Sorrow's Bride
By Joyce Solomon Moorman
Yvonne Hatchett : Mezzo Soprano, Joyce Solomon Moorman : Piano, and Wilson Moorman : Percussion
My opera, Elegies for the Fallen, is about the Soweto Uprising which began in Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, June 16, 1976, when the South African police shot into a group of students, protesting a new ruling making Afrikaans a mandatory subject and a language of instruction, killing several. Previously the language of instruction was English. The uprising continued for a year and a half. The opera follows the general outline of the uprising as reported to Dr. Rashidah Ismaili, the librettist, by South African artists and as the uprising was reported in the American news media. Dr. Ismaili first wrote Elegies for the Fallen as a play.
The excerpt presented here, Sorrow’s Bride, is the first scene of Act II. It is a bedroom scene. A middle-aged woman, whose husband has been in jail eighteen years, prepares to go to bed. As she looks at his picture, she sings about her loneliness, fears, and love for her husband.
About the Artist
Joyce Moorman
Joyce Solomon Moorman’s compositions have been performed by Lilan Parrot, Triad Chorale, Wilson Moorman, LonGar Ebony Ensemble, the Woodhill Chamber Ensemble, the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, After Dinner Opera Company, Sandra Billingslea, the Plymouth Chorus and Orchestra, the Moravian Philharmonic, the Afro-American Chamber Music Society of Los Angeles, and the Richmond County Orchestra. She has been commissioned by the Plymouth Chorus and Orchestra of Minneapolis, Minnesota; the Cygnus Chamber Ensemble, Rejoicensemble and North/South Consonance of New York City, Turn On The Music of New Jersey, and Louise Toppin. In 1990 she was a finalist in the first Detroit Symphony African-American Composers’ Competition. Ms. Moorman was a winner of the Vienna Modern Masters 1998 Millennium Commission Competition. The awards included a concert performance, recording and publication of an orchestral work for international distribution. She received honorable mention in the International Alliance for Women in Music Competition for the Year 2000 Women of Color Commission. And she received a performance award in the Andy Warhol Composers’ Competition sponsored by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in August 2000. In 2004 her opera, Elegies for the Fallen, received a special commendation from the Nancy Van de Vate International Opera Competition for Women Composers. She is included in Helen Walker-Hill’s Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music (Hildegard, 1992), Piano Music by Black Women Composers: A Catalogue of Solo and Ensemble Works (Greenwood Press, 1992), and Music by Black Women Composers: A Bibliography of Available Scores ( Center for Black Music Research, 1995). Also she is in Evelyn White’s Choral Music by African-American Composers (Scarecrow Press, 1996). In 1997 she was appointed by the Governor of New York to the Advisory Music Panel for the New York State Council on the Arts, which she served on for three years. Pen and Brush, Inc. of New York City presented her with the June Jordan Award in 2003 for excellence in the field of arts and performance and the perpetuation of African American culture. Currently she is retired from Borough of Manhattan Community College where she held the rank of Professor in the Music and Art Department.