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Penumbra company member Hannibal Lokumbe composed an original score for a video in tribute to George Floyd and all of the victims of state-sanctioned violence. Sarah Bellamy wrote the narrative and she and Lou Bellamy provide the voice overs.

About the Artists

For Art In This Present Moment, Penumbra Theatre created a video called "The Light and Water in Our Eyes." Company member Hannibal Lokumbe composed an original score for the video in tribute to George Floyd and all of the victims of state-sanctioned violence. Sarah Bellamy wrote the narrative and she and Lou Bellamy provide the voice overs.

Penumbra has also invited members of its racial healing artist institute to contribute, sharing brief statements about what kind of a world they dream of and imagining a brighter future.

Hannibal Lokumbe is a classic composer and jazz trumpeter. Lokumbe (né Marvin Peterson) has been celebrating and commemorating the African-American experience through music and words for over four decades. His work has been commissioned and performed by symphonies and orchestras across the country, including The Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra (“Can you hear God Crying?” conducted by Dirk Brossé, 2012), The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (“Dear Mrs. Parks,” conducted by Thomas Wilkins, 2005) and The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (“God, Mississippi and a Man Called Evers” conducted by Dr. Leslie Dunner, 2002).

Lokumbe’s piece “One Land, One River, One People” was performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin during the winter of 2014, and during the fall of 2015. He is the founder and director of the Music Liberation Orchestra, a program that teaches music, genealogy and writing to incarcerated men around the country.

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Art In This Present Moment

This project is part of Art in This Present Moment, an initiative of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, with funding from the McKnight Foundation. We provided grants to 12 Minnesota-based nonprofit organizations to fund work by over 50 BIPOC artists who are changing and challenging dominant narratives through their craft.

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