Actor Harry Lennix joins composer Timothy Adams for world premiere of Harriet Tubman-inspired music with Erie Philharmonic

Composer Timothy Adams played in major symphony orchestras in Atlanta, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh. Yet despite the diverse populations of those cities, only a handful of his fellow musicians looked like him. The music they made was even less representative.

"For 31 years, I played the same three Black composers, whether it was a gospel concert, Black History Month program or the Martin Luther King Jr. Day program," he said. "And it's not like there weren't Black composers writing music for hundreds of years."

Since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the nation's cultural institutions have made long overdue efforts to present the work of creators from underrepresented backgrounds. The Erie Philharmonic went one step further by assembling an international consortium of orchestras to commission a new work by Adams based on the life of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Adams' "Harriet: Journey to Freedom" will receive its world premiere Saturday at the Warner Theatre by the Philharmonic and conductor Daniel Meyer.

Every world premiere is a notable occasion, but this one has an extra sprinkle of stardust in the person of actor Harry Lennix, whose narration is a central element of the work. Lennix got to know Philharmonic Executive Director Steve Weiser when Weiser's former orchestra, the much missed Erie Chamber Orchestra, programmed Stravinsky's "A Soldier's Tale" for a concert featuring dazzling violinist Ade Williams, Lennix's goddaughter. In that piece, Lennix was both narrator and actor, portraying the titular soldier and the devil. "Harriet" doesn't have parts for characters, per se, but the story of Tubman's harrowing journeys is intensely dramatic.

Coming up:Sheena Easton, violinist Midori, 'Toy Story' among Erie Philharmonic's 2022-23 season lineup

"I've always been very interested in the balletic quality of words," Lennix said by phone from New York where he is wrapping his ninth season as FBI Task Force Director Harold Cooper in the NBC television drama "The Blacklist."

"Working with music, to tell a story of this nature is something that I almost considered a kind of sacred music."

The sacred is a world that Lennix knows well. As a student at Chicago's Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, he was on his way to becoming a priest. Though life led him in other directions, Lennix said he still thinks deeply about matters of faith. In Harriet Tubman's story, he sees a connection with St. Joan of Arc.

"Hearing voices and having a certain knowledge of what to do in spite of the powers that be — that is God's work," Lennix said.

For Adams, the most compelling aspect of Tubman's story was her daring selflessness.

"Her story resonates because she went back and got people she didn't know," he said by phone from the University of Georgia, where he is chair of the percussion department. "In today's time, she is the person to imitate, because she had a worldview and saw the importance of being humane to everyone. I thought she would be a subject that people would know and one that could be a unifier."

'Quietly spectacular':Longtime Erie Philharmonic violinist Louis Nicolia dies at 62

Unifying thread in response to Floyd's murder

Unity was on Adams' mind when he and the Philharmonic's Meyer discussed responses to the events of 2020. The two men had known each other since Meyer's time as resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

"We've had many discussions about the world and race for 20 years," Adams said. "Then George Floyd was murdered, and we were talking about the state of where we were again. I said I'd love to write something that could bring people together, to bring a more diverse orchestra in the room and try to find a way to have this orchestral music that we both love serve in a position of healing."

Breaking barriers:Erie Philharmonic principal cellist brings classical music 'to the people'

Adams brings a dizzying array of musical experience to the composer's desk. In addition to his orchestral experience, he plays keyboards and electric bass. He's played jazz gigs as a drummer and while he was a student at the Cleveland Institute of Music, he was in a band called Exotic Birds (when he left the band, his successor was a guy from Mercer that you might have heard of: Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails).

Erie's Chris Vrenna:From Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, Gnarls Barkley to college instructor

In its eight sections, "Harriet," scored for double string orchestra, percussion and narrator, uses the musical and devotional language of the Black church, the swelling lyricism of Romantic composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff and the uplifting music of the Civil Rights struggle to tell the story of Tubman's heroism. A haunting recording of rattling chains is subtly woven into the orchestral texture and Adams allows the presenting orchestra the option of ending the work with the recitation of texts by the composer or by poet Amanda Gorman. The effect is inspirational by design and so is the appearance on the program of saxophonist Steven Banks, who will play Alexander Glazunov's Saxophone Concerto followed by the Concertino by Jacques Ibert. Though these pieces are the most frequently played works for saxophone and orchestra, Banks insists that there are more great works waiting to be played, including some he hopes to write.

"As a saxophonist, there aren't a lot of pieces in the classical realm by composers of color," Banks said via video call from his office at Ithaca College. "Part of my mission is to continue to bring the names that are running throughout the concert world into the saxophone world and to mix them up, mix them together. So I try to commission composers that I really believe in, and then also to write pieces myself because I have fallen in love with composition."

All composers must contend with the ghosts of giants peering over their shoulders. The most imposing of them, Beethoven, will have the last word Saturday night in the form of his Symphony No. 7. It's a stone-cold masterpiece by any definition of the term, but not every composer aspires to be Beethoven nor every work to be immortal.

Adams' ambition in writing "Harriet" was more modest. Yet perhaps without realizing it, he is a musical Tubman leading his audience through terrain that some of them might find unfamiliar, even forbidding, to arrive at a place of delight.

"The whole idea is to get people in the room who will realize that, oh, man, this music is beautiful! That's where every orchestra has to make a concerted effort, and that's how you change the audience," Adams said. "I don't necessarily think my piece will change how (the audience) will feel. I'm hoping that while they came in the room to hear the piece, they would also enjoy Beethoven and then hopefully want to come back."

Erie music scene:Sounds of Summer returns, 814 Concert Series launches with local bands

Tubman's historical link to Erie

There is no evidence that Harriet Tubman ever visited Erie or that that any of the people she led to freedom did, either. There is, however, a historical and geographic link between Tubman and Erie, and it has a musical connection, too. Those details are presented in the books "Journey from Jerusalem" by Sarah Thompson and Karen James, and "Harry T. Burleigh: From the Spiritual to the Harlem Renaissance" by Jean E. Snyder.

Tubman was born around 1822 in Dorchester County at the southern end of Maryland's Eastern Shore. Ten years after her birth, a man named Hamilton Waters in neighboring Somerset County purchased his freedom for $50. Waters would soon settle in Erie, where he was said to have been a key figure on the Underground Railroad that led formerly enslaved people to freedom in Canada.

Waters, who lived on East Third Street, between French and Holland streets, was well-known in Erie as the lamplighter, town crier and founder in Erie's New Jerusalem neighborhood of the congregation that would become the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church. Yet his fame would soon be eclipsed by that of his grandson, Harry T. Burleigh, the composer, singer and protégé of the Bohemian composer Antonin Dvorak. Burleigh is considered one of Erie's greatest musical sons.

'Freedom Day':Juneteenth holiday is a time to educate, reflect on America's history

If you go ...

Saturday's Erie Philharmonic performance of "Harriet: Journey to Freedom" starts at 8 p.m. at the Warner Theatre, 811 State St., with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. The Erie Junior Philharmonic will give a pre-concert performance of Beethoven’s "Egmont" Overture at 7:15 p.m. Tickets range in price from $23 to $56 and can be purchased at eriephil.org. Student tickets are $12.

The Erie Philharmonic is leading the international consortium of orchestras in commissioning "Harriet." The consortium includes the Akron Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Naples Philharmonic, Niagara Symphony, San Jose Chamber Orchestra and the Sewannee Music Festival.

Updated theater:Warner renovations create better space for performers resulting in better shows for audiences

All Erie Philharmonic concert attendees are required to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test, according to current guidelines. Masks are not required but encouraged.