No Tears Suite – Memphis Flyer

When pianist Christopher Parker and singer Kelley Hurt composed the No Tears Suite to commemorate the Little Rock Nine, the Black students who defied Arkansas segregationists and walked into the once all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957, they never suspected the piece would take on a life of its own. That was over six years ago, when the couple were commissioned by the Oxford American to create the piece, and it made perfect sense to premiere it at the Central High School National Historic Site on the 60th Anniversary of the Little Rock Nine’s actions. Beyond that, however, there were no plans.

“It’s completely amazing,” says Parker of the trajectory of the suite he and his wife composed. “It just keeps snowballing, and now it’s unfolding that this thing was destined to be more than just one performance in Little Rock.” Ultimately, an album of the piece was released on Mahakala Music, but it wasn’t long before it grew into a movable musical feast which, ironically, shrank the original suite’s length to make room for local voices wherever the show took root.

Given the centrality of racial justice issues to today’s America, one might have predicted a second life for the piece, which blends orchestral jazz not unlike that of Gil Evans with Hurt’s invocations of the imagery and names from that day, inspired by Melba Pattillo Beals’ memoir Warriors Don’t Cry. Before long, Parker and Hurt sensed that they had struck a nerve. Their creation was resonating with cities across the region in ways they couldn’t have predicted. In 2019, a new arrangement by bassist Rufus Reid was presented in Little Rock, followed by a live-streamed performance in New Orleans the next year, then shows in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the year after that. Most recently, the project was presented in St. Louis last month, soon to be followed by a series of events in Memphis from June 10th through 14th.

At the heart of the Memphis shows will be a June 10th performance of what has grown far beyond a suite, now known as the No Tears Project, at the newly reopened Cossitt Library on Front Street. It will be an apt use of the newly renovated library space, which has been carefully crafted under the guidance of programmer Emily Marks and other team members into a multimillion-dollar arts hub featuring video labs, recording studios, and performance spaces. Indeed, it’s entirely appropriate that this space, shaped by and for the Memphis community, should play host to a project that’s become a community endeavor in its own right.

As Parker explains, it all began with the Oklahoma show. “We collaborated with these people in Tulsa, and that was really successful,” he says. “We were like, ‘What do y’all do?’ And they were more like the folk rock/singer-songwriter type of ilk. They weren’t really writing civil rights songs, but more about the moral life, folksy and spiritual. So it tied things together in kind of a cool way. People in the audience knew those people and we found some commonality.”

The St. Louis show ramped up the local involvement considerably, with the involvement of a bona fide jazz great, saxophonist Oliver Lake, founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet. “Oliver’s poetry was hitting it on the head,” says Parker, “with five poems about Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Amadou Diallo. Not only was it very piercing, but it had this dark humor.”

The original suite was shortened to make time for those poems, and others by Treasure Shields Redmond, not to mention the dancing of Ashley Tate. Now all those elements will be presented in the Memphis show, plus trumpeter Marc Franklin’s new arrangement of Memphis pianist Donald Brown’s song “A Poem for Martin.” And Parker’s especially excited about the native Memphians who’ll be in the band. “[Saxophonist] Bobby LaVell’s daddy was Honeymoon Garner! And he lived with Fred Ford, who was his saxophone teacher. Then there’s Rodney Jordan, the best bass player I ever met.” Multiple Grammy-winning drummer Brian Blade will also participate.

Parker pauses a minute to let those names sink in, happy to minimize his own role in what was originally his baby. “I mean, with players like that, all I’ve got to do is just cut them loose. I don’t have to do a thing.”

Visit oxfordamerican.org/ntp-memphis for more information.

UPDATE: Due to technical issues, the venues for this series of performances have changed:

Education Concert
NEW TIME: Saturday, June 10, 2023 – Noon to 1 p.m.
NEW LOCATION: Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library
Free to the public; seating is limited and reservations are required via Eventbrite.com

A 60-minute education concert for youth and families featuring No Tears Project ensemble members. The artists will play short selections of music interspersed with dialogue that highlights key moments and people from Memphis, Little Rock, and Jackson involved with the civil rights movement.

Community Concert
NEW TIME: Sunday, June 11 – 2 p.m.
NEW LOCATION: The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Free to the public; seating is limited and reservations are required via Eventbrite

A 90-minute concert from the No Tears Project ensemble led by Christopher Parker (piano) and Kelley Hurt (voice). The band will perform the world premiere of new works written by and in collaboration with Memphis artists, including saxophonist Robert “Bobby LaVell” Garner. A new arrangement of Memphis pianist Donald Brown’s song “Poem for Martin,” written by Marc Franklin, as well as selections previously written by Oliver Lake, Parker, and Hurt, in honor of the Little Rock Nine will also be performed with poetry accompaniment by Treasure Shields Redmond, and dance by Ashley Tate.

