Courtney Bryan (born 1982)
Courtney Bryan was born in New Orleans. She obtained a Bachelor of Music from Oberlin, a Master of Music from Rutgers, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia. Her compositions integrate jazz and modernist idioms (including electronic music) with influences from gospel and spirituals. She currently teaches at Tulane.
Courtney Bryan’s music has been increasingly informed by activism. Such is the case with Yet Unheard from 2016, which is a response to the death of Sandra Bland, the woman who was found hung in a jail cell in Texas after three days in police custody following an arrest during a traffic stop. This is a powerful and unnerving composition for orchestra and chorus based on a text by activist poet Sharan Strange delivered by the extraordinary vocalist Helga Davis.
The performance features teenage musicians from the Kaufman Music Center:
This video of a performance by the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus includes subtitles.
This is a 2018 composition for piano, violin, cello, and clarinet called Elegy. Courtney Bryan has said that this work is a response to “Strange Fruit,” the anti-lynching song by Abel Meeropol made famous by a 1939 recording by Billie Holiday. One can hear fragments of the song in Bryan’s composition.