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MONDAY
MUSICAL
MEDITATIONS

“St. Martin de Porres”by Mary Lou Williams
Border CrosSing
Ahmed Anzaldúa, conductor
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Recorded in concert on October 19, 2019 at Church of the Ascension, Minneapolis

In this week's Monday Musical Meditations we’re delighted to share with you this recording from a concert last fall by Border CrosSing. BC founder and conductor Ahmed Anzaldúa writes:
 
“Jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams wrote a large body of choral music during her life. These works are performed very rarely due to their obscurity and the difficulty in obtaining the scores. Most of this music came after she retired from performance for nearly four years at the height of her career and had a spiritual conversion. Her first record after she came back from retirement was a musical setting of the Catholic Mass. In 1962, the Catholic Church canonized the Peruvian Saint Martin de Porres, the son of a freed slave named Ana Velazquez and a Spaniard who refused to recognize him because he was born black. Mary Lou Williams wrote this piece to commemorate the event, and it is the opening track of her seminal record “Black Christ of the Andes.” St. Martin de Porres, venerated throughout Latin America, is the patron saint of those who seek racial harmony and was regarded as a miraculous healer during his life.”