
Margaret Bonds: Credo
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Margaret Bonds: Credo
Join us for an intimate evening of music for voices and piano by African-American composer Margaret Bonds. Selections include Credo, a setting of W. E. B. Du Bois’ prose poem, and settings of poetry by Langston Hughes. Anton Nel will join Conspirare and perform movements from Spirituals Suite for piano solo. The Los Angeles Times describes Nel as “…a pianist of exceptional sensitivity and stylistic discrimination.”
Stay after the concert for a talk back with Bonds scholar John Michael Cooper, Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson and artists.
Margaret Bonds:
Credo
Join us for an intimate evening of music for voices and piano by African-American composer Margaret Bonds. Selections include Credo, a setting of W. E. B. Du Bois’ prose poem, and settings of poetry by Langston Hughes. Anton Nel will join Conspirare and perform movements from Spirituals Suite for piano solo. The Los Angeles Times describes Nel as “…a pianist of exceptional sensitivity and stylistic discrimination.”
Stay after the concert for a talk back with Bonds scholar John Michael Cooper, Artistic Director Craig Hella Johnson and artists.
Tickets start at $25. Student tickets available for $10.
TUESDAY
02.15.22 at 7:30pm
St. Martin’s Lutheran Church
606 W 15th St, Austin, TX 78701

W.E.B. Dubois
Listen to Marques Jerrell Ruff, Conspirare bass, read
W. E. B. DuBois’ “Credo.” Ruff will be the bass soloist in
Bonds’ setting of Du Bois’ Credo.

Marques Jerrell Ruff
Listen to Marques Jerrell Ruff, Conspirare bass, read W. E. B. DuBois’ “Credo.” Ruff will be the bass soloist in Bonds’ setting of Du Bois’ Credo.

Conspirare singing Path of Miracles at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in October 2021. Photo credit: Scott Van Osdol
Concert Program
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Spirituals Suite (piano solo)
I. Valley of the Bones based on the spiritual “Dry Bones”
II. The Bells based on “Peter, Go Ring dem Bells”
African Dance (duet for soprano and tenor with piano)
When the Dove Enters In (soloist and piano)
Credo (soprano solo, baritone solo, choir and piano)
- I Believe in God
- Especially Do I Believe in the Negro Race
- I Believe in Pride of Race
- I Believe in the Devil and His Angels
- I Believe in the Prince of Peace
- I Believe in Liberty
- I Believe in Patience
Concert Program
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Spirituals Suite (piano solo)
I. Valley of the Bones based on the spiritual “Dry Bones”
II. The Bells based on “Peter, Go Ring dem Bells”
African Dance (duet for soprano and tenor with piano)
When the Dove Enters In (soloist and piano)
Credo (soprano solo, baritone solo, choir and piano)
- I Believe in God
- Especially Do I Believe in the Negro Race
- I Believe in Pride of Race
- I Believe in the Devil and His Angels
- I Believe in the Prince of Peace
- I Believe in Liberty
- I Believe in Patience
Listen
Background
We invite you to get to know the composer, Margaret Bonds, and more about the music on the program with the resources below.
- Explore Georgetown University’s Margaret Bonds: Composer and Activist and read her biography
- Bonds’ “Credo” is the concert finale. John Michael Cooper provides cultural context with his talk Margaret Bonds, Black Feminism, and the Credo of W. E. B. Du Bois.
- “African Dance” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” are examples of Bonds’ settings of text by Langston Hughes.
- View the manuscript and story of “When the Dove Enters In” and read scholar John Michael Cooper’s reflection on this composition in “The Light is Revealed”.
- WEB DuBois’ Credo proclaimed his philosophy of racial equality. View the original publication and read W. E. B. Du Bois papers.
Collaborators
Michael Cooper
John Michael Cooper, Professor of Music at Southwestern University (Georgetown, Texas), is the editor of seventy works of Florence B. Price published in sixty volumes by G. Schirmer in 2019-21, and chief contributing editor to the Margaret Bonds Signature Series of Hildegard Publishing Company (currently slated to include fifty volumes). He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music (Scarecrow Press), three other books on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and sixteen editions of music published by Bärenreiter and other German publishers. His book titled Margaret Bonds: The Montgomery Variations and Du Bois “Credo” is currently at press with Cambridge University Press.
Camilla Tassi
Camilla Tassi is a projection designer from Florence, Italy. Coming from formal backgrounds in computer science and music, she has worked as a designer, singer, producer, and translator. She has created projections for works including Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Apollo’s Fire), Pollock’s Stinney (PROTOTYPE Festival NYC), Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol (Yale Opera), Glass’ Fall of the House of Usher (MASS MoCA), Tesori’s Fun Home (Yale School of Drama), Carissimi’s Jephte (Hopkins Center for the Arts) and Mozart’s Magic Flute (Berlin Opera Academy). Tassi is particularly passionate about bringing theatrical design to traditionally unstaged compositions (choral, art song, chamber, oratorio) as a re-contextualization of the work and layer of accessibility to the music and its relation to the performance space. As a video designer, Tassi has filmed and produced for groups including the Washington Chorus, Les Délices, Yale Cabaret, Princeton Festival, Nasty Women Connecticut, and the Chicago Ear Taxi Festival.
She has directed and produced performances of period and contemporary works, including a joint theater and opera project of Tennessee Williams and Larry Delinger’s Talk to Me Like the Rain and the US Premiere of Morricone’s Se questo e` un uomo. As an Italian coach and soprano, she has created program translations for Carnegie Hall (L’Arpeggiata) and sings with the Yale Schola Cantorum. Tassi holds degrees in Computer Science and Music from the University of Notre Dame, Digital Musics from Dartmouth, and is currently an MFA Candidate at Yale in Projection Design under Wendall Harrington. http://camillatassi.com
Viera Buzgova
Viera Buzgova’s experience in the world of music is multi-faceted: she studied piano for 12 years, received her Bachelor’s degree in church music, sings in choir and plays percussion, and is experienced in many aspects of choral music production. Her lighting design and theatrical production career began in 1998 while working as a Technical Director with Concordia University at Austin theater program. During her 10-year tenure there, she directed lighting design, set design and construction, and stage crew management. Since 2012, she has been a member of Grammy-winning Conspirare’s production team, serving as stage manager and lighting designer for local and touring concerts including the national Considering Matthew Shepard tour. Outside of her production life, Viera is an owner and managing partner of an Austin-based immigration law firm.
Meet the Artists
Craig Hella Johnson
Anton Nel, pianist
Anton Nel
Winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition Anton Nel tours internationally as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. Highlights in the U.S. include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, and Seattle Symphonies, as well as recitals coast to coast. Overseas he has appeared at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and major venues in China, Korea, and South Africa. He holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Austin and in the summers he is on the artist-faculties at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival. The Johannesburg-born Mr. Nel, also an avid harpsichordist and fortepianist, is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied with Adolph Hallis, and the University of Cincinnati where he worked with Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock.