Ravinia 2024 Issue 3

Blacknificent Seven members (from left) Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Joel Thompson, Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, and Carlos Simon take a bow after their CSOMusicNOW concert December 3, 2023—their first program together as the collective. A group discussion on Karen Slack’s KikiKonvos livestream during the pandemic led to the composers regularly conversing and formally banding together, and the experience comes full circle with their African Queens songs for Slack premiering at Ravinia on August 1. idea, and we would collaborate. I’m not comfortable in a box, and I was always fighting that. When I stopped fighting and started creating and leading by example, everything started opening up for me. There is agency in building your own, especially if you are building things that are needed. Tell us about African Queens. How did the concept for this recital come about? African Queens has been in the making for about eight years. Although I was doing a lot of contemporary opera, I wasn’t always telling the stories I wanted to tell. I wanted to tell stories about women that weren’t simply adjacent to the men. But I couldn’t find characters to really dig myself into, specifically from African American composers. I came across a story about the Aba Women’s War in Nigeria in 1929. I had no idea that these women had protested and fought against inequities like this. I started researching Africa, and all these queens came popping up! We have had so many women rulers in Africa besides Cleopatra, leading armies and fighting colonization. These were the stories I needed to tell. During pandemic I interviewed some amazing composers on my show Kiki- Konvos. They later became a group, “The Blacknificent Seven”! Dave Ragland told me they wanted to write something for me as a thank-you for bringing them all together. So, I put together about fifteen Queens with one of my collaborators and got everybody on Zoom. They were all for it. That’s how African Queens was born. Ravinia is the premiere, and like I said, I always wanted to sing at Ravinia, but the opportunity never came [after the Steans Program for Singers]. I never imagined it would be through African Queens. I’m thrilled. This feels like com- ing home. The classical music industry has been grappling with issues of equity and inclusion. As someone who is an important figure in the Zeitgeist—how are we doing? I think we’re doing okay , not great. There are so many challenges in the way we create art, and so many com- munities. You can’t judge San Francisco the same way you judge Chicago, or Memphis, or Nashville. I think the main thing is that people are trying. There are those who are resistant to change and want everything to be as it used to be, but there is no way that it can. My hope is that as we try to diversify our institutions, we don’t forget that experience matters. Everyone wants something young, something new. This is a conversation that hasn’t happened. There is a whole generation of artists who want to be part of change but have no work. Ageism is looming over us. That’s a part of diversity, too. You have been named Artist-in-Resi- dence for Lyric Opera of Chicago and are positioned to become an import- ant ambassador for the art form here. What can we expect from this? That really came from Afton Battle [vice president of Lyric Opera’s Lyric Unlim- ited initiative]. They had seen the work that I’m doing. I do a lot of outreach. I call teacher friends and talk to their classes about opera, because I hope that the life of even one kid might be changed by that. I can talk to any kind of person about how amazing this art form is; I don’t care if you are Bill Gates or the guy down the street making sand- wiches. I hope to be fully myself and make sure that communities understand that we are not some ivory tower on a hill—we are their opera company, with no apologies for opera being big and loud and transformative. Is there anything you want Chicago audiences to know about you? That I love their city! I’m a Philadel- phian, so I’m not an imposter, I’m coming in as a cousin from a sister city. I love the vibrancy and the arts scene. I want people to know that I’m passionate about bringing art and storytelling to all of Chicago’s communities and to bring it in a vibrant way. My career has been ebbs and flows. People see you in certain ways, and we wait for that person who tells us, “You are the one.” But the things I created for myself are where my success came from. It wasn’t because I was on every inten- dant’s first-choice list. Yet I’ve been able to carve out a significant career. That is what I’d like people to under- stand: you can do that. It hasn’t been easy. It takes work and belief in yourself. That is what has driven me—the belief that I have something to say and some- thing to offer to the people. Mark Thomas Ketterson is the Chicago correspondent for Opera News and program annotator for Atlanta Opera. He has also written for Playbill , the Chicago Tribune , Atlanta Journal Constitution , ArtsATL, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, the Edinburgh Festival, and Wolf Trap. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 11 ANNERYAN/CSO