Discovery Orchestra’s Black History Month concert will include more than just classical music

GEORGE MARRINER MAULL

Maestro George Marriner Maull has a fine eye (and ear) for detail when it comes to classical music. “We are in the business of trying to help people discover things about music that they may not be aware of,” he says.

As founder and artistic director of The Discovery Orchestra, his business is to get inside the music through immersive and educational programming, and to teach the listening skills that help people deepen their understanding.

The “Discover Angelitos Negros” concert to honor Black History Month — which will take place Feb. 23 at 3 p.m. at Grace Church in Newark — seeks to broaden The Discovery Orchestra’s classical roots through an exploration of songs, opera excerpts, Hispanic folk music and spirituals of Caribbean, South American and African American composers. The event will be free, but tickets must be reserved. A post-concert reception will allow concertgoers to mingle with Maull and the performers, including conductor Patricio Molina and soprano Cheryl Warfield, and soloists and vocalists from Warfield’s Manhattan Opera Repertory Ensemble (MORE Opera), a performing arts nonprofit she founded in 2000.

The program, now in its third iteration, was created for The Discovery Orchestra by Warfield and Molina. It is a spin-off of “Angelitos Negros” (“Little Black Angels”), launched in 2021 by MORE Opera as a series of free, outdoor performances of classical music in Black and Latino neighborhoods in New York that were severely impacted by the pandemic. Molina joined as music director for the second edition in 2023, and will be in the same role here.

The program is split into three main groups, and will be sung in Spanish and English. It will open with James and John Johnson’s Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Maull will lead an interactive discovery exploration of “Hay una Antilla en Medio del Mar Caribe,” the traditional Dominican poem set to music that translates from Spanish as “There is an Antilles in the middle of the Caribbean.” Though the folk piece is well known in the Antilles, a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, no one knows who wrote the melody.

“It’s one of the vast number of pieces written by that famous composer called ‘Anonymous,’ whoever he or she was!” says Maull, with a lighthearted joke that is characteristic of the humor he uses to decode the music.

“As is typically the case at our concerts, we will take one short piece of music, perform it once, and then begin to help the audience notice things about it,” he says. “We do that in our usual fashion, by providing them with a listening guide, sort of numbered events, and then we ask them to fill in blanks where there are gaps in the information, which they can only do by listening to the next excerpt that we perform.”

LINDA MARIE PHOTOGRAPHY

PATRICIO MOLINA

“Antilles” will feature tenor Emmanuel Cruz, the MORE Opera chorus and Vic Ortiz on flute in an arrangement written by Molina that premiered at the 2023 performance. Molina, a composer and pianist of Chilean-Syrian heritage, has an extensive background in music from the Caribbean and some of his pieces and arrangements will be heard on the program.

“The poem is set to a very beautiful theme,” Maull says. “It talks about how the Antilles receives light and life from the sun, and about the fact that if we maintain our union and live as brothers, we can create concord and peace forever. The song ends with the line ‘Long live freedom,’ a very uplifting text, and I think Molina felt that if he set it in such a way that there’d be soloists and chorus, it could be a very effective piece of music.”

In addition to “Antilles,” the program’s first group, “Caribbean,” will feature other Molina works as well as pieces by Cuban composer Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes and Dominican composers J. A. Hernandez, Luis Alberti and Rafael Solano. In addition to Cruz, Ortiz and Warfield, performers in this section will include vocalists Mallory Molina and Gabriel De Los Santos, and percussionist Ricky Rosa.

The second group, “South America,” will feature sopranos Warfield and Rachel Silverstein in works by Molina, Chilean composer Eliodoro Ortiz de Zárate and Mexican composer Daniel Catán.

The final section, “North America,” will begin with “I Am Seekin’ for a City,” a spiritual arranged by Molina, which will be sung by mezzo-soprano Veronica Lewis and the chorus. The concert will close with a Discovery Orchestra commission, Molina’s “Your World,” which originated at last year’s gala, and will be sung by Warfield. “There was a sort of silent auction of sorts,” Maull says. “You could sign up and say how much you wanted to contribute to the orchestra and have Patricio write a piece of music for you.”

The “Angelitos Negros” collaboration with The Discovery Orchestra came about through Molina, a member of the board, who first shared the idea with Maull and fellow trustees. “At one point Patricio said to us, ‘I’ve been doing this program with MORE Opera that basically celebrates the classical music of Caribbean, South American, and African American composers,’ ” Maull says. “And then he went into a little detail about how it came to be.”

CHERYL WARFIELD

Warfield named the series after a 1948 Mexican drama film. “It’s a fascinating script,” Maull says. “There’s a little girl in the story who I believe is of mixed race and she asks her mother why there are no Black angels in paintings by the great masters. Of course, that question by itself should stop most people in their tracks.”

Maull, who is 77, founded The Discovery Orchestra, a nonprofit music education organization based in Summit, in 1987, as The Philharmonic Orchestra of New Jersey. The name was changed in 2006.

He first encountered Caribbean music as a teenager and has loved it ever since. For the past 30 years he has spent winter vacations in Cancún and periodically visits The Antilles, with an ear turned to local music.

