Michael Slon: Twenty-Five Years Celebration. Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia
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Last night, Old Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia was the setting for a celebration that was long overdue: twenty-five years of Professor Michael Slon at the helm of UVA’s choral program — and a concert that made the case, beyond any argument, for why that tenure matters.
The evening was organized around the idea of America — its founding ideals, its contradictions, its music — and it unfolded with the kind of architectural clarity that only a conductor of long experience can bring to a program. Slon has spent a quarter century building something at UVA that is difficult to name and easy to feel: a choral culture in which students sing not just with technical accomplishment but with genuine understanding of what the music means and where it comes from.
The program opened with The Star-Spangled Banner in a new arrangement by Slon himself — a quiet declaration of authorial intent. This was not an evening of received tradition; it was an evening of active engagement with that tradition. Two settings of We Hold These Truths followed, by Judith Shatin and J. Todd Frazier respectively, each wrestling with the Declaration of Independence as living text rather than monument. Soloists Maya Pattison and Kathryn Geoffroy distinguished themselves in the Frazier.
The second half brought the evening’s great revelation. Among the works programmed under the heading Challenges was Keep Step with the Music of Union by George Frederick Bristow — a Civil War-era piece that Slon had recently discovered and brought back into the light. The audience, I suspect, knew little of Bristow before sitting down. By the time the last note faded, they knew something essential: that the American choral tradition runs deeper than the standard repertoire suggests, and that there are still voices waiting to be heard.
For those of us working on the documentary Life and Music in the Age of George Frederick Bristow, the moment carried a particular weight. To hear Bristow sung — live, in a packed hall — is to understand, viscerally, what the film has been reaching for.
We were honored that the evening also included a selection from the film, shown on the large screen at Old Cabell Hall. It was a small contribution to a celebration that belonged, entirely and deservedly, to Michael Slon and to the students whose voices filled that room. Twenty-five years is a long time to build something. Last night, you could hear every one of them.
Life and Music in the Age of George Frederick Bristow is a production of Heritage Film Project, made possible with support from The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. A YouTube Premiere is scheduled for May 21, 2026.
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