David Patterson, a longtime professor of music at ­UMass Boston, had one thought as he watched turmoil and violence erupt two years ago in his hometown of Ferguson, Mo, where an unarmed black teenager was shot dead by a white police officer.

“This can’t be my city they’re talking about,’’ said the silver-haired Patterson, 75.

News reports showed a sharply divided city spiraling into violence, a portrayal that his childhood friends who still live in the city of nearly 22,000 people felt ignored progress made in race relations.

At the same time, images of demonstrators marching for equality convinced Patterson that “we’re still working on it.’’

Patterson felt he could not stay silent, and turned to his art.

He wrote a piano composition entitled “#Ferguson,’’ which he performed Friday night in the inaugural concert of a gleaming new University Hall Recital Hall at the Dorchester campus.

“#Ferguson’’ traces the days of his youth, when he played piano at Sunday school and rode his bicycle past the home of St. Louis Cardinals legend Enos Slaughter. But he also wanted to capture the “cataclysm’’ after the death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014, and Ferguson’s ongoing attempts at healing.

“I wanted to write about then, and I wanted to write about now,’’ Patterson said, seated at the piano a few hours before he was scheduled to perform.

The 23-minute piano suite aims to capture both the warm embrace of his hometown, and the chaos and unrest that followed Brown’s death.

A middle section, for example, named 8/9/14 for the date of Brown’s death, is louder and reflects a “splintered’’ community, he said.

Patterson, a UMass faculty member for more than four decades, first performed “#Ferguson’’ in September at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The performance coincided with his high school reunion.

Initially, Patterson said, “there was concern about my optimism — on the one hand, am I painting too much of a picture of progress?’’

He acknowledged that he could face skepticism as a white artist wading into a racial controversy that sparked nationwide protests, led largely by people of color.

But the piece has been well-received, Patterson said.

“This music is not about nostalgia,’’ Patterson said. “It’s not about politics. It’s about my empathy and affection for Ferguson.’’

An acclaimed composer, Patterson also planned to perform other works from his repertoire during the concert on Friday night.

His performance “#Ferguson’’ will be accompanied by a visual display of photographs of Ferguson during Patterson’s youth there, to the racial unrest of two years ago, projected on a screen behind him on stage.

One image shows artwork painted on plywood casings put up on windows smashed during the riots of 2014.

“There’s dialogue,’’ Patterson said of the current atmosphere in his hometown. “There’s dialogue and there’s peace.’’

As for “#Ferguson,’’ he hopes it communicates “the determination of those marchers’’ who took to the streets in 2014.

“The bigger picture is how that march plays into our yearning desire for freedom,’’ he said. “Good comes out of bad.’’

Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.