This program explores, during a time when American ideals are undergoing such deep challenges, the vital and life-affirming sounds of the young Republic as its citizens sang and played forth their love of freedom and their rejection of tyranny. The rough-hewn sounds of citizen-composers, such as the Boston tanner Billings or the Vermont tavern-keeper Ingalls, still ring true and strong today. And Liberty’s early attendants — feminists, abolitionists, freed slaves, Boston rascals and the insolent scallywags of “Yankee Doodle” all remind us that in our musical roots lies our true strength. Exhilarating part songs, marches, anthems, jigs, and ballads from early prints and manuscript sources in a program first commissioned by the Paris Philharmonie and first performed there last fall 2018 and now the subject of a new Harmonia Mundi CD.