IN ADDITION to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 and Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture, the distinguished Princeton University Orchestra, which only costs about $60,000 a year for musicians to join, will be performing the “Ballad for Trayvon Martin for Orchestra and Jazz Quintet” at its concert tonight. The ballad is the work of Jazz Professor Anthony Branker, who says Trayvon’s death was an act of racial violence. The two-faced professor contends that his composition, obviously born of racial militance, is all about healing. From The Star-Ledger:

According to Branker, the work is intended “to be a form of healing and something that could be seen as a composition of hope — one that speaks to all of us to continue to work together so that children of any race, ethnicity or religious affiliation never have to meet such a tragic end.”

Rather than write from a place of anger, Branker has worked to create a lyrical, peaceful and harmonically beautiful work that incorporates a fugue and Brazilian style. The goal, he said, is to pay tribute to Martin, as well as others who have been victims of racial violence.

Yes, I suppose it is a composition of hope: the hope that white guilt will never die. Surely, it implicitly embodies the hope that whites will not wake up one day and say, “Wait a minute. Where are the ballads for the victims of black brutality? What about the hundreds of people raped and murdered by blacks every year? What about those who died in total innocence, not while pummeling a stranger and not while pounding a man’s head against a concrete sidewalk?”

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