Good News Mass
Carlos Simon was born April 13, 1986, in Washington, DC, grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently based in Washington. He wrote Good News Mass on commission from the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, Music & Artistic Director, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons, Music Director (through the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency). Texts are by Courtney Ware Lett and Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel gave the world premiere performances on April 17-18, 2025, at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, with soloists Samoht, Zebulon Ellis, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and the vocal ensemble Joseph White and the Samples.
The score of Good News Mass calls for amplified soprano, alto, and tenor soloists, amplified spoken word artist, and mixed chorus, plus an orchestra of piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (crotales, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, chimes, wind chimes, bell tree, mark tree, bowed cymbal, suspended cymbal, crash cymbals, tam-tam, egg shaker, temple blocks, congas, bass drum), harp, piano, a rhythm section of Hammond organ, 5-string electric bass, and drum set, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
A metaphysical miracle critical mass
materially pressed of human flesh
God breath and star dust
Hallowed be…
—poetry from Good News Mass (2025) by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
“God is here!” These three words resound as both proclamation and invitation in Carlos Simon’s Good News Mass (2025), a groundbreaking orchestral composition with choir, soloists, and spoken word artist that merges gospel fervor with the liturgical structure of the Catholic Mass. With libretto by Courtney Ware and poetry by spoken word artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, this work navigates the deep waters of human experience—loss, thanksgiving, joy, and hope—asking us to reflect on the divine presence in life’s struggles and triumphs. Infused with the rich traditions of African American spirituality, Good News Mass elevates the sounds of praise, storytelling, and supplication into a transcendent musical experience.
Simon, a multi-genre composer shaped by his Pentecostal upbringing and Western style conservatory training, creates a dialogue between his gospel music heritage and the traditions of the Black Catholic community. Drawing from his gospel roots, he joins a lineage of African American composers who have reimagined the mass form, from Mary Lou Williams and Florence B. Price to contemporary artists like Kim Harris, M. Roger Holland, Robert Ray and Damien Sneed. In Good News Mass, Simon not only honors this legacy but pushes it further, blending sacred traditions with multi-genre ingenuity to craft a Mass of and for our time.
As Simon explains, Good News Mass “explores the ups and downs of being human and finding God in the midst of it all. What does it mean to question the existence of God? Where is God during our seasons of loss? How is God experienced in times of joy and hope?” The composition is both deeply personal and universally resonant, offering listeners a liturgical journey of introspection and celebration.
Unfolding in 16 movements across three acts, Good News Mass begins with the “Introit” and culminates in “God’s Love.” It includes reimagined liturgical staples—“The Lord’s Prayer,” “Prayer of Confession,” “Lord Have Mercy”—as well as vibrant gospel declarations like “Oh, Give Thanks unto Our Lord” and “The Greatest of These.” Simon’s hallmark ability to weave together diverse musical idioms shines through, combining gospel harmonic syntax, choral grandeur, spoken wordsmithing, and orchestral brilliance. Moreover, a unique feature of Good News Mass is its emphasis on orature, that is, the oral literatures central to Black religiosity. Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s poetry recalls the West African griot tradition, enriching the performance’s narrative depth. This storytelling is amplified by visual art from filmmaker Melina Matsoukas, creating a multi-sensory experience that bridges the sacred and the contemporary.
The multi-genre soloists, spoken word artist, and choir infuse the performance with the textures of traditionally versatile “Black church” worship: Hammond B3 organ, congregational singing, gospel choir antiphony, and altar-call zeal, all underscored by Simon’s orchestral mastery.
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Symphony Orchestra, Good News Mass stands as a testament to the vitality of Black sacred music in contemporary classical spaces. Simon’s work not only affirms the divine in our midst but reminds us that music itself can be a vessel of healing, hope, and love.
Alisha Lola Jones
Vocalist and scholar Dr. Alisha Lola Jones is an associate professor of music at the School of Arts & Humanities at the University of Cambridge in England. She is co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies (JPMS). She was on the faculty of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Her book Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance was published by Oxford University Press. This essay was written to be included with the printed score of Good News Mass.
Carlos Simon became the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Deborah and Philip Edmundson Composer Chair in September 2023 for a three-year term. His activities with the BSO have included composing for the orchestra and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players as well as writing a work for violin and piano for Augustin Hadelich. He has also curated chamber music concerts and a centennial orchestral celebration of John Coltrane’s music. During the BSO’s E Pluribus Unum: From Many, One festival this month, the Boston Symphony Chamber Players premiered his Gardner Suite, inspired by a visit to and objects within Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. On February 1, Augustin Hadelich and Orion Weiss perform a new BSO-commissioned work for violin and piano, his Serenade. In summer 2025, his choral work Words and Prayers of My Fathers was premiered by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in the Koussevitzky Music Shed, preceding the BSO’s season-ending performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The BSO also commissioned and premiered his Four Black American Dances, taking the work on their 2023 European tour. He wrote Festive Overture and Fanfare for the BSO and Andris Nelsons to celebrate the conductor’s tenth anniversary as BSO music director. The BSO first played his music in 2021, his Fate Now Conquers, and has also performed Motherboxx Connection, Warmth from Other Suns, and the concerto for orchestra Wake Up!
Simon is also composer-in-residence at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center until 2027. As a composer, he has concentrated in recent years on more than a dozen works for orchestra, including short concert openers and orchestral studies, a suite of dances, a big work for voice, chorus, and orchestra, a trombone concerto, a four-movement symphony, and a concerto for orchestra. Several of his orchestral works were recorded by Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gianandrea Noseda for an album released in 2024. In 2020 he joined the faculty of Georgetown University, where he is now an associate professor of music. Simon wrote Requiem for the Enslaved for Georgetown University, which commissioned it as part of its reckoning with its history of engaging in slaveholding and the slave trade.
Simon’s music has been commissioned by the Kennedy Center, American Ballet Theatre, BBC for the 2024 Proms, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, and many others. Simon has also been commissioned by New York’s Metropolitan Opera for a new work, The Highlands, slated to be produced by the company in 2027. He is the first Black composer commissioned for an original opera in the history of the company.
An interconnectedness of subject matter and musical genre is key to Simon’s approach, which is illustrated on a more personal and intimate level in his albums My Ancestor’s Gift and Together, which feature stylistically fluid collaborations with close musical colleagues. “The way I think about things, I’m a composer first,” Simon has related, but he has enhanced instinct via hands-on and pragmatic musical activities in several spheres, as he has demonstrated in his work with the BSO. His Good News Mass, one of his most important, personal, and ambitious works, draws on the great stylistic range of the BSO’s individual players, who, in their activity with the Boston Pops, perform in the annual Pops Gospel Night, a collaboration with chorus director Dennis Slaughter and Greater Boston’s vibrant concert, church, and gospel chorus community.
Composer and writer Robert Kirzinger is the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Director of Program Publications.