AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM Hosted by International Contemporary Ensemble with Dr. Naomi André In partnership with FringeArts and Opera Omaha
THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY AND IMPORTANCE OF COMMEMORATION: HONORING GEORGE FLOYD A YEAR LATER AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM, MAY 25, 2021 This Afro-Diasporic Opera Forum is taking place exactly one year after George Perry Floyd, Jr. was murdered (May 25, 2020) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our opening event on the evening of Tuesday, May 25, 2021 brings us pause as we think about this very difficult year; during this week we will remember where we were when we first heard this horrific news. And George Floyd is tragically one of the too many Black people who have been killed—sacrificed, murdered, and martyred: Emmet Till, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Ahmed Aubrey, Breonna Taylor…this list goes on and includes only a few of the names of so many people who died directly as a result of police misconduct. The organizers of this forum did not plan this event in response to, or because of George Floyd. Rather, this forum was already in the making as the need to bring light to Black voices writing operatic works presented an important opportunity to hear new narratives in contemporary music. For the organizers of this symposium and many of those involved, George Floyd was, and continues to be, a regular part of our daily thinking as we drive in cars, walk in neighborhoods, go grocery shopping, and seek medical care. The works on our program both directly touch on violence to Black people in our current lives (such as dwb—driving while black, 2018) and the legacy of colonialism (The Nubian Word for Flowers: A Phantom Opera, 2017). These operas address the struggle and celebration of Black creativity (Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, 2017 and Afterword, 2015). These operas also explore urban life in the Third Ward of Houston, Texas (Cry of the Third Eye, 2020). Right now, and at points throughout this week, we urge you to take the space and time to be good to, and gentle with, yourself as we discuss these works and commemorate the difficult legacy of George Floyd and so many others. Dr. Naomi André May 2021
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM MAY 26 - ACT I 12:30-2pm – Scene I talking about opera: blackness, voice, and theoretical paradigms Opening Address: Dr. Naomi André Speakers: Dr. Matthew D. Morrison, Dr. Fredara Hadley To be Rescheduled: Dr. Dr. Daniele G. Daude
3-4:15PM – SCENE II PERLE NOIRE: MEDITATIONS FOR JOSÉPHINE A Conversation with Dr. Tyshawn Sorey, Julia Bullock, and Dr. Naomi André
5-6PM – SCENE III INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTISTS IMPACT ON OPERA Speakers: Lisa E. Harris, IONE, Helga Davis, Melanie Bacaling
7-9 PM – SCENE IV Screening: Afterword (2015) by George Lewis
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM MAY 27 - ACT II Black Opera Composers in European Classical Music* Presentation by Dr. Dr. Daniele G. Daude *To be shared after the forum
11-12:15pm – Scene I libretti, words, and text Speakers: George Lewis, IONE, Sharan Strange Moderator: Dr. Naomi André
3-4PM – SCENE II CONSTRUCTING THE OPERATIC AFRODIASPORA Speakers: Dr. Courtney Bryan, Dr. Matthew D. Morrison, and Dr. Fredara Hadley Moderator: George Lewis
7-9PM – SCENE III Screening: The Nubian Word for Flowers: A Phantom Opera (2017) by Pauline Oliveros & IONE
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM MAY 28 - ACT III 11-12:00PM – SCENE I George Lewis: The Work of Anthony Davis
1-2PM – SCENE II Screening: dwb (driving while black) (2018) Opera by Susan Kander & Roberta Gumbel Film adaptation by Du’Bois and Camry A’Keen (A’KEEN Brand) Film commissioned and presented by UrbanArias
3-4PM – SCENE III POEMS ARE BULLSH*T: DEMANDING BLACK SPACE IN OPERA Dr. Derrell Acon with introduction by Dr. Naomi André
5-6:30PM – SCENE IV THE FUTURE OF BLACK OPERA Speakers: Dr. Naomi André, Dr. Derrell Acon, Melanie Bacaling, and Lisa E. Harris Closing remarks
7-9PM – SCENE V Screening: Cry of the Third Eye (2020) by Lisa E. Harris
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM BIOS DR. DERRELL ACON
DR. NAOMI ANDRÉ
Fulbright scholar Dr. Derrell Acon is an award-winning bassbaritone who understands the power of the performing arts to foster human compassion and catalyze conversations on challenging subjects. He has over 15 years of experience in the equity, diversity, and inclusion space and continues to establish himself as a leader in classical music, education, and ethnic studies as relates to the role of the artist-activist. Dr. Acon is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grantee for his work in challenging the traditional narrative in opera and is a frequent presenter throughout the U.S. at such venues as conferences for the National Association for Ethnic Studies and National Association of Negro Musicians.
