Luminescence Project gives ‘multi- sensory’ show

A hush came over the crowd as the lights dimmed and the choir, barefoot and clad entirely in black, padded onto the stage in the center of the audience. The singers’ only accessories were small lights in red, white, blue, green or orange hanging on black cord from their necks and the black binders of music they carried.\nThe IU Luminescence Project’s multi-sensory performance Friday and Saturday in the Musical Arts Center transported the audience into a world where a young black man is lynched by a white mob.\nThe show began with Harald Svennson’s “I-A-O,” a series of syllables accompanied by a small instrumental section and overlaid with speech sound bytes from Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.\n“We shall overcome,” King’s well-known voice resonated throughout the room, part of a speech he gave June 17, 1966. “Deep in my heart, I believe we shall overcome.”\nThe music transitioned into the centerpiece of the show, “And They Lynched Him on a Tree,” a song written by black composer William Grant Still and white poet Katherine Garrison Chapin. The piece began with the first of its two choruses, the “White Crowd,” who laid down their lights in a small pile on the stage.\n“For me ... the lights were emblematic of hope,” said Mark Doerries, the production’s conductor and artistic director, though he added that the symbolism was open to interpretation.\nIn this instance, the “White Crowd” had just lynched a young black man who had received a life sentence for murder – a sentence that apparently did not satisfy the mob.\n“We swung him higher than the tallest pine,” they sang. As the Crowd told their story, swaths of fabric hanging on either side of the seats with trees painted on them turned red with lighting.\nAfter their piece, the “White Crowd” singers exited the stage, moving to surround the audience and the “Negro Men and Women” took their places, appearing shocked and pleading “God have mercy on me.”\nContralto Xan Jennings entered to perform her solo as the dead man’s mother as the other “Negro men and women” sat around her.\n“Oh, sorrow, I must walk with you to the Promised Land, oh sorrow,” she sang. “Oh, Jesus, my Jesus, what have they done?”\nFollowing an ode to the dead man (“He was a man, Lord, he was a man”), a powerful plea to “cut him down” resonated with the audience as both choirs sang.\nAs they left, the second choir also laid down their lights, adding them to the small pile Jennings now stood before.\n“Instead of ending in a hopeful way, the composer chose to end it in a bleak way,” Doerries said.\nSoprano Abigail Mitchell, who as a “White Crowd” member had sung she was glad the dead man was no son of hers, entered to face Jennings, her blue-light necklace swinging gently from her left hand. The women stared at each other for several beats before Jennings slowly removed her green light, placing it with the others and exiting.\nTaking Jennings’s place, Mitchell began her a cappella solo piece, Thomas Jennefelt’s “Stimoni Volio,” whose words are Latin-sounding gibberish. With facial expression, body language and voice, she told a story of shock, anger, pain and relief, constantly rotating to face all sides of the audience. With no clear plotline, each audience member had to decide for themselves exactly what that story was.\n“It was innovative, different,” senior Kurt Bennett said of the overall performance.\nJunior Shellie Strange agreed.\n“It was a lot different than your average concert,” Strange said, adding that she enjoyed Mitchell’s solo. “There was a lot of emotion ... even though I couldn’t understand(the words).”