Beneath Suspicion, the Sojourner Truth Cantata, Monument

Saturday June 13 @ 7pm

Sunday June 14 @ 3pm

Heartland Community College

Astroth Auditorium

1500 W. Raab

Normal, Il 61761

Beneath Suspicion by Jessye Ayers

Elizabeth Van Lew: Sarah Price, Soprano

Mary Bowser: Tracy Marie Koch, soprano

Tracy Marie Koch, stage director

Program Notes from jessyeayers.com

Beneath Suspicion is based on a true, but almost unknown, story of two daring, American women who fought against slavery, exploiting prevailing gender and racial stereotypes to spy for the Union inside the Confederate “White House” during the Civil War.

Elizabeth Van Lew, a passionate abolitionist known around Richmond as “Crazy Bet,” is the middle-aged daughter of a recently deceased, wealthy Richmond slave owner. Upon her father’s death, she frees her family’s slaves, including a young household servant named Mary. Bet, recognizing Mary’s extreme intelligence, sends her to Philadelphia to a Quaker school to be educated, after which Mary returns to Richmond to work in the Van Lew home as a free woman.

Mary has a photographic memory. She can memorize documents verbatim in one quick reading as well as repeat lengthy conversations word for word. As the war breaks out, Mary is in her early 20s, Bet, her 40s. They are close friends. Though Richmond is the capital of the Confederacy, about half of its inhabitants are Union sympathizers. Bet, a firebrand, uses her contacts to set up a spy ring to report Confederate troop movements to the Union military. Her information is so reliable, her coded messages go directly General Ulysses S. Grant.

This works portrays a key scene in the lives of these two women: the crisis moment when Mary must decide if she will risk her life to undertake the daring plan she believes God has revealed to her, or if she will shrink back to maintain her personal safety and freedom.

Both women were inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in the 1990s.

The Sojourner Truth Cantata by Stanley Friedman

Stanley Friedman, conductor

Sojourner Truth: Tracy Marie Koch, soprano

Stanley Friedman’s Sojourner Truth follows the traditional five-movement cantata structure, exploring pivotal milestones in the legendary abolitionist and women’s rights activist's life.

• I Told the Lord I wanted Two Names: Recounts Isabella Baumfree’s transformation, shedding her slave name to become a traveling minister and speaker of the truth.

• Bound for Freedom: Focuses on her fight for her family and her historic legal victories to free her youngest son.

• Ain't I a Woman?: A musical interpretation of her iconic 1851 address at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

• Forty Years a Slave: Reflects on her early life in bondage and the resilience required to survive it.

• Rock This Nation (Like a Cradle): Concludes the piece with a spirited look at her lasting civil rights legacy

Monument by Stanley Friedman

Stanley Friedman, conductor

Dyson Ramsey, choreographer

The music was inspired by the removal of Confederate statues from public parks in Memphis, TN.