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Moses Hogan: ‘An immensely gifted arranger and conductor’ [1]

['Tammy C. Barney', 'More Tammy C. Barney', 'Verite News']

Date: 2024-04-15  

If you hear a high school, community or church choir singing a spiritual a cappella, it likely was arranged by Moses Hogan, an internationally known classical pianist, arranger, composer and conductor.

According to the Amistad Research Center, Hogan was responsible for the “emergence of concert spirituals into the standard choral repertoire, and he is credited with the popularization of professional choral spiritual singing.”

Born in 1957, Hogan began his musical journey as a child. By the time he was 6, he was playing piano for choirs at two New Orleans churches. He was in the first graduating class of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts High School (NOCCA) in 1975, and graduated from Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1979. He also studied at New York’s Juilliard School of Music and Louisiana State University.

Hogan published more than 80 original arrangements of classic spirituals. His first arrangement, “Elijah Rock,” was published in 1981. He formed several choirs, such as the Moses Hogan Chorale (1993) and Moses Hogan Singers (1997) to perform and preserve spirituals.

“Hogan and his personally founded choral ensembles, quite literally began heralding the thoughts, hopes, and voices of the Black experience in a way that no one had done so before in the classical arena,” Okara Imani wrote in the 2022 article “Moses Hogan: A Bridge Built That Can Never Be Built Again.”

Later in his career, Hogan was artist-in-residence at both Dillard and Loyola Universities. He was 45 when he died from a brain tumor in 2003.

According to a Deseret News editorial, Hogan was a peacemaker.

“An immensely gifted arranger and conductor with a spirit as wide as his beloved Mississippi Delta, Hogan drew people together, then quickly drew the best out of them.” the editorial stated. “He used every opportunity to use music as the universal language.”

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