Selections from "Hold Fast to Dreams" - Composed by Dave Brubeck & Poems by Langston Hughes

Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland
Performed October 13, 2024 at Rose City Park United Methodist Church
In the 1990s, Brubeck set nineteen poems by Hughes, nine of which make up Hold Fast to Dreams, all on the theme of dreams and aspirations. “Dreamer” offers tentative glimpses of beauty that the poet longs to share with those willing to see. Like waves lapping the shore, “Dusk” ebbs and flows, alternating the pain of rejection and the hope of freedom. We close the set with “I Dream a World,” which Brubeck set as both a fugue and a chorale; we present the latter. He intriguingly combined musical forms that could come straight out of Bach with modern jazz harmonies, at last affirming a better world within our grasp.