Community Concert
NEW TIME: Sunday, June 11 – 6:30 p.m.
NEW LOCATION: The Green Room at Crosstown Arts
Free to the public; seating is limited and reservations are required via Eventbrite

A reprise performance of the same 90-minute program, designed to serve additional Memphis community members.

Recognition Before Reconciliation
Tuesday, June 13, 2023 – 6:00 p.m.
NEW LOCATION: Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library
Free to the public; seating is limited – register via Eventbrite

A panel discussion featuring civil rights heroes and activists including Memphis 13 member and daughter of Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles Dwania Kyles; Little Rock Nine member Elizabeth Eckford; and activist Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of Medgar and Myrlie Evers. Dr. Russell Wigginton, President of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis will moderate the discussion. Superintendent Robin White of Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site will provide opening remarks and context for the discussion.

Story Time with Elizabeth Eckford
Wednesday, June 14, 2023 – 10:30 a.m.
NEW LOCATION: Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library
Free to the public; seating available on a first come first served basis.

Capping the residency in a 60-minute program for youth and families, Little Rock Nine member and heroine Elizabeth Eckford will share personal experiences and read from her book, The Worst First Day: Bullied While Desegregating Central High. Eckford, who as a 15-year-old in 1957 faced an incensed mob of segregationists and soldiers alone, will inspire the next generation with her words and story.

As 2020 settled into its longest nights last month, one bright spot was an online video concert by a septet stacked with Memphis-affiliated players. As virtual concerts go, it was notable both for its technical clarity and for mixing compositional craft, spontaneity, joy, and gravitas in equal measure. That made it a fitting capstone presentation of a work that has been evolving in various iterations over years: No Tears Suite, composed by onetime Memphian Christopher Parker and Memphis native Kelley Hurt, now married and residing in Little Rock.

Though the couple met in Memphis, living in Arkansas had everything to do with the creation of No Tears Suite, a musical meditation on the Little Rock Nine, the Black students who courageously defied the state’s segregationists and walked into Little Rock Central High School after a monthlong standoff in 1957. Speaking in 2019 to the Oxford American, which commissioned the piece, Parker said, “It was a hometown kind of thing. I grew up here, and all my life, whenever you bring up Central High and 1957, either the conversation is going to be negative or people don’t want to have that conversation. And yet we were one of the first states to force integration. … We should be celebrating what happened then, but that also means you have to acknowledge that huge parts of our community were racists who wanted to tear nine kids limb from limb.”

Hurt saw the historical moment through a more regional lens. “I grew up in Memphis,” she told the magazine, “and that city holds a lot of weight. The assassination of Dr. King is something that changed the city forever, the way people interacted with each other, and especially the music. Coming from there to Little Rock, you start to wonder, do all cities have this kind of weight?”

Whatever its provenance, that weight is felt in the lyrics she brought to the composition, based largely on Melba Pattillo Beals’ memoir Warriors Don’t Cry. Hurt’s recital of the students’ and others’ names and biographies in “Roll Call” carries both heaviness and beauty, especially when accompanied by the very heavy band, which includes, in the latest version, percussionist Brian Blade, bassist Roland Guerin, tenor saxophonist Bobby LaVell, trumpeter Marc Franklin, and alto saxophonist Chad Fowler, along with Parker on piano and Hurt on vocals.

The sensitivity of the players makes the piece a worthy inheritor of a vital, often overlooked tradition of jazz that addresses the civil rights movement, such as Sonny Rollins’ “Freedom Suite” (1958) and the album We Insist! and Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960). In walking a fine line between a composed piece and the audacity of free improvisation, No Tears Suite dredges up the turbulent passions of America’s racism and as such serves as a kind of exorcism. But, as Hurt noted in 2019, it also embodies more positive emotions. “We treat it more as a celebration than as something terrible that happened. It’s a celebration of those young people that had the courage to bring attention to themselves. That’s a hard decision to make when you’re a kid.”

That may best be expressed in the nearly euphoric “Don’t Cry (Warrior’s Song),” with its hard-swinging, slamming chords and intricate unison horn lines, as Hurt sings, “Don’t cry, sister, don’t cry, don’t let them see you shed a tear. Beaten and bruised, yeah, you refused. There are no cowards here.” It’s cathartic, and some of that lies in the composition itself. It can be heard in other versions of the suite, such as its premiere on the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site in 2017, the studio recording from the same year (released on Mahakala Music last September), or the 2019 expanded arrangement with members of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.

But an additional layer of celebration arose from the particular day on which the online concert was recorded: November 7, 2020. “We started recording this directly after the networks called the presidential race for Biden,” says saxophonist Chad Fowler. “Nobody mentioned politics, but I felt like there was a calm that came over us all and was reflected in the music.”

No Tears Suite can be viewed at youtube.com/user/oxfordamerican.