DuSable To Obama: Chicago's Black Metropolis (Original Soundtrack)

February 2013

Jazz Recording Artist, Orbert Davis, excelled in his role as music composer of this soundtrack for the critically acclaimed television documentary, which premiered on Chicago's WITW in June 2010 and national public television beginning February 2011.

Buy the recording here.

Press

The Chicago Tribune (June 01, 2010)
“"I realized what an extraordinary talent (Davis) is, what a great gift he has for visualization," adds Andries. "A lot of his work sounds like a picture and a story. He writes cinematic."[...] Each epoch had its sound and its style, and Davis draws upon these characteristics to conjure moments in time.All of his music...radiates Davis' signature lyricism, his haunting melodic lines deepening the emotional content of the scenes unfolding on the screen.”-Howard Reich

NewCity Music (January 14, 2016)
““The entire piece ends with a blues for President Obama. There’s this sense of the blues and how we, as Chicagoans, identify with the blues.””

The Chicago Tribune (January 14, 2016)
“When I watched Davis and his musicians perform the work alongside film clips at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts in 2013, it was impossible not to be moved. The juxtaposition of Davis' sublimely lyrical score with scenes of slavery and the Great Migration and subsequent chapters of Chicago history proved all the more effective with the music played live.”-Howard Reich