San Francisco Opera Center and Merola Opera Program Present Schwabacher Recital This Month

The Schwabacher Recital Series presents baritone Sidney Outlaw (Merola, 2010) and pianist Warren Jones in the final concert of the 2022 series on Thursday, July 28 in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Now in its 38th year, the Schwabacher Recital Series, co-organized by San Francisco Opera Center and Merola Opera Program, presents emerging artists from around the globe in the intimacy of a recital setting.

The July 28 program will focus on the two artists' recent recorded collaboration, Lament, which pays homage to 20th-century American song including works by Ricky Ian Gordon, Robert Owens, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Harry T. Burleigh and the texts of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Frederick Douglass and Adela Cory. The concert will conclude with a selection of spirituals.

Baritone Sidney Outlaw has performed in Billy Budd with San Francisco Opera and John Adams' The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera. He has also portrayed Salieri in Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, Jake in Porgy and Bess, Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Marcello in La Bohème. He is currently on faculty at Ithaca College's James J. Whalen School of Music.

In addition to his remarkable catalog as a recording artist, Warren Jones is a celebrated recital partner to opera stars, from Stephanie Blythe and Kathleen Battle to Samuel Ramey and Thomas Hampson. As a dedicated educator, he has served on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and as a guest artist in residence at the New England Conservatory and University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Professor Outlaw shares this personal statement:

I have always been inspired by Nina Simone's quote that "it is the artist's duty to reflect the times. That is true of painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians. It's obviously our choice but I choose to reflect the times and the situations in which I find myself and at this crucial time in our lives when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I think you can't help but be involved. ... That to me is the definition of an artist!"

This program is pretty unique and special to me as it originated from a lecture that I gave on exploring the legacy of Black composers in opera and art song during the pandemic! The title of the project Lament was absolutely inspired by Langston Hughes' poem "Lament for Dark Peoples" which expresses pain for the injustices upon people of color.