An Atlanta Concerto

detailed notes on Liminal, an Atlanta Concerto

On February 25th and 26th 2023, the Georgia Symphony and its conductor Timothy Verville in collaboration with Okorie “OkCello” Johnson premiered an original concerto entitled Liminal an Atlanta Concerto at the Marietta Performing Arts Center. This work, performed and co-composed by Black Atlantan cellist and composer, OkCello, offers the listener a unique perspective on his creative in Atlanta and his exploration of what contemporary African Diasporic stories and song forms sound like on an orchestra. 

Co-composed by Verville and OkCello, this three movement solo cello and orchestra composition is comprised of 4 original pieces - composed originally by OkCello and orchestrated for solo cello and Orchestra by Verville - and two interstitial pieces, composed by Verville to act as cadenza-like-codas, connecting the three major movements of the piece. 

The four pieces by OkCello were composed for solo cello with looper, which enabled him to create and play with a real-time, self-performed ensemble of cellos to back his largely improvised solo cello work.  He recorded these works to faithfully represent his live performance and Verville has taken those recordings and arranged them for orchestra and solo cello.  The result is a full yet nimble composition with melodic interplay between the orchestra and solo cello that still - uncharacteristic of classical music - leaves room for improvisation from OkCello, the soloist.

Additionally, all four of OkCello’s four pieces have resonances, both musically and inspirationally, of the African Diaspora, and two of the pieces are the results of commissions from Atlanta Organizations: the National Black Arts Festival and Freedom Park Conservancy. 

Elder Roots and Tree

The first movement of the concerto’s three movements is built around a piece from OkCello’s third album Beacon, entitled “Elder Roots and Tree.”  OkCello was commissioned to write Elder by the Freedom Park Conservancy in collaboration with the National Black Arts Festival to accompany a piece of public art created by Masud Olufani. 

Olufani’s impressive piece - a felled, altered, and sculpted 100 year old elm, entitled Elder - was conceived and created to commemorate the history of the David T. Howard School in Old Fourth ward, one of Atlanta’s most significant schools for Black students during the city’s era of segregation. The piece, whose limbs had been replaced with geturing sculptures of arms and hands, cast from alumni of the Howard School during its era of segregation, sat in a section of Freedom Park directly across from and pointing, literally, to the newly renovated Howard School (2020), as a way of reminding attending students and families of its important, complicated, uncomfortable, and venerated history. 

OkCello’s composition was to help communicate the gravity of this piece of art and the history it acknowledged. To help express the gravity of this commemoration, OkCello starts the piece with a contemplative drone and melody that invites the listener to travel inward and prepare for the fullness of the melodic communication to come, and he quotes the melody from the song “Trees,” performed by Paul Robeson, internationally significant civil rights leader, singer, actor, and orator of the time when the school was segregated. The movement ends with a contemplative flute solo, composed by Verville that seems to both reflect on the story presented in the first movement and prepare the listener what’s to come.

Dreaming of Lagos

The second movement, while not slow like most concertos, centers around an OkCello composition off of his second Album, Resolve, entitled, “Dreaming of Lagos,” a driving, rhythmic, major-pentatonic, musical exploration of what OkCello imagines it would be like, sonically, to travel to Lagos Nigeria and be embraced by a cultural family that has only existed for him in his imaginings.  

Growing up with a Nigerian, Igbo name, “Okorie,” OkCello has always been assumed to be Nigerian by other Nigerians here in the States.  Always unable to confirm that assumption, OkCello has long been filled with a curiosity about Nigeria and a desire to travel there.  This song for him, and in some ways the listener, is a reverse Middle Passage, reuniting him, at least in his mind’s ear, with a cultural family he has longed to know.  

This movement is looped real time by OkCello and the orchestra plays along with the loop as he solos and improvises on top of both elements. In addition, it has a two part cadenza, comprised first of an OkCello piece off of his first album, Liminal, entitled “In Memoriam,” a piece he often plays at memorial celebrations.  It was originally commissioned by the National Black Arts Festival in 2014 for their annual gala as a score to a segment they produced recognizing recently passed Black Artists that the festival had previously honored. In the context of this concerto, however, “In Memoriam” almost feels like a memorial song for those Africans who perished in the Middle Passage, a song he seems to offer as he travels the imaginative and musical distance back to West Africa.  The second part of the cadenza is a gorgeous and soaring chorale composed by Verville that adds a fullness to the solemnity of “In Memoriam” and gives this middle movement a feeling of grandeur in its ambitious emotional scope and spiritual intention.

Fire

The third movement rests on the polyrhythmic, pizzicato foundation of the song “Fire” off of OkCello’s first album, Liminal.  Fire’s afro-latino feel implies movement and dance in the way the melody winds through the on-and-off-the-beat quality of the bass.  The melody - the solo cello - and the bass line - the orchestra - slowly combust over the course of the song until there stands between them an inferno of sound that dances with as much intensity as it does control.  It is in this section that OkCello’s solo cello explores the possibilities of improvisation within the structure of a conducted orchestra - an interesting experiment of European and African artistic sensibilities. This third movement, in typical concerto fashion, brings the entire composition to a sonic climax while also bringing the composition to a close in what might be considered an unexpected dance between cello and orchestra.

If interested in performing the piece with your orchestra, hit the button below to reach out to a member of the team that will walk you through the details.