Celeste Headlee Joins Opera On Tap's New Brew At Barbes April 3

Black, Brown, Beige and Every Other Shade Renowned author, journalist, and singer Celeste Headlee joins Opera on Tap's New Brew at Barbes in an evening of classical song by a diverse array of composers of color.

The program, curated by Celeste Headlee and David Gordon, will include works by William Grant Still, Duke Ellington, Nkeiru Okoye, Kamala Sankaram, David N. Baker, Undine Smith Moore, Charles S. Brown, Florence Price, Diana Syrse, Brittney Boykin, Thomas H. Kerr, Adolphus Hailstork, and Howard Swanson among others.

Opera on Tap is also pleased to welcome Celeste to our newly formed Advisory Council this Spring. Inaugural Advisory Councilmembers along with Celeste include Sylvia McNair, Eve Gigliotti, Kyle Pfortmiller, and Laura Pfortmiller.

"We're very excited to work with Celeste and to welcome her and the rest of our new Advisory Council to Opera on Tap, along with our new members and guests of New Brew. There is extraordinatry poetry and music in this program and we are looking forward to hearing it sung and sharing it with our audience."- David Gordon

Celeste Headlee is an award-winning journalist, professional speaker and best-selling author of Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving and We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter. She is co-host of the weekly series Retro Report on PBS and is an advisory board member for Procon.org and The Listen First Project. Her TEDx Talk sharing 10 ways to have a better conversation has over 23 million total views to date.

In her 20-year career in public radio, Celeste has been the Executive Producer of On Second Thought at Georgia Public Radio and anchored programs including Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition. She also served as co-host of the national morning news show, The Takeaway, from PRI and WNYC, and anchored presidential coverage in 2012 for PBS World Channel.

A graduate of the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, Celeste holds a Bachelor's and Master's of Music in Vocal Performance. She has performed at the National Gallery of Art, the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock, the Distinguished Artist Series at the Church of the Red Rocks, Colorado College, the Detroit Institute of Arts and many others, and has performed with the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Sedona Repertory Company, the Harlequin Players and more. Celeste is the granddaughter of William Grant Still, the first African-American composer to have a symphony performed by a major symphony orchestra and the first to conduct a major symphony in the United States, among his many other groundbreaking milestones.

Celeste's work and insights have been featured on TODAY, Psychology Today, Inc., NPR, Time, Essence, Elle, BuzzFeed, Salon, Parade, and many more. She has presented to over 100 companies, conferences and universities including Apple, Google, United Airlines, Duke University, Chobani and ESPN, and received the 2019 Media Changemaker Award. Celeste lives in Washington, D.C.

The New Brew series brings you classical music written by some of today's most exciting composers, presented in entertaining and irreverent programs by singers and instrumentalists who relish the direct contact with audiences not inhibited in their reactions by the looming menace of giant chandeliers.

For more information visit www.operaontap.org

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