Bastrop’s resident jazz phenom Hannibal Lokumbe expects things to be jumping when he and fellow musicians play next Saturday, Feb. 13, at Austin’s Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.
Lokumbe has re-arranged a sweeping orchestral piece titled, “Dear Mrs. Parks,” for a jazz-style quintet he will lead, accompanied by the Bastrop-area Lost Pines Community Choir and two Austin church choirs.
“It will be a very intimate setting, but with room to move and express yourself,” Lokumbe said of playing in a 250-seat performance theater within the museum.
Translation: If people get out of their seats and start shaking to the music, Lokumbe will be more than fine with that scenario. The performance begins at 8 p.m. The museum is at the intersection of north Congress Avenue and Martin Luther King Blvd., just across the street from the University of Texas campus.
The original recording of “Dear Mrs. Parks” with the Detroit Symphony was recorded live at Orchestra Hall in Detroit in Spring 2009 and released last December.
Lokumbe’s composition, which was influenced by blues, jazz, African and Gospel music, pays homage to Civil Rights heroine Rosa Parks.
Lokumbe said attendees for the Austin performance should particularly appreciate the solo singing of Taylor Gardner, a fourth-grade student at Bastrop’s Mina Elementary School, who sings on the Detroit recording.
Two Austin choirs, the Ebenezer Baptist Choir and the Greater Calvary Bible Church Choir, will team with the Lost Pines Community Choir. There will be a total about 55 performers, he added.
“I consider this performance in Austin to be a culmination of my musical career,” Lokumbe said. “I learned just as much re-arranging ‘Mrs. Parks’ as composing the original. To me, it was actually more challenging to re-arrange this musical piece than to write the original.”
The re-arrangement for “Mrs. Parks” for a quintet was finished about three weeks ago. Lokumbe will lead the quintet with his signature B-flat trumpet.
He said is particularly looking forward to the attendance by former members of The Soulmates, a group he formed when he attended Booker T. Washington High School in Texas City.
The group, with Lokumbe in the lead backed up such musical greats as Otis Redding, Etta James, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lokumbe said.
“I am also exceedingly proud of the work and dedication of the Lost Pines Community Choir,” Lokumbe said. “That choir can sing with anybody, anywhere.”