Opera of Note

Anthony Davis

Three tenors

Ultimi three tenors sing "Ombra mai fu" by Handel
www.ultimitenors.com

Ombra Mai Fu

Malcolm X, The Civil Rights Movement and the African American struggle for social justice and human rights

X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, An Opera in Three Acts by Anthony Davis with libretto by Thulani Davis is a landmark and masterpiece of American Opera Theater. On many important levels, X is the seminal American opera about The African American Experience in the mid to late 20th Century

No American Opera of the last 60 years has so brilliantly interwoven social themes of critical contemporary importance, richly hewn drama and masterfully innovative music as is found in X.

 February 21st 2015 will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X.   This extended showcase of critical highlights from the opera has been created during 2013 to enhance the marketing and strategic pitch campaigns for prospective productions of X during 2015.    This post underscores my work done for Mr. Davis during 2013 as his marketing and strategy agent.

Premiered to great acclaim in 1986 by New York City Opera, X richly details the life and death of one of the most talked about iconic figures in American politics of the 1960s.

Davis' score is richly complex and multi layered with jazz, African poly rhythms enveloped in late 20th Century classical music idioms. Mr. Davis notes that he used  rhythmic overlay as a device of operatic leitmotif that reappears throughout. The vocal writing is exquisite in its intricate detailed use of block scoring with an effect recalling the power of Verdi opera Ensembles.

The Arias, Duets and Ensemble writing is matched with an immediacy and depth in Thulani Davis’ text  which is provocative, as it is moving.  More poignantly, X is now: X is 2014…. with a searing relevance speaking directly to an American nation at a crossroads in confronting Race Relations, Social Justice and the discussion of the threats posed by the current Supreme Court and Congress to The Civil Rights Movement legacies: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, The Voting Rights section in The Civil Rights Act of 1965 and poignantly,"The New Jim Crow":the crisis of mass incarceration of African American men in the prison system. Note, the scene in Act 2 titled Policeman speaks directly to the experience of young black men like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis to issues of racial profiling and worse. X is a tour de force of amazing clairvoyance   

In this premiere recording, the music is brought to life by the brilliant singers which include Thomas Young, tenor as Elijah and Street, Eugene Perry, baritone as Malcolm X, Herbert Perry, bass baritone as Reginald Priscilla Baskerville as Louise and Betty, Hilda Harris as Ella and an outstanding Ensemble including Cynthia Aaronson,Vanessa Ayers, Cornelius White,William Moize,Raymond Bazemore,, Autris Paige and Reginald Pindell.  The Policemen Scene with resonance for the 2013 Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman event are sung by tenors John Daniecki and Ronald Edwards.  The Reporter commenting about the death of JFK is spoken by Max Wilcox  The orchestra is The Orchestra of St Luke's under the baton of William Henry Curry.  To purchase the cd recording, visit Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Times-Malcolm-Anthony-Davis/dp/B000009JE4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406301581&sr=8-1&keywords=anthony+davis+x

To learn more about the rich and diverse world of contemporary Black Composers, visit  http://www.billdoggettproductions.com/Black-Composers.html

Anthony Davis:X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X,An Opera in Three Acts-Excerpts

Three Welsh Tenors - Caruso

Three Welsh Tenors - Gwinllan

Known as "The Goddess of The Waters" aria from Amistad, this is a critical aria performed spectacularly by the renowned Mezzo Soprano, Florence Quivar that speaks to the trauma of her character,"Yemeya", The Yoruba Goddess of The Waters who witnesses in horror the tragedy of the Transatlantic Slave Ship Holocaust..... captured Africans who escape by suicide by jumping overboard or thrown overboard by the ship owners after they have suffered disease or death on the months long passage known as "The Middle Passage".  The searing text is by Thulani Davis.
This is from the world premiere in 1997 of the opera at Lyric Opera  of Chicago.

Anthony Davis: Amistad

Amistad, Act II, Scene VI: Aria "They come as if from the heavens"

Anthony Davis' Notes From The Underground evokes aurally images from the Black Lives Matter "underground resistance movement" of Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton,  Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Ron Karenga and The Symbionese Liberation Army of the late 1960s into early 1970s. This is an era of Black Liberation Activism inspired by and empowered by the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 and the emergence of "urban riots" beginning with The 1965 Watts Riots and myriad riots in the wake of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King in 1968.  Written in 1988, it clairvoyantly speaks to The Black Lives Matter Movement 2015-2020.
This is the out of print Neeme Jarvi-Detroit Symphony recording from the mid 1990s.    PROGRAM NOTES from "If You Care To Listen "Notes from the Underground (1988), premiered by the American Composers Orchestra, has its origins in Duke Ellington, though contains as many inflections of jazz as it does colotomic structures. As Davis explains, the work ignites in the relatively short “Shadow,” with a complicated polyrhythmic, palindromic, multi-phrased system unfolding in “Act.” Superimposing 20/8 and 11/9 patterns along with 12, 25, and/or 27 beat patterns, Davis creates a world of multiple moving parts clearly moving with and against one another.

Anthony Davis  Notes From The Underground

Bill Doggett is a Marketing Agent and Publicist for Contemporary Composers of Color. He has worked with Adolphus Hailstork, has a long association with Anthony Davis ,2020 Pulitzer For Music works with UK-Scottish Richard Thompson and interfaces with many younger generation BIPOC composers.