Milwaukee Children's Choir to honor black composers in classical, jazz and other music genres

Wallace McClain Cheatham's first music teacher was his mother.

She taught him what she knew about melody and let him tinker and toy with the piano in their home, unwittingly training his ear for a career that would bring him national and international renown.

But at his first piano lesson, an 8-year-old Cheatham didn't know where music would take him. He just knew that he loved it.

He loved it as he studied at Knoxville College under Ernesto Pellegrini, a Julliard-trained composer and author who taught him choral arrangements.

And he loved it even more when he earned an A in Pellegrini's class and five years later published his first choral arrangement in a long line of celebrated musical works.

Since then, he has composed pianist and choral works, earned a doctorate, authored several articles, written a book about African-Americans in opera and taught music in Milwaukee Public Schools to hundreds of students.

So it's only fitting that students would pay tribute to the 73-year-old Cheatham at a concert being put on by the Milwaukee Children's Choir honoring Cheatham and other African-American composers.

"I never thought I would have the kind of career I've had," Cheatham said.

He is especially excited about the concert because he believes it will encourage people to think more inclusively about African-Americans' role in music.

"We have always had black composers that excelled at a very high level of craftsmanship," he said. "(This concert) is not promoting the stereotype of the black composer ... it's promoting the broad range of involvement."

Musical legacy

Lynn Swanson, executive artistic director at the Milwaukee Children's Choir, proposed the idea after moving to Milwaukee from Georgia, where concerts honoring African-American composers are held every February.

Swanson leads the choir's 150 choral singers, who are divided into groups according to age and skill. The top two choirs regularly sing with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and perform "The Nutcracker" at the Milwaukee Ballet every year.

Yet works from artists such as Margaret Bonds usually aren't a part of their repertoire.

Swanson said it's important for them to showcase how the classical, orchestral and choral genres have been beneficiaries of African-American talent.

For example, Florence Price studied at the New England Conservatory of Music in the early 20th century, becoming the first nationally famous African-American female composer of the 1930s whose works have been compared to Dvořák and Strauss.

William Grant Still, another New England Conservatory alumni and composer of the 1931 "Afro-American Symphony," often fused African and orchestral music in his compositions and became the first African-American to conduct a symphony orchestra in the U.S.

But although they gained widespread national recognition for being excellent composers in addition to being firsts, many of their musical compositions have gone unheard.

Swanson wanted to change that by bringing an Atlantan tradition to Milwaukee — celebrating Black History Month with a concert focused on black historical composers.

Still, Price, George Walker, Bonds and Fats Waller will all be celebrated at the concert and Swanson also sprinkled in contemporary African-American musicians, such as Donna Woodall of the Jazz Estate and choral composer Rollo Dilworth.

Swanson said the experience will teach choral students the diversity of music and its creators.

Jack Cannon, a junior at Homestead High School in Mequon, is a choir singer who will perform in the upcoming concert. The 16-year-old has been a part of the Milwaukee Children's Choir since he was 13. 

He said the rehearsals have provided him with a culturally-infused music education, which has been both fun and eye-opening.

"I love singing songs that have more meaning behind them (because) you feel more connected with the music," Cannon said. "And that also happens when you work with the composer."

Cannon and other choir members have spent the past three months rehearsing songs such as "To Sit and Dream," a tribute to Langston Hughes, and Cheatham's "Glory Hallelujah, Since I Laid My Burdens Down."

"There are some powerful lyrics and if you put that into the context of Langston Hughes ... as a black man growing up in that time period, (learning) about the world must have been pretty difficult," he said.

Cannon plans to attend college and continue studying musical theory and composition as well as musical theater. 

"To be honest, I didn't know who Wallace Cheatham was," he said. "I’ve just developed a much greater appreciation of music from different perspectives and I want to continue with that."

Swanson said that was a crucial part of developing the concert.

"Having the arts in your life helps in so many other ways," Swanson said. "It helps your math skills, it helps your understanding of science, it helps your creative thinking skills and therefore, your critical thinking skills."

Cheatham, who has worked directly with the choir members for the concert, said they — and audiences — will grow from their participation, just as he did sitting in a classroom, learning from Pellegrini.

There are "certainly continual challenges for the African-American classical composer," he said. "Hopefully, the perspective will be broadened about the contributions of black composers."

The Milwaukee Children's Choir is holding the "Tribute to the American Black Composer"  at 2 p.m. Saturday at St. Sebastian Parish, 5400 W. Washington Blvd. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. and tickets cost $10 (children 5 and under free).