“One of the great treats of being in Cancún is that big bands from islands around the Caribbean come and perform there in hotels and clubs,” he says. “When we first started going there, I remember Cuban bands that were just scintillating; I’m sure they’re still able to be found. There is a lot of music going on down there and amazing local musicians.”

By combining what he does at The Discovery Orchestra with African American and Latino musical traditions and cultures, he hopes to bridge the repertoire with the orchestral field and to build new audiences and partnerships. He finds rewards in helping his more classical music-minded base gain some understanding of composers they have never heard of.

“There is so much music that is unknown by many classical music devotees coming from the Caribbean, South America and the African American communities,” he says. “We like to be able to feature composers that our listeners can be quite touched by their music. …

“If you can help people to listen to music in such a way that really moves them to their core, and they feel like, ‘Wow! Yes! This composer is saying — in abstract, wordless music — exactly how I feel right now’ … that’s an incredible thing to experience.”

His public radio show “Inside Music with George Marriner Maull” is broadcast on the second and fourth Saturday of every month at 7:30 pm on the Mercer County-based radio station WWFM, 89.1. His programming explores various genres of classical music, from Baroque to modern.

“It’s hard for me to find music I don’t like, so it was never a case of either or: either he loves Beethoven or he loves Elvis Presley,” he says. “It was always both. As I began to encounter the music of other cultures, I just began enjoying it. I find music almost no matter where it originates.

“First of all, it is universal in the sense that wherever there are human beings on the planet, you find music. It’s not all going to be like Beethoven. I think if we can, as fellow human beings, get to enjoy each other’s music, that is a really good thing.”

Maull has played a large part in shaping the classical music field in New Jersey, including as an assistant conductor at New Jersey Symphony. In 1979, he founded New Jersey Youth Symphony with the goal of giving local performing arts students an outlet for creative expression and personal growth. He went on to lead NJYS for 18 seasons, which included four European tours and three performances at Carnegie Hall.

In 2012, NJYS was integrated into Wharton Arts, becoming its flagship orchestra, which has been led, since 2018, by principal conductor Helen H. Cha-Pyo, who is also the artistic director of Wharton Arts.

“Helen is my sixth successor there, since I left at the end of the 1997-1998 season, I think,” he says. “They’ve all been wonderful conductors who’ve come to the orchestra since I left, but Helen is the pièce de résistance.”

“George is still educating and being a guiding light for classical music and how to really engage the audience,” Cha-Pyo told me at NJYS’ 45th anniversary concert last year. “He’s ‘walking the talk’ that he’s been doing all of his career and he’s still right here with us.”

At the milestone concert, he was honored with the “George Marriner Maull Careers in Music Scholarship Award,” a new scholarship fund set up in his name. “I was quite touched by them doing that,” he says. At the Wharton Arts Gala one month prior, he was presented with the 2024 Education Award for his lifelong commitment to sharing his appreciation of classical music and building a community around it.

He remains a friend of NJYS. In 2023, he led an interactive exploration in a Black History Month concert, helping the audience notice aspects of Florence Price’s First Symphony.

JAMES ORTHMANN

George Marriner Maull with members of New Jersey Youth Symphony in May 2024 at NJPAC in Newark.

His fame extends far beyond the state, thanks to his acclaimed concert series founded in 1996 called Discovery Concerts, in which he breaks down the barriers of classical music for listeners of all ages and education levels. It has been televised since 2003 and is distributed by American Public Television and APT Worldwide. Programming explores symphonic masterworks and icons such as Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi and Stravinsky. The most recent one, “Discover Saint-Saëns’ ‘Organ’ Symphony,” was recorded in 2023 at The Pingry School in Basking Ridge.

APT recently re-released three Discovery Concerts; they are currently being shown on various public television stations. All shows are available to stream on Amazon Prime and PBS Passport.

“In addition to the latest one we made on Saint-Saëns’ ‘Organ’ Symphony, also being shown around the country are ‘Discover Beethoven’s 5th,’ ‘Discover Vivaldi’s Four Seasons’ and the signature course I teach, an eight-part series called ‘Fall in Love with Music,’ ” Maull says.

“Last season, due to the release of those four programs, 81 million households were reached by their broadcasts on American Public Television, Amazon Prime and PBS Passport. It’s an astounding number to think about! We’re getting wonderful feedback from people around the country, saying how much these programs helped them and changed them; it feels good to get that feedback and to know we’re touching lives.”

Those eager for his next Discovery Concert will be excited to learn that a program on George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” is planned for 2026, in commemoration of the centennial of its first performance (which was in 2024). It will be The Discovery Orchestra’s seventh national television special.

The orchestra’s spring season kicks off with an annual gala, April 30 at The Park Savoy in Florham Park. The event will feature a concert, cocktails, dinner and awards. Maull will be joined by Turkish classical guitarist Celil Refik Kaya and his wife, violinist Amanda Braud Kaya, in movements from Manuel de Falla’s “Siete Canciones Populares Españolas,” arranged for guitar and violin.

May 17 at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Maull will revisit the American masters with an exploration of Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” which will also feature an opening reception and post-event dessert.

For information, visit discoveryorchestra.org.