Naomi André is Professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Residential College at the University of Michigan. She received her B.A. from Barnard College and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her research focuses on opera and issues surrounding gender, voice, and race in the US, Europe, and South Africa. Her book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement won the Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music and Judy Tsou Critical Race Studies Award from the American Musicological Society. Currently she is a coeditor for the essay collection African Performance Arts and Political Acts.
MELANIE BACALING
COURTNEY BRYAN
Melanie Bacaling is an active producer, stage manager, and director in the opera industry. She is currently Co-Curator and Associate Producing Director for Opera Omaha’s Amplifying the Black Experience series as well as Boston Lyric Opera’s Project and Digital Content Producer. Boston Lyric Opera appointed Ms. Bacaling as the Company Intimacy Advocate, where she is developing protocols for consent-based practices in the opera rehearsal room. Her upcoming engagements include Assistant Directing Netia Jones’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Santa Fe Opera and joining the staging staff at LA Opera for the 2021/22 season.
Courtney Bryan is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). Her music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and other types of experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. Bryan has academic degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, and completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is currently the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University and a Creative Partner with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. She is currently a recipient of a 2020-21 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship.
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM BIOS JULIA BULLOCK
DR. DR. DANIELE G. DAUDE
One of Musical America’s 2021 “Artists of the Year,” American classical singer Julia Bullock combines versatile artistry with a probing intellect and commanding stage presence. She has headlined productions and concerts at preeminent arts institutions around the world. She holds notable positions including opera programming host of the new broadcast channel All Arts, founding core member of the American Modern Opera Company, 2018-19 Artist-inResidence at NY’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019-20 Artist-inResidence of the San Francisco Symphony, and 2020-22 Artist-inResidence of London’s Guildhall School. Bullock is also a prominent voice for social consciousness and change.
Dr. Dr. Daniele G. Daude is a French-German scholar whose research fields encompass stage analysis, music and ideology since 1945, humor on the stage, and tendencies of non-canonical music histories in the 21th century. She received a doctorate in Theatre Studies in 2011 at Freie Universität Berlin in Performance Analysis and a doctorate in Musicology in 2013 in Opera Analysis at the Université de Paris 8. She has taught at several German and French academic institutions. In 2013 she founded the choir Com Chor Berlin and in 2016 the chamber music ensemble The String Archestra to promote diversity in the German classical music landscape.
HELGA DAVIS Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages and with firm roots in her local community. Her work draws out insights that illuminate how artistic leaps for an individual can offer connection among audiences. Davis was principal actor in the 25th anniversary international revival of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s seminal opera Einstein on the Beach. She is artist in residence at National Sawdust and Joe’s Pub, host of the eponymous podcast HELGA on WQXR, winner of the 2019 Greenfield Prize in composition, a 2019 Alpert Award finalist, and the 2018-21 visiting curator for the performing arts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
DR. FREDARA HADLEY Dr. Fredara Hadley is an ethnomusicology professor in the Music History Department at The Juilliard School where she teaches courses on ethnomusicology and African American Music. Dr. Hadley has presented her research at universities and conferences both domestic and abroad and has been published in academic journals and other publications. Her commentary is featured in several documentaries including the recently released PBS doc-series, The Black Church, hosted by Professor Henry Louis Gates. Dr. Hadley's ongoing research projects focus on the musical impact of Historically Black Colleges and Universities and on Shirley Graham DuBois, one of the earliest Black women musicologists and opera composers.
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM BIOS LISA E. HARRIS
Lisa E. Harris, Li, is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, creative soprano, performer, composer, improvisor, writer, singer/songwriter and educator from Houston Texas. Li's work resists genre classification as she focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit and place. Using voice, theremin, photography, movement, improvisation meditation, and new media, Li maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance and living. She is the founder and creative director of Studio Enertia, an arts collective and production company in Houston Texas. Li is the 2021 recipient of the Dorothea Tanning Award for Music/Sound, awarded by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
GEORGE LEWIS George Lewis is Professor of American Music at Columbia University. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a MacArthur Fellow and a Guggenheim Fellow, Lewis also holds honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh, New College of Florida, and Harvard University. Lewis is the author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music and co-editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies. A 2019 recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, his compositions, published by Edition Peters, are performed worldwide.
