|
|
Black Professional Classical Musicians • Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
May 24, 2022, Charleston SC—The
Colour of Music Festival
(COMF) announces its New York début in New York City, Friday, June 17, 2022, 7:30 p.m. at Zankel Hall at Carnegie
Hall presenting an evening of quartet and octet chamber music works by two Black classical composers
Valerie Coleman, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson and an octet by Felix Mendelssohn. The performance celebrates the first anniversary of the historic Federal Juneteenth holiday.
Since 2013, the Charleston, South Carolina-based Colour of Music Festival has brought classically trained Black musicians together to offer the public an opportunity to experience the talent of prodigiously gifted classical principals, composers, and performers of African descent share their musical talents, knowledge, and inspiration and showcase the impact and significance of Black classical composers and performers on American and world culture.
The Colour of Music Festival Zankel Hall performance features German-born violinist Anyango Yarbo-Davenport and French violinist Romuald Grimbert-Barré joined by colleagues Michael Jorgensen, James Keene, Alexandria D’Amico, Caleb Georges, Kenneth Law, and Ryan Murphy to form an octet showcasing Felix Mendelssohn’s String Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20 and quartets by two Black composers―Valerie Coleman’s Umoja for String Quartet and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s String Quartet No. I “Calvary.”
“Two
years in the making, and in honor of the first Juneteenth Federal
holiday, in part by a generous grant from the National Endowment of the
Arts,
we are elated to present this history-making performance in America’s
cultural capital. Charleston, SC is known for a multitude of festivals
itself and we are proud to bring to New York audiences the black
classical contributions from a region where 40 percent
of all Africans arrived on the continent of North America,” said, Lee
Pringle, COMF Founder and Artistic Director.
Friday, June 17, 2022, 7:30 p.m.
Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall
Seventh Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets | New York City
By phone: Carnegie Charge (212) 247-7800
Online:
www.carnegiehall.org
About the Colour of Music Festival
Based in Charleston SC the
Colour of Music Festival, Inc. presents a diverse classical repertoire of baroque, classical and 20th-century
music at the highest of musical standards. The Festival has presented
in Atlanta; Charleston and Columbia, SC; Nashville; Houston;
Pittsburgh; Richmond; Sacramento, and Washington, D.C. www.colourofmusic.org
Additional Media
Additional high-resolution images available upon request to
public.relations@colourofmusic.org
Florence Price was widely performed during the 1930’s, but by the fifties her work had dropped from view. Since the rediscovery of the full score for this concerto, pianist Michelle Cann’s ‘exquisite, authoritative’ performances are reintroducing Price to audiences and critics. Passionate, part Romantic, part bluesy, the Concerto is a small sample of Price’s repertory.
Conductor Tito Muñoz will open our final program with works by Buxtehude and Quinn Mason and close with Beethoven’s joyous Symphony No. 7. Beethoven called this work “one of the happiest products of my poor talents”— the perfect choice to conclude his 250th plus one, and Symphony Silicon Valley’s 20th anniversary season.
Buxtehude: Chaconne in E minor
Quinn Mason: Reflection on a Memorial
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (May 18, 2022) – Prairie View A&M University, along with 13 other Boeing HBCU recruiting partners’ paraphernalia, will be sent to outer space aboard Orbital Flight Test-2 on Thursday, May 19. Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft is set to launch at approximately 6:54 p.m. Eastern time from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Live broadcasts of the launch will be shared on NASA TV.
Click here for more information about Orbital Flight Test-2.
The East Coast premiere will feature the
Choral Arts Symphonic Chorus with Artistic Director Scott Tucker,
Resonance Ensemble with Artistic Director FitzGibbon and NEWorks Chorus
and Philharmonic Orchestra with Nolan Williams, Jr.
She’s outspoken, outrageous, and has an outsized talent. She is Latonia Moore, an African American soprano who makes her Los Angeles Opera debut in the title role of Aida. Onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for six performances, May 21 – June 12, this production, first seen in 2016 at San Francisco Opera, is directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted by LAO music director’s, James Conlon.
While the Texas-born singer made a virtual debut with LAO in an online Living Room Recital in 2020, seeing her in the flesh promises to be something special, as Moore has probably racked up more performances of Verdi’s grandest opera than anyone, with last count somewhere between 150 and 160 times.
Now owning the role, the 43-year-old downhome diva counts hard work, good teachers, and a little bit of luck as part of her success. Indeed, when Moore stepped in for an ailing Violeta Urmana in 2012 at the Metropolitan Opera to tackle the titular role of the Ethiopian princess, The New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini wrote that “her voice was radiant, plush, and sizable at its best, with gleaming top notes that broke through the chorus and orchestra during the crowd scenes.”
