Good Friday Worship
Roland Hayes’ “The Life of Christ”, a song cycle of Aframerican spirituals will be featured at the Good Friday worship service at First United Methodist Church of Evanston on April 15, 2022 at 7:00pm. The service will be held in the church sanctuary and also livestreamed.
Senior Pastor Rev. Grace Imathiu explains that Hayes’ work completes a Lenten series with sermons by Rev. Dr. Ernest Fremont Tittle who served the congregation 1919-1949 and spoke of Roland Hayes as a “superior individual” and an example of courage in the face of racial injustice. The song cycle will be performed by Henry Pleas, tenor, and Casey Robards, piano. Any donations to a free-will offering at the service will go to the church’s Easter 2022 offering to continue the congregation’s support of Reparations in the City of Evanston.
Roland Hayes, Musician and Activist
Roland Hayes (1887 – 1977) was the first African American man to reach international fame as a concert performer and one of the few artists who could sell out concert halls throughout the world, including New York’s Town and Carnegie Halls, Covent Garden and both Boston and Chicago Symphony Halls. His trailblazing career carved the way for a host of African American artists including Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. In concert performances, he regularly presented the Aframerican (Hayes’ attribution) spirituals he was raised on, but Hayes’ voice was marked with a unique sonority which easily navigated French, German, and Italian art songs. A multiculturalist both on and off the stage, he counted among his friends George Washington Carver, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ezra Pound, Pearl Buck, Dwight Eisenhower, and Langston Hughes.
When he sang at the Woman’s Club in Evanston in 1925, a newspaper headline described Roland Hayes as “Black Gold” and further that “in him dwells the genius of music. He is possessed of that genius” (The American Missionary; February 1925). Dr. Robert Harris, Emeritus Director of Choral Organizations at Northwestern University and a member of First UMC, interviewed Roland Hayes late in the singer’s life and describes him as a force to be reckoned with as a musician and an activist.”
In the introduction to the song cycle that he arranged, Roland Hayes wrote: “The salvation of man is always the great theme of masterworks in literature and art. . . . No story appeals to man’s finer creative vision as does the life of Christ. The early Christian chants, the masses of Palestrina, the passions, oratorios, masses of Bach, Handel, Beethoven . . . are the musical panorama of the mute majesty of the life of God on earth. It is small wonder that in his turn the Aframerican should find in his musical portraying of the life of Christ his most effective utterance.”
Henry Pleas, Tenor
A Chicago based tenor, Henry Pleas is recognized for his robust, warm sound. As soloist for Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Grand Rapids, and Chicago Opera Theater his roles have included the title role in Tales of Hoffmann, Rodolfo in La Boheme, Tamino in the Magic Flute, Turriddu in Cavalleria Rusticana, and Don Jose in Carmen. In orchestral performance he has appeared as soloist in Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Mozart Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and Britten’s St. Nicholas for ensembles including the Grand Rapids Symphony, Ars Viva Symphony and Chicago Modern Orchestra Project.
Pleas’ beautiful, luscious sound and flexible, dynamic voice create riveting and emotional performances. He is a frequent recitalist and interpreter of music from a wide variety of styles, including readings of the song cycles of Schubert, Britten and new works by Glen Roven, Gwyneth Walker and Chris Garofalo. Pleas brings his passion for vocal chamber music to a variety of Chicago communities. He is founder and CEO of the production company WoodlawnArts, which focuses on presentation of classical music to many cultural disenfranchised Chicago Southside communities. He joins the voice faculty of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois in the 2022-23 school year.
Dr. Casey Robards, Pianist
A pianist and vocal coach, Dr. Casey Robards is known for her artistry, versatility and sensitive musicality. She has given recitals with singers and instrumentalists throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America and Asia. Dr. Robards is Head of the Collaborative Piano program at the Bay View Music Festival. Dr. Robards is interested in the intersection of music and social justice and has led benefit recitals for Musicambia, a non-profit organization that creates music conservatories in prisons.
Robards made her Carnegie Hall debut in November 2017 with baritone Christiaan Smith in a program mixing popular Top 40 songs with classical art song interpretation and technique. She recently created a “Shakespeare Cabaret,” an interdisciplinary project between music, theatre, and English faculty involving music by Glen Roven, and premiered with soprano Risa Renae Harman, with stage direction by Nick Gisonde. She currently tours with singer LaToya Lain in a “Narrative of a Slave Woman,” a dramatic and moving lecture-recital formatted program of Negro spirituals. She has special interest in piano and vocal music by African-American composers, having experience in Black church music and a research interest in Negro spirituals and the life and music of John D. Carter, the subject of her dissertation.
She has recorded a CD of African American spirituals with soprano Ollie Watts Davis, (Here’s One), an album of works by female composers with tenor Henry Pleas (Come Down Angels), and appears on recordings with oboist Nancy Clauter (Meridian: The Ascending Journey), Jacek Muzyk, horn (Horn Constellation), the Eden String Quartet (A Bountiful Blessing DVD) and a TV special for a PBS fundraiser with soprano Courtney Huffman.