Davóne Tines & Jillian Patricia Pirtle
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The HearTOGETHER Podcast from The Philadelphia Orchestra is a space for honest, intimate conversations about life, music, social justice- and how art can help bring us towards a brighter future.
In episode one, you’ll hear from two singers who raise their voices against injustice- Davóne Tines and Jillian Patricia Pirtle.
Davóne Tines is perhaps best-known for his original works which look at complex social issues, directly in the eye. Like 2018’s The Black Clown, based on Langston Hughes’ poem of the same name, about a black clown who is at first forced to wear a white costume, and gradually finds the resolve to take it off. Growing up in “Virginia horse country”, Tines connected deeply to the character. "I realized if I wore a certain thing, people reacted to me a certain way. And so that starts you building a toolkit of how you want people to treat you, so you assign clothes to those things. And you can really shape-shift those things very subtly. And yeah, I think that was almost the beginning of me being a performer," he said.
Jillian Patricia Pirtle is a historian, singer, pageant queen, and CEO of The Marian Anderson Historical Society and Museum. Her ongoing battle to preserve Marian’s 150-year old house got even more difficult this summer when three pipes burst in the basement. It’s been an incredibly difficult year, but Pirtle refuses to give up on her mission, saying, “I believe that Marian's legacy and her story makes our stories, what they will become, and our future legacies, possible. So why would I abandon that? You're asking me to abandon myself and you and other little girls who need to have that sense of knowing that they can. If I think of only but myself in this moment, then what?”
Watch
Davóne Tines Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBnULOJjyv9QOaeUXw5iTjw
Vigil video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkSDFkEoU90
Our City, Your Orchestra series: philorch.org/our-city-your-orchestra
Read
The Black Clown by Langston Hughes: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/media/the-black-clown-poem/
Listen
Background on our intro music, Dvořák’s Symphony No.9, “from The New World” https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2018/11/24/669557133/dvorak-new-world-symphony-american-anthem
Mixed by Teng Chen
The Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts’s HearTOGETHER podcast is generously supported by lead corporate sponsor Accordant Advisors. Additional major support has been provided by the Otto Haas Charitable Trust.