The Harlem Chamber Players revive a Black composer's biblical oratorio

The Harlem Chamber Players swell to orchestral proportions to revive "The Ordering of Moses," a biblical oratorio composed by Harlem Renaissance artist R. Nathaniel Dett, at Riverside Church in advance of Juneteenth weekend. The piece premiered on NBC Radio in 1937, but was cut short before the performance had concluded.

Conductor Damien Sneed says the piece “encapsulates and it exudes almost every possible musical idiom, every possible rhythm, the textures, the color, the timbre.” He hopes it will become “a normal part of the canon of orchestral music, the canon of choral music, and, of course, of the genre of oratorio.”