Lyric Opera 2022-2023 Issue 9 - Proximity

23 | Lyric Opera of Chicago Upon a suggestion from the director, Yuval Sharon, and an invitation from the singer, Renée Fleming, I was asked to compose the music for a new opera, which was to be a part of a trilogy. My work began during the summer of 2020, just after the start of the pandemic, as we were all faced with new realities and consequences for our work and actions. I had met the actor and writer Anna Deavere Smith earlier in New York City, and our conversations were broad and wide and brimming with ideas centered on storytelling, community, and a longing for understanding and change. The libretto for The Walkers is a brilliantly complex story whose text oscillates between transcribed interviews of real people in Chicago and the voices of Anna’s composite characters. It’s a potent mix of history, humor, poetry, and hope—all cast on a quest for freedom. For me, great words always suggest great music, and the music was always there in the rhythm of Anna’s words and magical ability to report and inquire and conjure up an array of feelings that allowed for a musical score that’s big and raucous at times, and soft and intimate in an instant. The music was also responding to the innovative design ideas of Yuval, where he was always in search of new ways of telling stories that allowed for inquiry and empathy, and that demanded as much from the score. Without Yuval and Anna challenging me to match and marry their ideas with my music, it’s clear that this score would have been something far less appealing. I remain in their debt. Any operatic work is an investment. It’s an act of trust. It’s quite literally a show of faith. Collaborating with Lyric Opera of Chicago—the staff, production crew, musicians, artistic leadership, and, of course, the audience—has profoundly changed me as a human being and as a Black, Haitian-American composer. The work they are doing, and their commitment to the creative canon of past, present, and future work, is peerless in an industry slow to change and sometimes reluctant to embrace it. Not here! I was born in Skokie, Illinois, just miles from this opera house. I feel at home here. I feel welcomed and seen and heard and safe, and most of all, loved here. I was able to nd a creative freedom that allowed me to be my full, creative self. I didn’t have to compromise. I didn’t have to hold back. I was held forward. Notes on The Walkers by Daniel Bernard Roumain The Walkers takes place in current-day Chicago.