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musical thought. In Ask Your Mama Isaw the possibility of working with themost brilliant, erudite ‘director,’ LangstonHughes.”Karpman is a Juilliard-trained, multiple-EmmyAward-winning composerwho writes prolifically for film, television,video games, and the stage. Her 2016opera Balls, which treats the 1973 “Battleof the Sexes” tennis match between BillieJean King and Bobby Riggs, will be givenits world premiere staging next monthacross the Bay by Opera Parallèle andSFJAZZ.Karpman’s fascination with Ask YourMama inspired her to embark on a collaborationwith the soprano Jessye Norman,for whom she envisioned writingthe score and who became co-creator ofthe project. “We agreed to use this opportunity,through music, to have an honestand impassioned conversation betweenBlack and white America,” says the composer.“We both felt Ask Your Mama toldthe history of America through culture,wit, beauty, and pain.”Following the world premiere at a soldoutCarnegie Hall concert in 2009—partof the Honor! Festival curated by Normanto celebrate African American music andculture—a Grammy-nominated recordingfeaturing sopranos Janai Bruggerand Angela Brown and jazz vocalistNnenna Freelon was released in 2015 onthe Avie Records label. Hughes dedicatedAsk Your Mama “to Louis Armstrong,the greatest horn blower of them all,” andKarpman and Norman dedicated theirsetting “to our beloved mothers, as wellas to Edgar Beitzel for introducing us,and finally to the great Carnegie Hall forcommissioning the work.”What to listen forTogether with Norman, Karpmanorganized a “playlist” of Hughes’s musicalreferences and allusions throughoutthe margins of the poem. This anda recording of Hughes himself recitingAsk Your Mama that she unearthedbecame the composer’s “essential tools,the building blocks of what you will heartonight. This playlist became the basis ofthe archival sounds, triggered as samples,that you will hear coming from twoonstage laptops.”Karpman sets the text for four principalroles, “none firmly stuck in onetradition: an opera singer who swings;a jazz singer(s) who loves lieder, who isthe siren, the mother, the child; a spokenword artist who is a poet himself, aGreek chorus and a preacher; and LangstonHughes.” The orchestra membersare asked “to do much more than simplyplay their instruments” as they realizewhat Karpman calls a “‘mashup’ of manykinds and styles of American music.”Felix MendelssohnBorn on February 3, 1809, in Hamburg,Germany; died on November 4, 1847, inLeipzig, GermanyOverture to A MidsummerNight’s DreamComposed: 1826First performance: February 20, 1827,in Stettin, Germany, with Carl LoeweconductingDuration: c. 12 minutesMarch 23, 2024 23
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