Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Altadena Composer Brings Songs of the Enslaved to Free Pasadena Chorale Concert Tonight

[photo credit: Pasadena Chorale]

The “I Believe” program pairs Michal Dawson Connor’s spiritual arrangements with Margaret Bonds’ civil rights choral work for Black History Month

The Pasadena Chorale will perform a free concert tonight honoring Black History Month with works by two Black American composers, including an Altadena resident whose spiritual arrangements draw on songs his great-grandmother sang to him — songs that originated in slavery.

The concert, titled “I Believe,” pairs original arrangements by composer Michal Dawson Connor with Margaret Bonds’ “Credo,” a seven-movement choral work setting W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1904 call for racial justice and equality. The 85-voice chorale and its High Notes youth ensemble will perform at 7:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado Blvd. Admission is free, though reservations are required at pasadenachorale.org.

Connor, who lives in Altadena and whose home was singed in the Eaton Fire last January, has spent decades arranging slave songs created before the Civil War. His great-grandmother’s mother was enslaved in Virginia, and the older woman sang those songs to Connor when he was a child.

“My great-grandmother planted these seeds in my brain, and they took root,” Connor said in an interview with the Pasadena Weekly. “The stories of my ancestors, who worked and lived through slavery, are so compelling. Their music is in every single thing that we hear.”

The program opens with Connor’s settings of spirituals including “My Lord, What a Morning,” “There Is a Balm in Gilead” and “Hush.” He will also sing alongside the High Notes — the Chorale’s youth choir for students in grades six through 10 — in his arrangement of “Sweet Little Jesus Boy.”

“To hear them sing as beautifully as they sing, it really gives me hope for the youth,” Connor said of working with the young singers. “These kids, they were asking me very potent questions about the meaning of what they were singing, and it just thrilled me.”

Connor, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, has performed on Broadway in Tony Award-winning productions of “Ragtime” and “Show Boat,” according to his website. He is also the author of “The Slave Letters,” a book drawn from letters written by enslaved and formerly enslaved people that he curated from Smithsonian collections over more than a decade of research.

The concert’s second half features Bonds’ “Credo,” composed between 1965 and 1967. Bonds, a Chicago-born composer who died in 1972, set Du Bois’ prose poem to music in a work that fell into obscurity after her death and was recovered and published in 2020, according to Cambridge University Press. The Hildegard Publishing Company describes the text as promoting racial justice, equality and harmony.

“She is the dean of African American composers,” Connor said of Bonds. “Her music is so moving. She’s a great inspiration for me.”

The Pasadena Chorale, founded in 2009 by Artistic Director Jeffrey Bernstein, won the American Prize in Choral Performance in 2024 and performed with Katy Perry at the FireAid benefit concert in January 2025, according to the organization’s website. Bernstein, who lives in Altadena, has said the Eaton Fire displaced 10 families across the organization’s ensembles.

“We’re all human beings, and music seems to be the thread that can bind us all together in brotherhood and sisterhood, in personhood,” Connor said.

Doors open at 7:10 p.m. A post-concert gathering with Connor and Bernstein will follow from 9 to 10:30 p.m. at the AC Hotel Pasadena for concertgoers who donate $50 or more. For reservations and information, visit pasadenachorale.org.

“It’s very serious topics juxtaposed with this ravishing music,” Connor said of the spirituals. “The words are uplifting, and the melodies are gorgeous. But behind the melodies, there’s this wave of melancholy that exists.”