Music Academy of the West: 7 African Queens Redefine the Recital

The Music Academy of the West is roaring back into action. Not two months after the summer festival came to a close, MAW is back with the third season of its Mariposa Concert Series – a collection of musical experiences staged at the intimate Hahn Hall with some connection to MAW alums. Mariposa makes its 2024-25 debut on Saturday, October 5, with an evening-length vocal recital of new art songs celebrating the history and legacy of seven African Queens; mostly those not well-known in the Western world. The program offers historical narrative through eight songs, each about a specific queen, written for soprano Karen Slack by different composers, including three recent Music Academy guests in Jessie Montgomery, Carlos Simon, and Joel Thompson. The commissions are interwoven with highly curated existing material chosen to flesh out a full evening of song via theme, sound or both. Slack, who is joined in performance of the groundbreaking program by pianist Kevin Miller, spoke with me about the project in mid-September.

Q. What was the impetus for you to create the African Queens program?

A. It’s been in the making for over eight years, something I have always dreamed of that was born out of the frustration of not being able to choose the stories that you want to tell. In opera, women are siloed to playing mothers, wives, girlfriends – characters that are one dimensional – where you never get to hear the whole arc of who they are. I wanted to create a program that centered around powerful women who were transformative in their time.

How did that impulse finally manifest as queens from Africa? 

The original project was going to be about warrior women, those who were leading revolts and battles. But when I started doing research on the continent of Africa, stories kept leading into another one that I hadn’t known about. Everyone writes about Cleopatra or Nefertiti, but there were so many other powerful and intriguing ones that I had to delve into some kind of evening – just to plant a seed that these stories get told in bigger forms.

How did you choose the composers and what was the basis for the collaborations? 

During the pandemic, I had a Facebook Live show where I invited seven of the hottest young African American composers to come on with me. My dear friend Terrence Blanchard moderated the panel, and I wanted to connect him to the next generation of composers. They became friends through that. After a couple weeks, Dave Raglan reached out to me and told me that they wanted to write a song for me as a thank you. Instead I came up with the idea that each of them would choose a queen from the continent of Africa and write a song about a part of her life. They were all an immediate yes. The majority of the composers chose their own librettists that they already currently worked with, and I had a colleague who’s a young countertenor and librettist, Jay St. Flono. He worked with me on the research of which queens to present to the composers as my creative collaborator. Some of his poetry is infused in the evening, and are the text for Carlos Simon’s and Jesse Montgomery’s pieces.

The main idea was to charge the composers with centering on the women, the extraordinary stories that you don’t see in opera, ones where we learn who the woman is and why she made the choices she made, the feeling of taking the moment to express whatever was happening with her at the time… I always say working with composers is like trying to wrangle cats. They just do what they want. But really these guys knocked it out of the park. 

I just realized that the evening is about strong women, but it’s mostly male composers, as are some of the librettists. 

It’s true. I think about that every time I produce pieces, particularly where the female story is centered. At least here most of them used female librettists and I appreciated that. There’s just not enough women writing music, or getting opportunities to write music. So I will definitely be cognizant of that the next time.

Can you share about the other pieces performed during the evening that are not new commissions, and how they weave together?

The idea was to fill out the program with connective tissue between the new pieces that fit the theme. So almost all of the other pieces are about women, or by African composers or African American, some that are very clearly rooted in African, the diaspora, the sound. 

What was the most challenging part of the project? 

Getting nine new works onto a single program. It’s much simpler and easier to come up with an evening of songs from well-known composers. When you are building from the ground up, thinking of the concept, commissioning the work, finding others that fit the theme – it’s a lot of work. Fortunately, presenters were immediately interested, and it was received extremely well. 

The evening itself is a big heavy lift because of all the new pieces, and it’s new, unfamiliar works for the audience, too. I have to say I did not expect to be as tired after the first two performances as I was. It was exhausting! But I’m looking forward to doing it again and breathing new life into each piece. It’s very inspiring to sing. 

You are collaborating with pianist Kevin Miller for the concerts. Why did you pick him?

We’ve been friends for years, and I think he sounds amazing in recital. He’s someone that I trust, who I know has my back and cares about me. You have to have that in these spaces when you’re a team. You have to have people who love you, respect you, care about you, and will lift you up. That’s how you make magic together.

What is your goal for the audience? Do you want them to be inspired, entertained, impressed and/or curious about the composers and the queens? I know you created this for yourself, but what is your hope for their experience?

If there’s one thing, it’s to go home and Google these women and find out more about these incredible stories. I also want these composers to get their music heard and to be hired again to write more new pieces. I want the audience to be moved by my presentation, by my voice, and by my artistry. I want to push the boundaries of what it means to do a recital, what it means to be in a concert hall and add these elements. I want other people to sing these pieces later on when they’re published. And I want opera companies and chamber musicians to support and create these stories and create operas that tell more diverse stories. 

Visit https://musicacademy.org/mariposa for more information and tickets