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When the COVID-19 pandemic decimated live arts performances in 2020, six rising Black composers joined famed jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard for an edition of the then-new #KikiKonversations, a Facebook Live talk show with soprano Karen Slack.
The conversation went so well that the six composers decided to keep it going as a group chat, later adding a seventh composer — Carlos Simon — and playfully dubbing the informal association “The Blacknificent Seven.”
“We talk to each other all the time,” said Portland, Oregon-based bass-baritone and composer Damien Geter. “We ask each other questions. Throw ideas off each other. It’s safe place for us to go and just to be.”
Geter, along with Shawn Okpebholo, a professor of music composition and theory at Wheaton College, another of the seven, will have works featured March 14 as part of Night of Song, the next installment of MusicNOW.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary music series takes place at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St., and showcases members of the orchestra. Featured as soloists on this art-song program will be Geter and soprano Joelle Lamarre.
The MusicNOW series is curated by Jessie Montgomery, the CSO’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. A winner of the ASCAP Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein Award, she is also a member of the Blacknificent Seven.
Okpebholo, who will have an opera premiered in 2023 by the Chicago Opera Theater through its Vanguard Emerging Opera Composer program, said the group chat has been a boon to him and the rest of the composers, including Jasmine Barnes, Dave Ragland and Joel Thompson.
He described it as a “life-giving” exchange where the composers can confide in one another about their musical and societal struggles and celebrate their successes. “This is a group we can trust and talk to. It’s so meaningful. And the best part is that they all look like me, right? They are all Black, which is a big deal when you are in a profession under-represented with Black people.”
That said, he believes that the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, especially since the death of George Floyd in 2020, and more intense societal discussions surrounding race and gender have led to more diversity and inclusion in the classical world.
“People are more aware: It can’t be business as usual,” Okpebholo said about the return of live arts performances after the pandemic hiatus. “Who we see on our stages, what we see in the concert halls, who we are commissioning, who we are performing, it can’t look the same. What’s being produced artistically should reflect what our country looks like.”
Geter believes the operatic world is changing more quickly than the symphonic world, because the former is a vehicle for telling stories and has a built-in need to be relevant. “I think there is a desire for more current stories, more current situations and topics that people are living and experiencing today,” he said. “Opera is the perfect vehicle for that.”
The March 14 concert will feature the world premiere of Geter’s The Bronze Legacy, a setting of a work by Harlem Renaissance poet Effie Lee Newsome. She was best known for her children’s poems, but this one was written for adults and talks about taking pride in being Black. “She uses the word ‘brown’ but she means Black people,” Geter said.
The song is scored for piano, flute, light percussion, amplified bass and baritone, and Geter will serve as soloist.
In February, Novana Records released “Lord How Come We Here?,” a collection of Okpebholo’s “reimagined” spirituals, folk hymns and art songs. It is a follow-up to “Steal Away,” an earlier album of spirituals that received a similar treatment.
“I don’t think my pieces are mere arrangements,” Okpebholo said. “I am taking this beautiful art form that grew out of a horrible time in our history, and I’m keeping the integrity of the pieces but I’m reimagining them in a different way — my voice — how they can be more relevant today in American art music.”
Two of these reimaginings were originally conceived for voice and piano, but for MusicNOW, Okpebholo has created new arrangements for them. He has added clarinet to the original version of “Battle of Birmingham” from Two Black Churches and violin to Oh, Glory.
“I had to adjust all the parts, so it would musically make sense,” he said. “If I’m going to add an instrument, they need to serve a purpose in advancing the narrative and not be mere obbligato, if you will.”