IONE IONE is an author/playwright / director and an improvising textsound artist. She has taught and performed throughout the world with her creative partner and spouse of 30 years, Pauline Oliveros. She was Artistic Director of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd for 15 years and is currently a Deep Listening Consultant at the Center for Deep Listening ®, RPI. As Founding Director of M.o.M., Inc., IONE conducts workshops and seminars throughout the world, encouraging a vibrant international community of writers, visual artists, and musicians. She is a member of the Kingston Arts Commission and the recipient of the 2019 Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist’s Award and a Certificate of Merit from the General Assembly of the State of New York.
DR. MATTHEW D. MORRISON Dr. Matthew D. Morrison, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, is an Assistant Professor in the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from Columbia University. He has worked in collaboration with the opening of The Shed,NYC, with the Glimmerglass Festival Opera, and has held fellowships at Harvard University and the Library of Congress. He is currently completing a book entitled Blacksound: Making Race & Popular Music in the U.S., which considers the making of race, intellectual property law, and American popular entertainment out of blackface minstrelsy.
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM BIOS DR. TYSHAWN SOREY Newark-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Dr. Tyshawn Sorey is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as artists such as John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Claire Chase, Steve Lehman, Jason Moran, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, and Myra Melford, among many others.
SHARAN STRANGE Sharan Strange studied at Harvard College and earned her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a founding member of the Dark Room Collective and served as co-curator of its Dark Room Reading Series. She received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, the Barnard Women Poets Prize, an Artist Award from the DC Commission on the Arts, Georgia Writer of the Year Award, Pushcart Prize nomination, and residencies at the Gell Writers Center, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. Strange teaches creative writing at Spelman College and serves as a community board member of Poetry Atlanta.
DR. DR. DANIELE G. DAUDE Dr. Dr. Daniele G. Daude is a French-German scholar whose research fields encompass stage analysis, music and ideology since 1945, humor on the stage, and tendencies of non-canonical music histories in the 21th century. She received a doctorate in Theatre Studies in 2011 at Freie Universität Berlin in Performance Analysis and a doctorate
GEORGE LEWIS: Afterword (2015)
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM
Developed with directors Catherine Sullivan and Sean Griffin Performed by: Joelle Lamarre (soprano), Julian Terrell Otis (tenor), Gwendolyn Brown (contralto), Otis Harris, Zachary Nicol, Ninah Snipes, Coco Elysses, Douglas R. Ewart, Ann E. Ward, Discopoet Khari B., and the International Contemporary Ensemble The work derives from Lewis’s book about the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
“Founded on the South Side of Chicago in 1965, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians has long played an internationally recognized role in American experimental music. The AACM’s unique combination of artistic communitarianism, personal and collective self-determination, and ardent experimentalism animates the Afterword project. However, Afterword is not a history of the AACM, but a ‘Bildungsoper’—a coming-of-age opera of ideas, positionality, and testament. The challenge here was to create an opera around a collective that remains noted for its diversity of approaches to creative practice, while eschewing direct character representation of AACM artists. The opera eschews a conception in which fixed, authorial characters pose as what Michel Foucault calls “historical figure[s] at the crossroads of a certain number of events'' in favor of having music, text, and movement deploy a tricksterish displacement of character onto metaphysical collectivities. Sung and spoken voices, instrumental music, and movement become heteroglossic avatars, in a process described by Toni Morrison and others as the expression of a community voice. In some scenes, that voice presents remembrances and testimony; in others, clashes between subject positions allow audiences to eavesdrop on history as it is being made in real, human time, bringing us face to face with contingency, empathy, and wonder. In a sense, the community voices adopted by the avatars could also constitute externalizations of the conflicts within a single complex human life.” — George Lewis
