When Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society found records detailing iconic composer George Frideric Handel’s ties to the slave trade, it responded in a way only the organization could: through music and performance.
Dr. Anthony Trecek-King, resident conductor at the Handel and Haydn Society, said he and programming consultant and countertenor Reginald Mobley had the idea for a concert series during the many Zoom meetings the organization had to discuss how they would move forward with the information uncovered: that Handel had been paid in stock for the South Sea Company, a slave-trading company, for his work commissioned by James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos.
Trecek-King and Mobley’s idea became “Crossing The Deep,” a special concert series showing the parallels between the choral works of Handel and the spirituals of enslaved Africans in America…