Ravinia 2024 Issue 3

This letter, centered on life (Eva), beauty (Corinne), and light (Ufua), serves as a gift to my daughters: my desire to embolden them to cherish our rich ancestry, to never allow any- one to diminish their confidence and strength, to embrace resilience and grow in the face of adversity, to foster humility and discern true value, and to never forget the many mothers who have, and will, mold them into strong and flourishing women. While this work is sweetly personal—dedicated to my daughters—it is my fervent hope that the affecting words of Jaji, brought to life through embodied performances by Karen Slack and Kevin Miller, as well as limitless other artists, will resonate with and deeply inspire many, as an expression of life, beauty, and inner light. –Program note by Shawn Okpebholo JASMINE ARIELLE BARNES (b. 1991) I Am Not Your God Emmy-winning composer Jasmine Arielle Barnes is a Baltimore-native, Dallas-based composer. Her music has been described as “refreshing … engaging … exciting” by San Francisco Classical Voice , “beautifully lyrical” by The Telegraph (UK), and “the best possible blend of Billie Holiday and Claude Debussy” by the Boston Globe . Barnes has been a resident artist for Opera Theater of Saint Louis (2023– 24), American Lyric Theater (2021–23), Chau- tauqua Opera (2021), and All Classical Port- land (2021). She has been commissioned by numerous organizations such as New York Philharmonic and Juilliard Pre College, Chica- go Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, The Washington National Opera and The Kennedy Center, Aspen Music Festival and School, Apollo Chamber Players, Balti- more Choral Arts, CityMusic Cleveland, and LyricFest Philadelphia, among others. A steadily rising composer, Barnes has written music for Lawrence Brownlee on the album Jasmine Arielle Barnes titled Rising and, ever since, her art song Peace has been named a BMI favorite. Among other artists, she’s written for Will Liverman, Russell Thomas, Karen Slack, Leah Hawkins, and a host of other world-class artists. A PBS documentary about her choral/orchestral song cycle titled Portraits: Douglass and Tub- man , her career, and her relationship with Balti- more Choral Arts—titled Dreamer —earned her an Emmy in the 2023 Capital Emmy Awards. Barnes has had a busy year with 2023 premieres at Carnegie Hall, Los Angeles Opera, and Chi- cago Symphony Orchestra and 2024 premieres with Opera Theater St. Louis (her opera On My Mind ), a partnership of the New York Philhar- monic, The Juilliard School’s Preparatory Divi- sion, and American Composers Forum (an or- chestral workshop of her opera She Who Dared ), and many other premieres. WILL LIVERMAN (b. 1988) A Prayer Called “a voice for this historic moment” ( Wash- ington Post ), Grammy-winning baritone Will Liverman is the recipient of the 2022 Beverly Sills Artist Award and the co-creator of the op- era The Factotum , which premiered at the Lyric Opera Chicago in 2023. This season, Liverman returns to the Metro- politan Opera in the title role of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X . His season further includes productions with Opera Philadelphia for the world premiere of Rene Orth’s 10 Days in a Mad- house and the Metropolitan Opera for Roméo et Juliette . In concert, he joins the Lexington Phil- harmonic for the orchestrated world premiere of Shawn E. Okpebholo’s Two Black Churches , Houston Symphony’s Carmina burana , Cincin- nati Symphony Orchestra for Brahms’s A Ger- man Requiem , The Washington Chorus’s Elijah Reimagined , Tanglewood, Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys, Nu Deco Ensemble, and Ex- periential Orchestra, plus Dayton Opera, Car- amoor, Cincinnati Song Initiative, and Ithaca Will Liverman College for vocal recitals. He serves as Artistic Advisor for Renée Fleming’s SongStudio at Car- negie Hall. Cedille Records released Liverman’s Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers with pi- anist Paul Sanchez in February 2021. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard Tradi- tional Classical chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Liverman is an alumnus of the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was a Glimmerglass Festival Young Artist. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School (MM) and Wheaton College in Illinois (BM). JOEL THOMPSON (b. 1988) Queen Nanny’s Lullabye Joel Thompson is an Atlanta-based composer, conductor, pianist, and educator, best known for the choral work Seven Last Words of the Un- armed , which was premiered in November 2015 by the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club and Dr. Eugene Rogers and won the 2018 Amer- ican Prize for Choral Composition. In August 2021 he premiered another new work in Boulder at the Colorado Music Festival; the piece sets the writings of James Baldwin to music. Thompson’s works have been performed by such esteemed ensembles as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Master Chorale, Los Angeles Master Chorale, EXIGENCE, and the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Currently a doctoral stu- dent at the Yale School of Music, Thompson was also a 2017 post-graduate fellow in Arizona State University’s Ensemble Lab/Projecting All Voices Initiative and a composition fellow at the 2017 Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with composers Stephen Hartke and Christopher Theofanidis and won the 2017 Her- mitage Prize. Thompson taught at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta from 2015 to 2017, and also Joel Thompson RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JULY 22 – AUGUST 4, 2024 72 JACLYNSIMPSON(LIVERMAN)