"Requiem of Colour" Nominated for Five MidSouth Emmy Awards
- Kyla Davidson
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Created by a Belmont professor of music and director of choral activities, “Requiem of Colour: A Journey Through Lament and Joy,” received five MidSouth Emmy nominations.
The piece by Dr. Jeffery L. Ames, sponsored by the Creative Arts Collective, had its first television recording on PBS Nashville. Featuring over 200 singers from multiple institutions, the production combined genres in Western classical, jazz, R&B and gospel.
The categories included entertainment, production, musical composition, audio design and editing.
“I was very happy. I was very proud. I was very humbled. I had so much energy and excitement that I could not sleep,” Ames said.
Senior commercial voice major, Olivia Bastin, described her excitement to participate in Requiem of Colour.
“We did Requiem my freshman year as an oratorio, and it was the first time we’d done it at Belmont. The music was so impactful and I was just so grateful. It is celebrating Black history,” Bastin said.
Her excitement was shared with everyone across the production, she said.
“Everybody was flooding the chat with congratulations and it was mostly just celebrating Dr. Ames for the joy, love and support he has brought into our lives,” Bastin said.
Bastin appreciates the collective joy of the choir and support for Ames' work. She said that Ames emphasized the importance of storytelling, despite cultural differences.
“He told us that refusing to do it would be a disservice. Yes, you are telling a story about someone who has a different skin color and story than you, but it’s one collective displaying and telling a story,” Bastin said.
“Requiem of Colour” included Belmont Chorale and University Singers, Tennessee State University Meistersingers and University Choir and Requiem of Colour Orchestra. The composed piece also included visuals and dance.
Senior commercial voice major Cameron Lewis was another participant who expressed his excitement on participating in Requiem of Colour.
“I had the opportunity to do this my freshman year when it happened the first time. Getting to do it on a grander scale is surreal for me,” Lewis said.
From his experience, Lewis said he looks forward to performing the piece again and helping spread the positive message.
“I am very excited about it. And we all get to be excited about it. We love this show so much and we love singing it,” Lewis said.
Lewis said Ames was brilliant in his work of the composed piece and he appreciated the different genres, such as classical, used to tell the African American journey.
“Of all the things I would want to get Emmy nominated, this is one of them because of what it talks about. I would want the audience to know this happened to this group of people, but also be hopeful to change this narrative,” Lewis said.
Ames received the vision for the composed piece during his sabbatical leave from 2020-2021 and began writing in 2022, he said.
“We being here as people of color, shows that our ancestors’ DNA survived. It is a story. It is a unique way of telling the story that can hit the emotions without being a history book,” Ames said.
“You have the music and the visuals that speak to the aesthetic of the heart, mind and soul. It’s done in a way where it is disturbing and inspirational because it talks about survival,” Ames said.
During 2019, the Belmont Choral traveled to Ghana where Ames found a lot of inspiration in West African culture and dialogue.
“It was just so joyous that I realized that’s how we need to start. We go from celebration in West African language, and then where they’re terrorized, chased, trapped and trafficked across the Middle Passage,” Ames said.
The choir included Latin and West African languages from Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Mali.
“I wanted the choir to sing the Latin phrase, ‘Kyrie eleison’ meaning, ‘Lord, have mercy’ and ‘Christ, have mercy’, in those languages. I wanted to encapsulate that we were still together just in different contexts,” Ames said.
The choir will perform the piece again March 4-7 at the Southern Regional American Choral Directors Association Conference, where Ames serves as the southern regional president, in Memphis, Tennessee for “Prism of Voices.”
The Belmont Choral and the Symphony Orchestra will be two core ensembles for the conference along with TSU, Mississippi Valley State University and Coahoma Community College.
Ames hopes to receive a record deal and a Grammy Award in the future, he said.
“It’s not at all for my glory, it is for God’s glory. Everything he gives me to write is his and that is where it comes from. He has given Belmont to me as a platform to fulfill his work,” Ames said.
The regional Emmy awards ceremony will be held on Saturday in the Fisher Center where winners will be announced.
This article was written by Kyla Davidson