Richard Smallwood, Donald Lawrence, and Braxton Shelley discuss "Music and Mind"

Friday, May 3, 2024

Professor Braxton Shelley (left) and Richard Smallwood.

On April 18, gospel legend Richard Smallwood joined award-winning musician Donald Lawrence and Professor Braxton Shelley, director of the ISM’s Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church, in a masterclass entitled Music and Mind. The conversations, which centered around Smallwood’s life, process, and music, were interspersed with performances of several of Smallwood’s compositions by a student gospel choir and band, and with testimonies from audience members about the ways in which they had been impacted by Smallwood’s music.

The symposium was presented by the ISM’s Interdisciplinary Program in Music and the Black Church and was cosponsored by the following schools and departments at Yale: Degraffenreidt Resource Fund and 320Y Fund, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office, Yale Divinity School, Yale School of Music, Yale University Chaplains Office, Yale University Office of Diversity & Inclusion, Yale School of Art, The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, Yale School of Medicine, Yale School of the Environment, Department of Religious Studies, Department of English, Department of Music, Department of African American Studies, Afro-American Cultural Center, Whitney Humanities Center, Theater and Performance Studies, Office of Belonging at Yale, and the Yale Schwarzman Center.

Photos by Harold Shapiro