Philadelphia Soprano Karen Slack Joins Opera Philadelphia and The Wharton-Wesley Faith Ensemble For A Concert Celebrating Langston Hughes

 Langston Hughes (1901–1967) made a significant impact on the Harlem Renaissance as a poet, social activist, novelist, and playwright. On Sunday, March 17, at 3:00 p.m., Opera Philadelphia, in partnership with Wharton-Wesley Faith Ensemble and Philadelphia soprano Karen Slack, will present a program of music by Black composers centered on four choral settings of Hughes' poetry.
 
“To Sit and Dream” takes place at Tindley Temple United Methodist Church, 750 South Broad Street in Philadelphia. The 90-minute concert is conducted by Opera Philadelphia's Elizabeth Braden and Theodore Thomas, Jr., Director of the Wharton-Wesley Faith Ensemble and Minister of Music at Tindley Temple, and includes compositions by Roland Carter, Christopher H. Harris, Undine Smith Moore, Rosephanye Powell, Florence Price, Michael Reid, André J. Thomas, and Nolan J. Williams, Jr. Tickets are now available at a “pay what you decide” price at operaphila.org.
 
“Come dream with us, as we once again present beautiful music in our community,” said Veronica Chapman-Smith, Vice President of Community Initiatives at Opera Philadelphia. “These four poems by Langston Hughes speak about dreams – how we can and must dream of a better world, and how we must also protect dreams from our harsh world. The other songs on the program lift what we might dream about: faith; hope; redemption; justice; finding beauty all around; and love.”

Opera Philadelphia and the Wharton-Wesley Faith Ensemble first worked together when Opera Philadelphia filmed the streaming program Organ Stops in Wharton-Wesley's Southwest Philadelphia sanctuary, and then again in the spring of 2022 with a live concert, “Resilience & Healing: A Celebration of Women in Song.” That concert, like the upcoming “To Sit and Dream,” presented a musical story not on the opera stage, but out in the community, with community members helping to plan and perform in the program.
 
Known for performances that “ripped the audience's hearts out” (Opera News), guest soloist Karen Slack is “not only one of the nation's most celebrated sopranos, but a leading voice in changing and making spaces in classical music” (Trilloquy). A recipient of the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, Slack is a sought-after collaborator, curator, and artistic advisor known for her fiery charisma and ground-breaking approach to engagement. She is an Artistic Advisor for Portland Opera, serves on the board of the American Composers Orchestra and Astral Artists, and holds a faculty position at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada. Slack debuted the role of Billie in the 2019 world premiere of Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up in My Bones and made her film debut portraying the Opera Diva in Tyler Perry's movie and soundtrack For Colored Girls.
 
A native Philadelphian who grew up attending Opera Philadelphia's Sounds of Learning student dress rehearsal program, Slack is a graduate of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, as well as the Adler Fellowship and the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera.
 
Born in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes was the descendant of enslaved African American women and white slave owners in Kentucky. He attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio, where he wrote his first poetry, short stories, and dramatic plays. After a short time in New York, he spent the early 1920s traveling through West Africa and Europe, living in Paris and England. Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 and to Harlem after graduating in 1929 from Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Hughes derived great inspiration from the everyday scenes and sounds of his surroundings. He was especially inspired by jazz and blues, spending hours in the nightclubs of Harlem and Washington, D.C., listening and writing. “I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street,” he said of his poetry. The poet's relationship to music stretches far beyond the rhythms and images of his poems: he also wrote musicals, operas, and cantatas, and he collaborated with composers like William Grant Still, Margaret Bonds, Kurt Weill, and Jan Meyerowitz, and jazz musicians like Nina Simone.

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