McGill performance taps the music of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. may be best known for his message, but it's his music that helped make a disciple of McGill University professor and Grammy-nominated musician John Hollenbeck.

Hollenbeck, who teaches drums, composition and improvisation with McGill's jazz department, says the baptist preacher and civil rights leader was "a great musician" in the way he used cadence, tone and melody when he spoke.

"It's just amazing what he did with his voice — it's very emotional, and so much fun to play with," said Hollenbeck.

To mark Martin Luther King Day today, Hollenbeck and guests will perform three settings he's composed for King's famous "Drum Major Instinct" sermon from 1968.

King delivered the sermon in Atlanta, just two months before he was killed.

Hollenbeck said the sermon's contemplation of the human ego and its capacity for good and evil spoke to him the first time he heard it years ago, and continues to resonate today.

"At the time he was talking specifically about the United States and the Vietnam war, but everything he's talking about is very relevant to what's happening today," he said.

"Certain leaders of certain countries have this instinct to be on top and are putting themselves and their countries and other people into danger by their words and their actions. But if you can use that natural urge we all have to do good things for mankind, then that's greatest way you can channel it."

Music of the sermon

What made that message so powerful to Hollenbeck's ear was the masterful way King delivered the sermon.

"In the beginning his voice is so low and so mellow, and by the end he's yelling," Hollenbeck said.

"He's talking about what he wants to people to say at his funeral -— 'I want you to say that Martin Luther King served others and loved others.' And when he says his own name, he's yelling. It gives you chills. It's so intense."

The settings play off the ebb and flow, the highs and lows, the calmness and ferocity of King's delivery.

Hollenbeck says the settings involve both improvisation and written music, but "there's not really anything that I would call jazz."

One setting touches on jazz influences like African and blues music and "things that come from the traditions in many churches like shouting and things."

The second setting is rooted more in "loop-based ambient music" and the third blends elements of the first two and a video projection of the text.

An audience in Montreal?

Hollenbeck plays drums and piano and will be joined by trombonists Ed Neumeister, Jacob Garchik and Jean-Nicolas Trottier.

They will be joined by McGill music students Gentiane Michaud-Gagnon (accordion), Oliver Tremblay-Noel (mallets) and Roman Munoz Bueno (electric guitar).

​A native of the United States, Hollenbeck has performed the settings for audiences in New York and Berlin, where he says people "loved it."

He's now curious to see how a Montreal audience responds to a performance dedicated to Dr. King.

"That's kind of why I wanted to do it," he said.

"So far, I've found people here in Montreal to be very warm and very open and liberal-minded. So I'm thinking they're going to like it."

"The Drum Major Instinct" will be performed Monday, Jan. 16, at Tanna Schulich Hall, 527 Sherbrooke St. W, at 7:30 p.m.