CRAIG HELLA JOHNSON conductor

Program: PAUL MORAVEC/MARK CAMPBELL: Sanctuary Road

Sanctuary Road by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning librettist Mark Campbell. It is the second of Moravec's “American historical oratorios.” Campbell conceived and created the libretto drawn from the astonishing stories found in William Still’s The Underground Railroad. Regarded as the Father of the Underground Railroad, Still‘s meticulous documentation of the heroic and courageous stories of enslaved African Americans escaping to freedom is transformed into a “modern choral masterpiece, representing struggle and hope in the best of the oratorio tradition” (Black Grooves).