Music, history, and the iconic voice of Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman will collide at the Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage in Central Park on Wednesday, Aug. 27, for Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience — a journey into the genre’s development in the Mississippi Delta and beyond.
The experience, narrated by Freeman, features Austrian composer Martin Gellner at the helm, conducting Vienna’s Big Island Orchestra alongside veterans of Delta Blues for an evening that explores and expands on the history of the genre that laid its fertile roots in much of contemporary culture and history as we know it today.
Freeman, who is well-known for acting but somewhat less for his relationship to music, was not overtly passionate about the blues when younger, despite growing up in the heart of the Mississippi Delta and engaging with music in his high school band, as well as briefly as a folk singer. “We were in Clarksdale [Mississippi], and one day we saw a couple of backpackers … apparently looking for something,” said Freeman to the AmNews in an interview via Zoom, recounting an experience with his late business partner, Bill Luckett. “They said, ‘Where can we hear some blues?’ Well, there [were] blues guys all over, but there was no place that they played regularly, so we decided to fix that — we created Ground Zero, the blues club … Now I am immersed.”
Freeman opened Ground Zero in Clarksdale in 2001, providing a home for progenitors like Bobby Rush to showcase their talents alongside torch-carrying axe-wielders like Christone “Kingfish” Ingram in the place where the style gestated and developed. The blues, the specific origins of which are tough to date, has roots in field hollers, work songs, and spirituals; uses elements like improvisation and call-and-response; and has proven potentially the most significant cultural development in the history of American music — lending itself as the basis for much of what we know and hear today, and effectively establishing itself as the root of many contemporary styles — jazz, rock, hip-hop, and beyond.
The Experience, which was born of a desire to bring the spirit of Ground Zero to audiences around the world, features a diverse cast of young players, a tenet of the nonprofit sector of Ground Zero, which aims to “educate, elevate, and care for the blues,” according to their website. The program is provided by Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage and will be accessible at no cost to attendees.
The Experience serves as an illustration of the rich history of the blues, while pointing to the future by showcasing young talent, including such artists as Anthony “Big A” Sherrod. The show, which has played in parts of Europe, makes its debut in New York City, a place with its own rich musical history and relationship to the blues, building a bridge between the Big Apple and the Mississippi Delta.
Freeman understands the power and importance of connecting audiences back to the history of the music and culture we engage with today. “It’s a tremendous waste if we don’t teach young people about the roots of our music…it would be almost criminal not to continue to enhance and put forth this genre — this old, old music that still survives,” Freeman explained to the AmNews. “When they walk away from it, I’m sure they’re going to walk away from it with an experience that they’ve never had before — it’s extremely unique — and a very pleasant experience. You have to walk away either humming, or with sort of a spring in your step.”For more info about Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience, visit symphonicblues.com.
1989, WOW, such a film “Driving Miss Daisy.”