the people!

The play was completed and I was ready to set it all to music. It suggested a chamber orchestra of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. It suggested piano and harmonica (apparently, Lincoln of-ten had a harmonica in his pocket). It suggested a natural, acoustic sound, with the slight amplification of human voices. It suggested an actor, a virtuoso pianist, a Haitian singer, and a solo six-string violin-ist. The music suggested projected words, in English, French, and Creole, so that the audience might see and hear words that inspired, changed, and saved a nation. Borrowing techniques I observed in contemporary opera and theater, I decided that I would not coordinate the projected words with the spoken or sung words in an effort to give multiple meanings to both what is seen and heard. All of this became a quartet concerto and setting of a pocket play, on Darwin and Lincoln, understood through the eyes of an island-nation, Haiti.

A few days after completing this work, my girlfriend Jill Arkin, our dog Tank, and I attended rehearsals for Resurrection in Washington, DC. We made it a point to visit the Lincoln Memorial. In 1922, Robert Todd Lincoln, the only surviving son and last direct descendant of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, was present at the dedication. Holding Jill’s hand, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for him and for his family, to see his father there so large and illustrious. I imagined what it must have felt like for Abraham and Mary to lose their three other sons. I tried to imagine that sense of loss for Mrs. Emma Darwin, as her “love, precious love,” died in agonizing pain in their home, in their shared bed. I stood silent and thought long and hard about the thousands of Haitians starving, shivering, crying, drowning, dreaming, and dying in their homes, holding hands, in their shared beds. In that moment, I took a mo-ment and said a silent prayer and looked out onto that lawn, onto that pool of water and wonder, into that precious space that is utterly American, and allowed myself to feel the flaws of my humanity and the limits of my life.

Darwin’s Mediation for the People of Lincoln is a poem, a simple gift, and musical expression of that precious moment between resolve and regret. To draw from the words of Lincoln and Beaty:

“Four score and seven years ago my heart began to break, and for awhile, I did not know what it means to be free.”

Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR)Margate, FloridaAugust 26, 2008