Damien Geter takes on the disparate roles of composer and performer

As an active bass-baritone and a prolific composer, Damien Geter doesn’t fit neatly into one category.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “The people who know me as a singer know me as a singer. And the people who know me as a composer know me as composer. Very seldom do the two worlds ever meet, except for this concert in Chicago.”

The Portland, Ore.-based singer-composer was referring to the March 14 MusicNow program, in which he will both perform and unveil the world premiere of The Bronze Legacy, a setting of a work by Harlem Renaissance poet Effie Lee Newsome. The concert is the latest installment in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary-music series, which takes place at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph.

Like The Bronze Legacy, which speaks to the pride of being Black, much of Geter’s music is focused on the Black experience, whether it’s highlighting some aspect of racial justice or celebrating “Black joy.” But he doesn’t limit himself to those topics. “Sometimes I just want to write a song about a flower,” he said.

He has been influenced by Beethoven, whose music he heard as a child on records that his parents owned, as well as Brahms, Mahler and Shostakovich. He also loves the music of John Adams and is a big admirer of Anthony Davis, who has written such works as the opera The Central Park Five, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2020.

Geter, 41, also regularly incorporates what he calls “styles of the Black diaspora” like jazz, gospel and rhythm and blues. “I’m a product of all those things, just as much as I am product of Beethoven and all those people. I feel like when you listen to my music, and I’ve heard other Black composers say this, if they didn’t know I wrote it, they could tell it was by a Black composer just because of some of the language I use.”

In recent months, Geter feels like he has done more composing than singing. That’s probably because he is putting the final touches on his second opera, a one-act titled Holy Ground. It will be performed as part of a double bill this summer at the Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, N.Y., which is billing the world premiere as a mix of “satirical fantasy and divine comedy.”

Another major work, An African American Requiem, is set to debut in the spring in partnership with the Resonance Ensemble and Oregon Symphony, with subsequent performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Although Geter has yet perhaps to attain the fame of his composing idols like Adams or Davis, these major projects make clear that he is well on his way. But he is taking nothing for granted. “I don’t feel like I’ve made it,” he said. “I don’t know what that would feel like.”