Black Athena~Power
Ray Angry (b. 1972)
Performed by The Toledo Symphony on October 17 & 18, 2025

Pianist and composer Ray Angry is best known for his work in soul, pop, R&B, and jazz. He is the keyboardist in The Roots and in the house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Angry’s Black Athena~Power was commissioned and premiered by Jonathan McPhee and the Lexington Symphony in 2022. Like many musicians, McPhee wanted to work on a project as a response to the heightened awareness of racial injustice as well as contribute to increasing diversity in orchestral literature. McPhee explains, “When you had a really talented Black composer, they found their voice by going to places like the Cotton Club, where their talents were openly accepted and opportunities were opened everywhere. With this commissioning idea, what I wanted to do was to try and find a [classical composer of color] who ... was making terrific headway in pop music and jazz, and see if we could reawaken that connection to classical music.” McPhee chose Angry on the recommendation of his brother, who is the tour manager for The Roots.

In an interview, Angry said, “I just always had this inner desire to write for an orchestra, but just never had the opportunity.” In preparation for Black Athena~Power, Angry threw himself into studying orchestral scores and orchestration. Then the pandemic happened. Angry explained, “I felt like I was a sleeping giant. I [had] studied classical music since I was a very young, young lad. Frank Cooper, my piano teacher, was one of the world’s leading authorities on Bach. That was my upbringing. Then I went to Howard University, where I studied jazz, which was added to my plate, already full of classical and gospel. I was always composing. When you’re playing music in church, it’s similar to an orchestral setting, because you set the tone for the service, you’re orchestrating people’s lives, getting deep into meditation.”

Originally intended for solo flute, soprano, and orchestra, Black Athena~Power quickly outgrew this format to include a chorus and percussionist Bashiri Johnson. Angry explained, “[Johnson is] bringing all these incredible African and ancient instruments that you’ve never seen before, and I’m mixing that in with the classical orchestral setting, just really adding an African element and tying different worlds together. I wanted to use the orchestra as a way to tell the story of Black heritage, to tell the story of all the different cultures in the world.”

Black Athena~Power is based on British scholar Martin Bernal’s 1987 book Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. This book garnered a lot of academic criticism. It presents the idea that Egyptian and Phoenician cultures colonized and thereby influenced Classical Greek civilization, as well as the knowledge of this being actively suppressed after the eighteenth century. Angry writes, “Black Athena~Power is the acknowledgment of the Divine Feminine, designed to bring the essence of humanity to the surface. It is a journey in time to visit our collective ancestry and explore the trajectory of power throughout the ages.... this symphony in three movements, confronts the historic and resolves in the personal [,] stripping external Hope, Love and Logic in order to restore control of one’s own power.”

Angry explains how he accomplished this journey, musically speaking: “When you have tension sonically, as in the first movement of the piece, it’s very intense! Influenced by Stravinsky and Schoenberg, for example, if you would imagine, like, a hurricane that destroys everything, but by the end, the clouds disappear, the sun is out, the birds are singing, it’s very peaceful and meditative. I’m taking you on a journey. The first movement is named the ‘Age of Aries,’ which represents when Egypt was young. The second movement is the ‘Age of Aquarius,’ and it is more of a march taking us through the African slave trade when America was young. The final movement is the ‘Age of Pisces,’ our current time period, with technology and big corporations, and with hip-hop a worldwide sensation.”

Angry continues, “I wanted to write something that spoke to people almost working together in a way where there’s no such thing as racism. Long story short, the piece is really about people working together in a space where we all coexist, without any sort of issues or divisive tactics to keep people apart.”

Arts and Culture reporter James Bennett II writes, “Black Athena~Power represents an extension of [Angry’s] musical world building and ambitions – whether as a producer or a pianist/keyboardist, or composer for television.... But Black Athena is also Angry’s statement, a utopian dream of the world that, maybe, once was – and is a long way off from becoming again.”

Black Athena~Power is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celeste, piano, solo flute, chorus, and strings.