Chinyere Obasi - Three Maritime Songs for chorus, soloists, celesta, and percussion (2026)

Washington Master Chorale and Lloyd Mallory Singers Don Johns, percussion Performed live at St. Ann Catholic Church in Washington, DC Commissioned by the Washington Master Chorale on the occasion of the third annual Florence Price Commission Competition. The commission was made possible with the generous support of Diane Kresh Movements: 0:00 - I: Procession on a Bajan Chant 6:05 - II: Sea Calm 9:00 - III: and if I called it warm --- I began writing this piece in summer 2025, a time when I found myself increasingly horrified at the ways the world around me was shifting. I knew I wanted to write a piece related to my own Black history, specifically that of my mother and the Caribbean she originated from and using music from that culture. This want later turned into the first movement, whose near total wordlessness came both from an initial hesitance to state so plainly the horror of that history, before realizing that the horror is precisely the point. That Caribbean history—combined with a life in Boston that consistently has me crossing the Charles River and persistent thoughts of the Potomac, whose banks the WMC calls home—is how I began to have an interest in dealing with, through music, how we see open seas when we don’t know what they can bring. I started thinking of what people may have said to the galleons carrying conquistadors arriving on Caribbean, South American, and African shores (“and if I called it gold”), I mentally overlayed the poetry of Langston Hughes on sights of ships in the Levantine Sea (Sea Calm), and, slowly, a piece began to develop out of that meditation. Concurrently, I began to wrestle with my personal history with Western classical music, particularly its minimalist and sacred traditions. The influences of composers who pulled my ears into those genres are sprinkled throughout—Steve Reich peeks his head in with the usage of keyboard and mallet percussion, the three insistent notes of Lili Boulanger's Vieille prière bouddhique anchor the third movement, and John Tavener's work gave both structural and tonal inspiration for the first movement. I write this note as the Nuestra América Convoy prepares to attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba amid renewed embargoes, a month after Operation Absolute Resolve, itself months after Hurricane Melissa, itself months after the beginnings of Operation Southern Spear; I am unsure of what sea Hughes was referring to in his work, but the Caribbean Sea at present is anything but calm.