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM Michael Weyandt, bass baritone Lisa E. Harris, soprano Peter Tantsits, tenor Alice Teyssier, soprano Zizo, baritone and oud, flute, duff IONE, text, vocals, conception, and direction Laura Cocks, flute James Austin Smith, oboe Joshua Nathan Rubin, clarinet Jennifer Curtis, violin Nathan Davis, percussion
PAULINE OLIVEROS & IONE
The Nubian Word for Flowers: A Phantom Opera (2017) Jacob Greenberg, harmonium Rebekah Heller, bassoon Daniel Lippel, guitar Nicholas DeMaison, music director Rebecca Rouse, assistant director and dramaturg Monica Duncan, video design Ross Karre, video design Fray Eva, costume designer Nicholas Houfek, lighting design Senem Pirler, sound engineer
During several journeys to Egypt, as a journalist and teacher, author/playwright/director IONE, was strongly affected by the diaspora (Higra) of the Nubian people of Egypt and the Sudan, as well as being inspired by a real life island of flowers in the Nile. IONE shared her experiences of the island and its colonial connections with her creative partner and spouse Pauline Oliveros while they were performing in Kitchener, Ontario. The name of the town opened floodgates of historical memory and Pauline was very moved by the story. Slowly, they began to develop an opera, encompassing the Nubian diaspora and the life of Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener of Khartoum. While working on the project they journeyed to Egypt together, following an ancient route, from Venice to Cairo; where they began collaborations with Egyptian and Nubian musicians. The Nubian Word for Flowers: A Phantom Opera uses live performance, electronics, and moving images to create a deep dream exploration of Nubian Soul and Colonial Mind.
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM
PAULINE OLIVEROS & IONE
The Nubian Word for Flowers: A Phantom Opera (2017)
At the time of Pauline’s death in November 2016, the opera was only 75 percent complete. During the year that followed, IONE, collaborated with International Contemporary Ensemble (performing ensemble), Monica Duncan (video artist), Senem Pirler (sound artist), Nick Demaison (conductor) and Zizo (singer/composer) to posthumously complete the work and give a full-scale world premiere at Roulette (Brooklyn, NY) on November 30, 2017, which was lauded as “warmly felt haunting” by The New York Times.
In December 2018 at a residency at Mount Tremper Arts we were able to reshape the opera to be experienced in smaller locations; living rooms, meditation studios, and other nontraditional, intimate spaces.
This new “pocket” version preserved the opera’s original live, performed animation and transformed the production into an even more intimate exploration of this important work. The “pocket” version premiered in February 2020 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor Gallery.
The evolution of this work has brought together a creative integration of Pauline and Ione’s meditation and dream awareness practice and traditional opera. The Nubian Word for Flowers continues to live beyond us in ways we can only imagine, leading to one of the most incredible communities of creative, passionate listeners and performers.
Tyshawn Sorey: Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine (2016)
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM
Performers Creative Team Julia Bullock, soprano Music by Tyshawn Sorey Alice Teyssier, flutes Texts by Claudia Rankine Ryan Muncy, saxophone Conceived by Peter Sellars & Julia Bullock Rebekah Heller, bassoon Directed by Peter Sellars at Ojai Music Festival (2016) & Oberon (2019) Daniel Lippel, guitar Directed by Zack Winokur at MET Museum (2019) Jennifer Curtis, violin Choreography by Michael Schumacher Tyshawn Sorey, composer, drums, percussion, and piano
Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine, heralded as “one of the most important works of art yet to emerge from the era of Black Lives Matter” (New York Times), explores the life of Joséphine Baker (1906-1975) through her iconic songs as re-composed by Sorey and sung by world renowned classical singer and activist Julia Bullock. Bullock notes, “Together we share words, movement, and music that further examine and highlight various undercurrents of Joséphine Baker’s life. Loosening the grip and gloss on her tunes and her story, I hope I have enabled us to share a personal portrait that is not so much about her, but for her.” Premiered at the Ojai Music Festival in June 2016, the work has evolved over the last five years with performances at Stony Island Arts Bank, Da Camera Houston, Lincoln Center, the MET, and Oberon (Harvard University). Tyshawn’s score, which obliterates the boundaries between formal and spontaneous composition, alludes to the racial struggles of both Baker’s time and our own. “I identified more with Baker as a figure of the civil rights movement, with the lyrical and emotional content. I wanted to recompose the music so that it would match that,” says Sorey in a New York Times interview in August 2016. Bullock adds, “hearing her [Baker] sing ‘Si J’Étais Blanche’ [‘If I Were White’] in 1925 is just as relevant as singing it now.”
