Free concert Sunday in Tucson celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.

UA Presents is hosting a free community concert to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. on Sunday, Jan. 15, and organizer Candace Feldman is hoping it will become an annual event.

“When the community celebrates an event like this, then annually you can designate a day to come together,” said Feldman, who is in her first season as director of programming for the University of Arizona arts presenter. “I’m just glad it’s happening.”

The concert will include a performance by a 35-voice strong MLK Choir backed by an eight-piece band directed by Kevin Hamilton of Southwest Soul Circuit; poetry readings coordinated through the UA Poetry Center; and artists from the UA School of Theatre performing dramatic readings of King’s 1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” which defended the use of nonviolent protest to racial injustices. The letter formed the basis of the civil rights movement.

“This document is more than 50 years old and it speaks to us, to who we are and what we’re feeling, what we’re responding to now,” said Kevin Byrne, who will direct the student actors. Byrne, a Chicago native who’s been in Tucson 2½ years, teaches dramatic literature, theater history and African-American drama at the UA School of Theatre, Film & Television. “It makes his words very powerful and we’re hoping to convey that to the audience.”

The readings will be a centerpiece of the concert, which will open with a performance by children from the Ocotillo Early Learning Center, Sunnyside School District’s program for children up to 7 years old.

Feldman began organizing the concert not long after moving to Tucson from New York City in February 2016 to become program director for UA Presents. She formed a committee that included her UA colleagues and members of the Tucson NAACP and Urban League.

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“I really wanted those conversations to be driven by the people” who were from Tucson, she said. “It was really dreamt up and planned and programmed by every member of that committee.”

Arizona was one of the last states in the country to adopt a paid MLK Day holiday. It took two contentious ballot measures, an executive order from an outgoing governor that was later overturned by his predecessor, and the loss of Super Bowl XXVII, not to mention dozens of concerts, conventions and other big-dollar events before Arizona voters finally adopted MLK Day in 1992.

Feldman said she hopes the MLK concert will turn a bigger spotlight on King and his accomplishments.

“He was one of the strongest advocates for human rights and we’re not recognizing it,” said Feldman, whose résumé includes co-founding the Next Generation National Arts Network, a nationwide movement to create stability, legacy and cultural equity in arts administration.

“We have some large, altruistic goals for the event,” added Byrne. “It’s about community and community-building and diversity and celebrating one of the greatest Americans ever.”