Our Song, Our Story: The New Generation of Black Voices

This vibrant showcase will highlight some of the world’s best-known operatic arias, art songs, and spirituals, paying homage to the eternal legacies of operatic legends Marian Anderson and Jessye Norman. Created and directed by composer, conductor, and multi-genre musician Damien Sneed, this powerful program symbolically passes the torch to two of today’s most exciting operatic voices, Justin Austin and Jacqueline Echols McCarley, and features works by African American composers past and present — including Margaret Bonds, Harry T. Burleigh, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, and Damien Sneed — plus works by Copland, Mozart, Puccini, Gershwin, and Strauss.

Artists

Damien Sneed, music director and piano
Jacqueline Echols McCarley, soprano
Justin Austin, baritone

Griot String Quartet
Amyr Joyner, violin
Messiah Ahmed, violin
Edward W. Hardy, viola
Miles Goosby, cello