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If you're in downtown St. Paul over the lunch hour Wednesday, you might want to stop by the Landmark Center for a concert of new music.


 
Local composer Dameun Strange will be presenting a first look at his latest work, which combines operatic vocals with melodic horns — and the sounds of a rocket ship launching into space.

Strange started composing music at a young age. "Although I don't know if I would call it composing," he said. "I was really into writing melodies and songs. I was probably about 8 or 9."

Strange grew up in Washington, attending the historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, which features both gospel singing and classical choral music.

 
"Each first Sunday in Lent, my church would perform Handel's Messiah," he said. "And that was really the first idea I had of how big music could be. ... I was fascinated by the idea that someone could create music for a big group like that, and it really was the thing that got me inspired to be a composer."
 

Strange came to Minnesota to go to Macalester College, and stayed because of the dynamic arts scene.

 
At first he had a hard time finding his voice as a composer. He felt his work was just imitating other people's styles, rather than telling his own stories. "I decided that I wanted to focus on black mythology and black legends or historical figures," he said.
 

Strange composed a chamber piece on the folk hero John Henry, a railroad "steel-driving man" who hammered steel drills into rock that the railroad needed to tunnel through. Legend has it Henry competed with a steam-powered hammer and won, only to die from the effort.


Last year Strange created an opera based on the life of the mother of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Like her son, Alberta King was shot and killed. "Mother King" was performed at Public Functionary art gallery in Minneapolis to sold out crowds.
 

Strange says once he started focusing on his own culture, he gained a new sense of energy about his work. And he felt the audiences were responding in kind.

 
"You know it really did sound like my work, and I knew no one else was telling these stories or using this material, so I felt authentic finally," he said. "Like I had an authentic voice."
 

His newest work is called "Trek | Polaris." It's inspired by the life of Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, leading escaped slaves to the North and freedom. Strange imagined what Tubman might do if she were alive today, or in the future:

 
"And so I decided to think of Harriet Tubman as a rocket scientist, who is actually building a rocket ship to escape the planet in general," he said, "just to get away and further away, realizing that freedom may not be here but in another place."
 

Strange described his piece as contemporary oratorio. It features several voices and horns, as well as his synthesizer. He's experimenting with sound samples from rockets and ground control. People on the Underground Railroad often used the North Star to guide them, so in Strange's story, Tubman is actually bringing her people to a planetary system close to the North Star — also known as Polaris.

 
"I want people to come to see a story they may not know, or told in a different way, that gets them thinking about their own place in society, but also the place for people of color in the world," he said.


 
The Wednesday performance of "Trek | Polaris" gets underway at noon at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul. The performance is free.

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Instead of being guided by the North Star, the Harriet Tubman in this piece is flying to it.

Oratorio imagines Underground Railroad for the space age

Dameun Strange rehearses his opera based on the writings of Harriet Tubman.

Richard Marshall for MPR News

Composer Dameun Strange, second from right, laughs with performers.

Composer Dameun Strange makes use of synthesizers for his opera.

Strange works with vocalist Tabbie Sabali, left, and pianist Erica Orton.

Oratorio imagines Underground Railroad for the space age

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