The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ringshout

The Gathering: A Collective Sonic Ring Shout is an evening three years and several centuries in the making. The multifaceted event—"a 3-year promissory note" as National Black Theatre's Executive Artistic Director (and The Gathering's director and creative conceiver) Jonathan McCrory describes it—is a musical, political, and spiritual collaboration between the Apollo Theater, American Composers Orchestra, and National Black Theatre. And it finally makes its way to Harlem's iconic Apollo stage on May 7.

The program's title may sound abstract, but its evocation of the vital Black tradition of the "Ring Shout" is perhaps the most concise way to capture the program's connective tissue. The Ring Shout is an African-American religious ritual, first practiced by enslaved Africans in the West Indies and United States. As generations of slaves continued to be born into white Christian society, the custom coalesced around a uniquely Black iteration of Christianity, and became an opportunity for worshipers to spontaneously sing, pray, stomp, and take up space in a world that gave them very little.

Video projections by Katherine Freer and poetry written and performed by activist and community organizer Mahogany L. Browne will also be folded into the program, anchored by a 70-member orchestra and 50-voice choir composed of both professional and amateur singers from African-American churches and choral ensembles throughout New York, including Abyssinian Baptist Church Choir, Broadway Inspirational Voices, Convent Avenue Baptist Church Choir, and Sing Harlem Choir.