BEAVERTON, Ore. — In a unique program that reflects on our nation’s 250th birthday, bass-baritone Davóne Tines and nuevo-Baroque ensemble Ruckus delivered a gratifying concert Feb. 5 at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts exploring social justice and challenging who we are and where we are going. Entitled What Is Your Hand in This?, the performance smoothly transitioned between songs, including neglected pieces by enslaved African-Americans, background information, and purely instrumental pieces.
Presented by Friends of Chamber Music, the thought-provoking, 70-minute performance with no intermission was part of a 10-city tour that concludes Feb. 10 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in Pittsburgh.
Although the concert was billed as “Ruckus, with Davóne Tines,” it could have easily been “Davóne Tines with Ruckus” because Tines led the program. It touched on issues similar to his earlier projects: The Black Clown, a cabaret based on a Langston Hughs poem, and VIGIL, a video on the police killing of Breonna Taylor.
Ruckus, based in New York City, has been hailed for combining Baroque instruments with electric bass guitar and a keyboard synthesizer and amplification. The group comprises violinists Shelby Yamin and Keir GoGwilt, violist Manami Mizumoto, baroque guitarist Paul Holmes Morton, keyboardist Elliot Figg, baroque bassoonist and percussionist Clay Zeller-Townson, and electric bassist Douglas Balliett.
All of the instruments were amplified, which allowed Ruckus to add a rhythmic drive. Several numbers by Balliett were lightly textured with a jazzy feel, adding to the intimate atmosphere of the concert.
Tines also wore a microphone, which seemed unnecessary given that the Reser has a capacity of 550 and decent acoustics. But the miking allowed him to modify his voice. He easily moved from pillowy-soft and very warm levels to big fortes and also employed growls, sliding tones, and other nuanced sounds to express the texts.
Unfortunately, the only way to read the lyrics was via a QR code to a cell phone. After the hall lights went down, it was impossible to read a printed program anyway. Projected titles would have remedied the situation, or the hall lights should have been left up.
Opening with Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer,” Tines sang with a warm and gentle voice, wonderfully establishing the idyllic scene. He then added a dash of hopefulness with “Be the Lover of My Soul,” which he arranged from the hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.”
The emphasis shifted with “The Liberty Song,” a catchy number written by founding father John Dickinson. Tines pointed out that, despite his lofty text about freedom (“In Freedom we’re born and in Freedom we’ll live”), Dickinson owned slaves, which grated on his conscience. So, near the end of his life, he freed them.
This led to George Washington Clark’s “What Mean Ye?” and Sawney Freeman’s “The New Death March,” with the latter explicitly calling out the hypocrisy of enslaving people while claiming to be Christians (“See the white man sway his sceptre,/In one hand he holds the rod—/In the other hand the Scripture, /And says that he’s a man of God.”)
In one of his monologues, Tines suggested that we should consider if our actions will benefit beyond our own lives. He also noted that formerly enslaved Black composers knew the importance of music, because they could “sing about something that would be death to speak.”
Handel’s “Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage” (from Messiah) received a propulsive and idiosyncratic rendition by Tines and Ruckus that chopped up the runs. That allowed Tines to clearly express the emotion of frustration when he sang how we “imagine a vain thing.”
In his preface to “The House I Live In,” Tines noted that it was sung by Frank Sinatra. The lyrics address civil rights issues eloquently, and the arrangement by Tines and Balliett is just as poignant as the original by Lewis Allan and Earl Robinson. Clyde Otis’ “This Bitter Earth,” sung in the 1960s by Dinah Washington, ends with a ray of hope (“And this bitter earth, May not, be so bitter after all”).
The hymnlike “What Is My Hand in This?,” written by Tines in 2025 and arranged by Balliett, asks us to reflect on our lives. Tines invited everyone to sing the refrain with him, and it was refreshing to hear the heartfelt response. That was followed by Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” which accented a positive glimmer over day-to-day setbacks.
The concert closed with a “Nunc dimittis” composed by Balliett that altered the traditional wording with more obvious inclusiveness (“Glory to the Father and to the Son/And the Mother and the Daughter and actually/To everyone”).
Tines and Ruckus created a moving experience that resonated with concertgoers, who were overwhelmingly white. I spoke with some who still had tears in their eyes afterwards, and composer David Schiff remarked that it was a life-changing experience for him. Amen.