Since then, Moore has sung Aida at major opera houses around the globe, including at the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Teatro Colón, and at Opernhaus Zürich. But Moore’s musical journey began in her home town of Houston, where her grandfather was a preacher and her grandmother played the piano; at age 4 she sang gospel with her sisters, a cousin, and aunt in a group dubbed the Moore Singers.
After high school, Moore attended the University of North Texas, majoring in jazz. But, having found her true calling in opera, she moved east to attend Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts. In 1999, the musician made her debut at the Palm Beach Opera — albeit offstage, singing the Celestial Voice in Don Carlo — with competitions soon following, including snagging top honors at the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions in 2000 and scoring first prize in the International Competiziona dell’ Opera in Dresden in 2002.
In a phone conversation, Moore took a deep dive into Aida; how performing at the Met in the new Terence Blanchard opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, changed her; and the power of perseverance.
You haven’t done an Aida since before the pandemic. How does it feel to be coming back to the opera, and what are your thoughts on the character of Aida?
It has been a minute, but it snaps right back, just because I sang it so many times. When I jumped in to a new production in Hamburg in 2010, I was asked if I could learn it in a week. I said, “I don’t think I can sing it.” But there’s one thing about me — I basically was teaching myself to sight read. I’m excellent and I have perfect pitch. I learn music extremely quickly, which is why I was able to jump in to Aida in a week.
Momenta Quartet
Emilie-Anne Gendron, Alex Shiozaki, violins; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Michael Haas, cello
Alvin Singleton's (b. 1940) approach to music-making has all along been involved in an interplay with listeners and their psychology. While this does not mean he has been centered on simply pleasing his audiences, his work seems to constantly draw his audience into confronting challenges of listening, and they tend to end up pleased. Therefore, with so many of his pieces, they might be extremely complex and masterfully crafted, but seldom do you feel he presents the listener with something they cannot understand on at least a basic level. When asked recently about why ordinary listeners seem to "get" his music, he answered: "Perhaps because it's structurally filled with surprises, a lot of silences, and spaces in my compositions.…"
Contrasts both big and small, long and short, vigorous and subdued, loud and quiet, are important to his music. Maybe a passage is presented that happens loudly over and over again followed by sudden silence. Suddenly the listener notices how loud that silence seems. In a way, it is the relationship with the listener that he regards as making serious music a serious matter. And his pieces are more than what is normally thought of as just pieces of music. One finds them that, yes, but as much as anything, they are experiences—almost "theatrical" experiences you can hear.
Singleton's string quartets span the arc of his career—the first (untitled) written in 1967, the fourth in 2019—and trace his stylistic evolution as a composer. Suggestively and somewhat enigmatically titled—No. 2 (1988) is Secret Desire to Be Black; No. 3 (1994) is Somehow We Can; No. 4 is Hallelujah Anyhow—they serve as an excellent introduction to his work and constitute a substantial contribution to the string quartet repertoire by one of this country's most distinguished African-American composers. Three of the four quartets are world premiere recordings.
Castle of our Skins is donating 100% of its May Black Composer Miniature Challenge Anthology proceeds to the National Negro Opera House, one of America's 11 most endangered historic places.
The effort to restore and preserve the National Opera House, a historic landmark located in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood, is receiving a helping hand from Castle of Our Skins, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and uplifting Black artistry.
Ashleigh Gordon, artistic and executive director and co-founder of Castle of Our Skins, found out about the National Opera House — formerly known as the National Negro Opera House — when she read an article about it last year.
Gordon wanted to learn more about it and how she could help.
“There is an amnesia that plagues so many things, and certainly as it plagues an awareness of Black excellence and artistry,” she said. “We are in a heightened awareness now, but that moment needs to be extended and habitualized.”
Jonnet Solomon, executive director of the National Opera, bought the house with her friend Miriam White in 2000. Over the years, she has asked for support to preserve the house at 7101 Apple St. in Homewood.
The National Historic Landmark was named as one of Discover America’s 11 most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
In 1941, musician and educator Mary Cardwell Dawson founded the National Negro Opera Company — the first permanent African-American opera company in the nation. Dawson rented the third floor of the opera house as an office and rehearsal space for the company.
Dawson learned to sing in the church choir and then enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, the only African American in her class, according to the opera’s website. She earned degrees in voice and piano and continued her studies at the Chicago Musical College in New York with a dream of becoming an opera singer.
When she saw there were no opportunities for African American opera singers, she took it into her own hands to give Black singers opportunities. Some went on to perform in New York, Cleveland and Washington, D.C.
