about the composition 

Birmingham (2006), for orchestra and (optional) narrator, is dedicated to the work and memory of Civil Rights Movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The work incorporates text from Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written during his April 1963 civil disobedience campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.

Dr. King, one of thousands jailed during the Birmingham campaign, wrote the letter in response to a published statement by eight Alabama clergymen who called his demonstrations “unwise and untimely” and “extremist.” It was hastily scrawled in the margins of a newspaper and other sheets of paper provided to Dr. King while he was confined in a Birmingham city jail cell.

Birmingham, composed by Carl Schroeder of Minneapolis, Minnesota, with text by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has an approximate performance time of 6 1/2 minutes. Permission to use excerpts from Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was generously granted by Intellectual Properties Management, of Atlanta, Georgia, as exclusive licensor of the King Estate.

BIRMINGHAM

Details & Ordering Information

Instrumentation: 2 fl, 2 ob, 2 cl, 2 bsn, 4 hrn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, tuba, timp, 2 perc, optional narrator, strings
Difficulty Level: Grade 3.5 (Ideal for college and advanced high school/community orchestras.)

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