“Roots and Branches” - Music - University of California, Irvine

1995 - Regina Harris Baiocchi composes Good News Falls Gently. Additional works include
Gbeldahoven: No One’s Child, one-act opera based on the lives of Zora Neale Hurston and
Langston Hughes, 1996; Dreamhoppers, one-act opera, 1997;
1995 – Adolphus Hailstork’s opera, Paul Lawrence Dunbar: Common Ground, is premiered
by the Dayton Opera Company;
October 24, 1997 - Leslie Adams’ opera Blake is premiered by the Baltimore Municipal
Opera Company;
1997 – Anthony Davis’opera, Amistad, is premiered in Chicago;
1997 – Denyce Graves gives a performance at Washington’s National Cathedral, and the PBS
video and audio recording Denyce Graves: A Cathedral Christmas, is released.
September, 1998 – Barbara Hendricks performs Puccini’s Turandot at the Forbidden City in
Beijing,China;
1999 – Adolphus Hailstork composes the opera Joshua’s Boots based upon the life of the
Black cowboy and the Buffalo Soldiers. The work is premiered by the Opera Theatre of St.
Louis.
1999 – Denyce Graves opens the Los Angeles Opera season in a performance of Samson et
Dalila;
2000 - Akin Euba’s opera Chaka!, premiered by the St. Louis African Chorus with an
international cast.
2003 – Denyce Graves appointed Cultural Ambassador for the United states.
2005 – Tania Leon collaborates with Wole Soyinka to compose the opera Scourge of
Hyacinths, based on Soyinka’s Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known
2006 - Margaret Garner, written by Richard Danielpour, with the title role written for
Denyce Graves
2006 – Excerpts of H. Leslie Adams’ opera, Blake, are performed by the New York City
Opera Company.
2008 – Charles Lloyd, Jr. composes the opera Emmett Till
2011 – Porgy and Bess is revised and recreated into The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, opening
at the American Repertory Theaters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With the authorization of
the Gershwin estate, the director, Diane Paulus, worked with playwright Suzan-Lori Parks
and composer Diedre L. Murray to adapt the original four-hour opera script and music into an
“accessible” two-and-one-half-hour setting. Among other things, orchestration and cast
numbers are reduced and recitative is replaced with dialogue. The new version debuts on
Broadway in January 2012 with a cast that includes Audra McDonald (Bess), Phillip Boykin
(Crown), Norm Lewis (Porgy), David Alan Grier (Sporting Life), Nikki Renee Daniels
(Clara), Joshua Henry (Jake), Christopher Innvar (Detective), Bryonha Marie Parham
(Serena) and NaTasha Yvette Williams (Mariah). Choreography provided by Ronald K.
Brown. See review: Ben Brantley, “A New Storm’s Brewing Down on Catfish Row,” in
New York Times, Section C, January 13, 2012.
COMMENTARY: Sometimes our very presence changes things. When Anthony Davis and I went into City
Opera in New York to put on our piece, we discovered how very rare black composers and librettists are in any
opera house in the country. We knew our very existence gave some people a new perspective on what opera can
be. We discovered too that people were barely used to working with a living composer and the process for
mounting a piece was predicated on the work being known and the originators being long gone. It’s good to
bring change that involves working with living artists; it reminds us that such undertakings are collaborations.
“The Artist and Society”, a speech presented by Thulani Davis at the First
National Conference of the National Endowment for the Arts, April, 1994.
• Contemporary Venues and Competitions For African American Performers and Composers of
The Art Song include:
National Association of Negro Musicians Scholarship Competition
The Ben Holt Memorial Concert Series – founded by Dominique-Rene de Lerma
Four Seasons Concerts – New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, California
Classically Black Concert Series – Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Plymouth Music Series “Witness” Concerts in Minneapolis