Over time, the organization started to lose money. Dawson died of a stroke in 1962. The opera folded months later. The house received its first historical marker dedication in 1994.
The history behind the house compelled Gordon to plan to donate 100% of sales made during May for Castle Of Our Skin’s “Black Composer Miniature Challenge Anthology Vol. 2” to the house. The digital anthology is a collection of writings of 30-second pieces for solo flute, alto flute, piccolo, harp and/or flute-harp duo.
Gordon saw the opportunity to help highlight the nonprofit and its mission as a natural fit. Castle of Our Skin celebrates Black artistry through music and other arts. The nonprofit is also a concert educational series focused largely on classical music from the African diaspora as well as history, culture and education.
“We need to preserve that history,” Gordon said. “We can’t risk losing anymore history.”
The collaboration was a milestone for Solomon, who said she was excited to have the opera house’s work introduced to a larger network. “This is why we need people telling our stories,” she said.
“We need people advocating to support preservation of this type and historical preservation, and building a legacy and keeping a legacy in the community,” Solomon said. “We need people to advocate and defend it.”
Solomon hopes to restore the house to make it a space to foster talent and to help artists support their brands and businesses.
It requires raising $3 million to restore the house, she said. The nonprofit has managed to raise $2 million so far. Solomon is confident the last $1 million can be fulfilled.
“In the world of fundraising, it is not a lot of money, and it is doable,” she said. “We are hoping to get last thousands of dollars from foundations and the community.”
Preserving the history of the house is Solomon’s driving force.
She said the community’s support has been crucial for the nonprofit. Soloman said it has received more than $500,000 in grants from organizations and foundations.
In April, the Pittsburgh Opera and the National Opera House announced a long-term programmatic and strategic partnership. The partnership includes developing curricula and programming in music education, artistic development and community engagement, according to a press release.
“There are so many people in the city who want to see it happen successfully,” she said.
Once the nonprofit secures a permit for the house, a groundbreaking will be planned, Solomon said.
”That is the next big exciting thing — actually working on the house,” she said.
Donations to the National Opera House can be made at nationaloperahouse.org/donate.
 | Ashleigh Gordon (she/her/hers) Artistic/Executive Director & Violist - Castle of our Skins Address: Boston Center for the Arts, Studio #206 | 539 Tremont Street | Boston, MA 02116 Web: www.CastleSkins.org | Email:
|
Everett Lee was already a concertmaster leading white theater orchestras when he made Broadway history in 1945. He was appointed music director of Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Town” in September 1945, making him the first Black conductor to lead production on Broadway. Per the Chicago Defender, Lee was the first Black conductor “to wave the baton over a white orchestra in a Broadway production.”
Despite racial barriers, he went on to achieve other firsts. In 1953, he conducted the Louisville Orchestra in Kentucky — the first time a Black man led a white orchestra in the South. Two years later, Lee conducted the New York City Opera, another first for him. He could have done more but for the racism that Black classical musicians faced in the United States.
He went on to pursue an amazing career in Europe, holding conducting positions in Germany, Colombia, and Sweden. Lee also made guest appearances in many other parts of the world. While making waves internationally, his desire was to return to the U.S. but he wanted to do so only after he had become the music director of a major orchestra, according to The New York Times.
Born on August 31, 1916, in Wheeling, W.Va., to a barber and a homemaker, Lee started playing violin at eight years old. His musical talent inspired his family to move to Cleveland in 1927, where he became an athlete in junior high and led the Glenville High School orchestra as concertmaster. While working as an elevator operator, he met the Cleveland Orchestra’s conductor, Artur Rodzinski, who started mentoring him.
Lee studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and enlisted in the Army after graduating in 1941. He trained to become a Tuskegee Airman in Alabama but was released after getting injured. In 1943, Lee moved to New York to play in the orchestra for “Carmen Jones,” an Oscar Hammerstein II rewrite of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen”. A year later, Lee moved from the concertmaster’s chair to conduct Bizet’s music when the conductor was snowed in, The New York Times said. Then in 1945, as music director of “On the Town”, he made Broadway history amid Jim Crow segregation in performance.
Lee then played in the violin section of the New York City Symphony for Leonard Bernstein and studied conducting in Tanglewood in 1946.
***
An early pioneer of African-American conductors in the mid-1900s, Lee passed away in his home in Malmö, Sweden on January 12, 2022, at the age of 105. He is survived by his wife, Christin Lee, their son Erik Lee, and his daughter Dr. Eve Lee, whose mother Sylvia Olden Lee was Lee’s first wife.
