Tulsan Barron Ryan's work to commemorate 1921 Race Massacre earns national attention

A single sentence in one of the few first-hand accounts of the Tulsa Race Massacre struck the spark of inspiration for Tulsa native Barron Ryan’s newest composition.

“I was reading the book by Mary E. Jones Parrish, and she mentioned that at one point she and her daughter were reading from the Psalms,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t mention what Psalms they read, but my mind went to Psalm 88, which is a lament. The third verse begins, ‘For my soul is full of trouble,’ and that seemed the appropriate sentiment for this piece.”

Ryan used that phrase, “My Soul is Full of Trouble,” as the title for a piano trio he was commissioned to write by Chamber Music Tulsa, as part of that organization’s Greenwood Commissioning Project.

The trio, written for piano, violin and cello, is tentatively scheduled to have its world premiere in May. But it has already brought Ryan some national attention.

The Smithsonian Magazine selected Ryan as one of “Ten Innovators to Watch” in an article that appeared on the magazine’s website Jan. 7.

The article by Rasha Aridi is to highlight “innovators (who) continue to push the envelope and bring forth what they think the world needs.” Those needs range from protecting the mental health of young people by combating cyberbullying and developing animal-free food proteins to designing buildings and transportation systems that take into account social distancing restrictions.

Ryan was selected as a “Storytelling Composer,” whose piano trio is a way of “celebrating and honoring Black history,” according to the Smithsonian article.

However, Ryan said, “My Soul is Full of Trouble” was not designed as a piece of programmatic music.

“What I wanted to do in this music is to produce that same sort of emotional response I had when I was reading about the Tulsa Race Massacre,” he said. “I came up with the opening, that I thought had all the qualities that the phrase ‘My Soul is Full of Trouble’ conjures up.

“And then, I just kept writing until I could not think of what would come next,” Ryan said. “For me, there are two components in composing. One is inspiration, where you discover some musical idea that resonates with you. The other is more like engineering. You have this one piece, like the corner piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and you have to find a way to fit all the pieces together properly.”

Ryan said the one-movement work follows the sonata-allegro form, as that gave him a better sense of how the composition should unfold.

The work is something of a departure for Ryan, an acclaimed pianist who has performed in concert throughout the U.S., as a solo artist and in duo concerts with his father, pianist Don Ryan, a mainstay of Tulsa’s classical and jazz music worlds.