Kellen Gray & RSNO - African American Voices II - Presto Music

This second volume of orchestral works by Black American composers draws some outstanding playing from the RSNO: strings sing and shimmer in the evocation of 'Dawn in Dixie' from Margaret Bonds's powerful and brilliantly-paced Montgomery Variations (a response to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the mid-1950s and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama) and the brass really blaze in the Passacaglia from Ulysses Kay's neo-Classical Concerto for Orchestra from 1948. The percussion get ample opportunity to shine in Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Concert Overture - a real gift for any orchestra looking for an ebullient curtain-raiser by an under-represented composer.