Composer’s Note:

Mankind Rises is a work for baritone solo and piano trio on a text adapted from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s address delivered to the Democratic Party National Convention on July 2, 1932, when he called for a “New Deal” for the American people to recover from the calamity that was the Great Depression. This message of hope, though, is timeless.

This is what FDR said:

“Out of every crisis, every tribulation, every disaster, mankind rises with some share of greater knowledge, of higher decency, of purer purpose. … This is no time for fear, for reaction, and for timidity.”