I’ve been a fan of Adolphus Hailstork since the 1980s. That’s when I first heard “Done Made My Vow,” as part of a concert broadcast over the radio.

“Done Made My Vow” (1985), often described as a gospel oratorio, was inspired in part by speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. So uplifting was the marriage of words and music, I hoped for years that it would be recorded. Then one day I stumbled across a copy in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gift shop.

On the eve of MLK Day, I hope you’ll join me for this extraordinary piece, scored for speaker, chorus and orchestra. It’s my featured highlight this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord.”

Hailstork has been part of the fabric of American music since at least the 1970s. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1941, he earned his BA from Howard University, his MA from the Manhattan School of Music – where his teachers included with Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond – and his doctorate from Michigan State, where his studied with H. Owen Reed. Then he was off, like so many of his great American forebears, to study at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger. Hailstork is now composer-in-residence at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

He is perhaps best known for his choral music, though it was the wistful slow movement of his Symphony No. 1, composed for a summer music festival in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, that next caught my ear.

His brief but boisterous curtain-raiser “Celebration!” was included in Paul Freeman’s legendary “Black Composers Series,” recorded for Columbia Records back in the 1970s. Freeman remained a champion of Hailstork’s work for the rest of his career. I particularly recommend his recording of “Sonata da Chiesa,” a multi-movement work for string orchestra, inspired by Hailstork’s impressions as a boy chorister singing at the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany.

As preamble to the oratorio, we’ll also enjoy his rhythmically exciting “Variations for Trumpet” (1981).

The music is hale, but the sentiments are King. I hope you’ll join me for “Done Made My Vow.” That’s “All Hail Hailstork,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

“Sonata da Chiesa” (1992):

Symphony No. 1 (1988): Mov’t II, Lento ma non troppo:

“Motherless Child” (2002):

“Celebration!” (1974):