The North Carolina Symphony will perform music that celebrates African American culture in a concert Thursday night, Sept. 15 at Fayetteville State University.

The Freedom Celebration Concert will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Seabrook Auditorium at FSU, according to a news release from the symphony. Tickets are free but reservations are requested. Click here for tickets to the N.C. Symphony concert at FSU.

The concert will feature music created and influenced by African Americans, including spirituals, ragtime, jazz, and classical music. Associate Conductor Michelle Di Russo will lead the orchestra.

Guest soloist Micaela Bundy will join the orchestra to open the concert with a performance of the hymn “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Bundy, a mezzo-soprano, teaches choral music and theater at Eastern Alamance High School.

The program also will feature “Spirituals of Liberation,” a commissioned work by symphony composer in residence Anthony Kelley. The three movements the piece explores are the conditions of forced labor, feelings of loss and hope by the enslaved, and African Americans’ embrace of freedom, the news release said.

Also on the program are pieces by William Grant Still and George Walker and arrangements celebrating jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
The program premiered at Booth Amphitheatre in Cary on June 18 in commemoration of Juneteenth. It will be presented at Elizabeth City State University on Sept. 16.