Saxophone player Steven Banks explored the African American experience through a performance in Aspen on Friday night.
He was the featured soloist with the Aspen Music Festival and School’s chamber symphony, and he’ll be playing a fairly new piece he commissioned from Grammy Award-winning composer Billy Childs.
Childs said in an interview that the piece tells a story of slavery, emancipation, civil rights and self awareness.
“My whole purpose is to invite the person into my world,” he said. “And once invited, that world may be uncomfortable for them, but nevertheless, they would see the value in participating in it.”
The piece is inspired by several poems, including “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, “Africa’s Lament” by Nayyirah Waheed and “And Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou.
Much like poetry, Childs said, “music is kind of an art form [in which] you take something that is not explainable in a literal sense, and explain it in another kind of discipline and another aesthetic.”
The piece also includes melodic motifs from gospel music and church hymns that Childs and Banks grew up with; for Banks, a classically-trained saxophonist, that element really resonates with his own lived experience.
“I was often the person sort of being told that my playing was too much of this, too much of that,” Banks said. “And it probably was, but in many ways, I think that kind of raw expression that I was really interested in is something that comes from growing up in the church and in hearing and participating in gospel music.”
“For me, music is this sort of visceral outpouring, in many ways,” he added.
Banks is known for both his talent and his advocacy in the world of classical music. He said the piece allows him to express a lot of his own emotions about racial equity — and get the audience to think about the bigger picture, too.
“It sort of makes the feelings very visceral for the audience, which I hope will stick with them and allow them to be continually more aware of how they're existing in the world,” Banks said.
Editor's note: This story has been updated after the concert to reflect that the event has already taken place.