INTRODUCTORY NOTES FOR PERLE NOIRE: MEDITATIONS FOR JOSÉPHINE A conversation with Dr. Tyshawn Sorey, Julia Bullock, and Dr. Naomi André
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM
This video presentation contains most of a conversation I had with Julia Bullock and Tyshawn Sorey on Tuesday, May 4, 2020. This was our first conversation—a first encounter referring to the first time I had met Ms. Bullock and Dr. Sorey—and I am very grateful for the warmth and generosity they showed me in their willingness to talk about Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine and their collaboration. My questions in the meeting were not pre-circulated; this was their first time hearing them. I had made a general outline of possible themes to bring up for myself, but I was also listening carefully during the conversation as I was trying to both react to their comments and to be open to the process for following up on the many provocative themes they raised. In going back to listen to this conversation, my comments seem a little long and I want to give some context around that. Since we had not met before (time was of the essence and their schedules were super busy), I was concerned about helping them see my thought process and be transparent in my intentions. My goal was to help them feel comfortable so that they could be able to speak about what they wanted to share. As I mention early on in our meeting, I saw this as a different type of recorded conversation than what usually happens because we are three Black people who have devoted our lives to music—classical, concert, art, jazz, and popular musical styles. Even more unusual is that all of us have had deep commitments to opera. Julia Bullock through her training and performances in traditional and contemporary operatic roles. Tyshwan Sorey in his work with opera singers (in addition to Bullock he has worked with bass-baritone Davóne Tines and tenor Lawrence Brownlee) and his current position as the composer in residence for Opera Philadelphia. I am an opera scholar who writes about opera and its intersections with cultural and historical issues; I teach at the University of Michigan and work with opera companies in conversations around accessibility, belonging, and diversity. Moreover, all three of us have felt and experienced the troubling legacy of opera as an exclusive non-Black space that is still sometime hostile to our presence.
In this conversation we cover a wide range of topics, and the time really flew by. Let me outline just a couple of the highlights to help introduce some of the main themes. 1. Since “genre” is a slippery concept, I wanted to both claim this innovative work within an expanded understanding of what opera is (or can be), while still being sensitive to their own feelings (which I did not know) about having Perle Noire called an opera. For that reason, I introduced the construction of “operatic space” as a place that included Perle Noire. 2. Related to the issue of genre, Tyshawn Sorey mentions a term he learned from Amiri Baraka that also felt relevant: Verse-Music-Drama. The opera scholar in me really liked this since it feels like it belongs to the same world as the 19th-century Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, a term meant to encompass the importance of both the music and the text to the overall drama of the work, as well as Wagner’s later conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk [Total Art Work] that fused together music, poetry, drama, and stage production. For me, Baraka’s Verse-Music-Drama also resonates with Spoken Word as an oral poetic practice that leans into storytelling, hip hop, jazz, blues, and performance art. 3. Sorey and Bullock talk about the collaborative performance experience of Perle Noire. Sorey outlines three versions of the score. (1) the notated score—that he composed. (2) An understanding that there are prescribed areas for players to go outside of the score and listen to each other in real time, and to move outside of the notation. (3) An extension of (2) that comes out of the experience of performing the work and close listening while performing; this is a place to abandon the score, but also to remember it and play from that essence of being responsible for the score. 4. Through these three versions of the score, our conversation moved to how both Sorey and Bullock felt that they were decolonizing space through composition and performance. This discussion led to a discourse of liberating the work. 5. Rather than a documentary or bio-pic about Josephine Baker that puts her life in the past, Perle Noire opens with the line: “This is who I am now” and centers Josephine Baker as inhabiting a living work. This is a place to find the humanity in these songs that Baker sang and to re-position her in history to both the past and the present today.
Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine (2016) A work for mixed chamber ensemble and soprano. The work includes poetic texts composed by Claudia Rankine, choreography by Michael Schumacher, and the music for the seven musical numbers below. Perle Noire has been performed with the poetic texts and choreography interspersed between the musical numbers; the work has also been performed with just the musical numbers below. All seven musical numbers were performed by Baker. They have been adapted as source material for Perle Noire. “Bye Bye Blackbird” “Sous le Ciel d’Afrique” [“Under African Skies”] “C’est ça le Vrai Bonheur [“This is True Happiness”] “Madiana” [“Madiana”] “Si J’etais Blanche” [“If I Were White”] “C’est Lui” [“It’s Him”] “Terre Sèche (Negro Spiritual)” [“Dry Earth (Negro Spiritual)”]
Select Bibliography “A Conversation with Julia Bullock about Perle Noire,” DaCamera: Transformative Musical Experiences (online blog for the Houston-based chamber music institution). This conversation with soprano Julia Bullock was conducted in the summer of 2016, prior to the September 30, 2016 Houston premiere. Edited for the Fall 2020 virtual presentation. Posted December 3, 2020. https://www.dacamera.com/a-conversation-with-julia-bullock-about-her-josephine-baker-project/ Julia Bullock personal website: https://juliabullock.com/ Tyshawn Sorey personal website: https://www.tyshawnsorey.com/ da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna. “Review: A Haunting Tribute to Josephine Backer Arrives at the Met Museum,” The New York Times, January 17, 2019. Shatz, Adam. “The Composer Tyshawn Sorey Enters a New Phase,” The New York Times, January 7, 2021. Sorey, Tyshawn. “Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine: Aesthetics, Discussion, and Reception” DMA diss. Columbia University, 2017. Woolfe, Zachary. “This is Who We’ve Been Waiting For: A Diva on the Precipice,” The New York Times, October 25, 2019. Woolfe, Zachary. “Tyshawn Sorey: The Busiest Composer of the Bleakest Year,” The New York Times, January 1, 2021. Naomi André May 2021
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM
SUSAN KANDER & ROBERTAGUMBEL dwb (driving while black) (2018) Film adaptation by Du’Bois and Camry A’Keen (A’KEEN Brand)
Composed by Susan Kander Libretto by Roberta Gumbel Starring Karen Slack Directed and Choreographed by Du’Bois & Camry A’Keen of A’KEEN Brand Film commissioned and presented by UrbanArias dwb (driving while black) is a montage of poetic and haunting moments examining the trials and triumphs Black mothers experience as their children come of age in a society plagued by racism and inequality. In the central narrative, we meet the Mother in her home. The dangerous world outside, however, is out of the Mother’s control, and anxiety builds in her mind and heart as her “beautiful brown boy” approaches manhood and the realities of modern life as a Black person in America. As the Mother takes the viewer on this journey of memory and metaphor, they will be inclined to wonder: is this real? This adaptation of Susan Kander and Roberta Gumbel’s one-woman opera by filmmakers Du’Bois and Camry A’Keen incorporates elements of dance, music video production, and intimate storytelling to bring the audience into the mind of those who live every day… WHILE BLACK. For more conversations around the themes presented in this piece, see Opera Omaha's Amplifying the Black Experience panel titled 'Black American Truths.' Baruch Performing Arts Center and Opera Omaha presented the virtual, directed-for-video premiere of dwb (driving while black) on October 23, 2020.
Lisa E. Harris: Cry of the Third Eye (2020)
AFRODIASPORIC OPERA FORUM
Written, Directed, Composed, Produced by Lisa E. Harris Produced by Studio Enertia Starring Tamirah Collins, Jha'Quallin Mitchell with Anne Carillo, Autumn Knight and citizens of the Greater Third Ward Editor, Joseph Graham Lisa E. Harris, soprano
Cry of the Third Eye, a new opera film in Three Acts, is an interdisciplinary performance work that serves as a sonic and visual durational archive of the gentrification of Third Ward, Houston Texas, a historic district, between the years 2011 and 2020. Written, directed, performed and composed by creative artist Lisa E. Harris who blends documentary filmmaking with urban dreamscaping, Cry of the Third Eye is a meditation on the questions, how do we home and how do we value? This work is metered at a four year interval and all components of the production are sourced from the Greater Third Ward District. Cry of the Third Eye is created as a cinematic experience with live musical narration, orchestration and discourse, and may also be screened as a stand alone film. For more, watch the Director's Corner with Lisa E. Harris.
AFRO-DIASPORIC OPERA FORUM The Afro-Diasporic Opera Forum is produced and hosted by the International Contemporary Ensemble with financial and organizational support from Opera Omaha, FringeArts, and Arlene and Larry Dunn.
International Contemporary Ensemble's Performances and commissioning activities during the 2020-21 concert season are made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Pacific Harmony Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. The International Contemporary Ensemble is the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for the International Contemporary Ensemble.