The Ritz Chamber Players uplifts Black musicians, composers with Juneteenth concert series

• Black musicians represent less than 2% of the membership of American orchestras.
• The Ritz Chamber Player brings together Black musicians to play pieces composed by Black composers. It also seeks to attract Black audiences to classical music through inclusivity.
• From June 18-21, the Players performed the concert series "Voices of Freedom" in honor of Juneteenth, Black Music Month and Pride Month. It ended their 2024-25 season.
• The concert's program ranged from James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to modern pieces.

On June 21, over 100 community members sat together in Jacksonville University’s Terry Concert Hall. On stage, the Ritz Chamber Players — violinists Ashley Horne and Victoria Bramble, violist Chauncey Patterson, cellist Freddie Renaud and pianist Kamilla Arku — were dressed in black. Ann Marie McPhail, a classical soprano singer in a white dress with splashes of color, stood center stage.

They began to perform Nkeiru Okoye’s “We Met at the Symphony.” The song’s first movement also takes place in a darkened room with a stage and musicians. But that’s where the similarities between settings ends.

“This place reeks of uniformity,” McPhail sang. Uniformity of the white instrumentalists, the white audience. “2,499 white faces — and then mine, pecan colored.”

The piece describes, albeit with humor, the isolation of being the only Black person at a classical concert. Terrance Patterson, executive and artistic director of the Ritz Chamber Players, said that less than 2% of American orchestra members are Black.

Patterson first experienced this disparity when a professional ensemble visited his class at William M. Raines High School. He said Raines’ student body was almost entirely Black.

“I think we had one white student,” Patterson said.

But the world of classical music didn’t reflect Patterson’s world. He found that jarring.

So, Patterson built an artistic community that did. He founded the Ritz Chamber Players in 2002 to highlight Black musicians and composers in classical music. Bringing together performers from around the country, the group’s roster changes with each concert series as fresh ensembles must quickly perfect new pieces.

Additionally, the Ritz Chamber Players attracts Black audiences to concert halls. Patterson said that, for this classical style of music to survive, it must engage audiences. And to do that, it must include them.

The Ritz Chamber Players’ free June 18-21 concert series “Voices of Freedom” honored Juneteenth, Black Music Month and Pride Month. It served as their 2024-25 finale, the whole season paying homage to civil rights activist and Jacksonville native James Weldon Johnson on his 125th birthday. Saturday’s show began with “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a hymn known as the Black national anthem with lyrics by Johnson set to music by his brother, J. Rosamond.

The rest of the program varied from Nansi Carroll’s haunting and tense “The Threshing Floor Reflection of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” to Jessie Montgomery’s swashbuckling “Strum.” All of the program’s composers were Black, almost half were women and most were modern. Pattern said that the industry tends to oppose new classical music, but the Ritz Chamber Players continues to expand the community’s palette.

“Sometimes, people get freaked out when they don’t see Brahms, Bach or Beethoven on a program,” Patterson said. “It’s exciting when they trust you enough to come, hear it and find they really like it.”

Daniel Bernard Roumain’s “Agrarian and Liquid” was one of the newer pieces on the concerts’ program. McPhail described it as forward-thinking. It featured a spoken word component, performed by Jacksonville City Council member Rahman Johnson.

“Freedom, like music,” Johnson said, supported by the string quartet and McPhail’s singing. “Fluid and lucid, a sanctuary.”

The Ritz Chamber Players are still planning their next season, but it will include a performance of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Concerts. Patterson said this will be a community effort as the pieces need a big choir, classical soprano and baritone singers, a jazz singer, a gospel singer — and a tap dancer.