A Starry Night of Contemporary Composition Under the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella
Here in a nutshell is what went on under the Green Umbrella at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, April 16.
There were no less than five world premieres, four of which kicked off a promising project, LA Phil Etudes, along with a fifth by Canadian-born composer Zosha Di Castri. Anthony Davis, famed for his operas X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and The Central Park Five, was present to take in his terrific jazz-drenched clarinet concerto, You Have the Right to Remain Silent. LA Phil Creative Chair John Adams conducted.
It all went more than well. This was a consistently stimulating evening of new music, sometimes in surprising ways.
SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE
By Richard S. Ginell
Here in a nutshell is what went on under the Green Umbrella at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Tuesday night, April 16.
There were no less than five world premieres, four of which kicked off a promising project, LA Phil Etudes, along with a fifth by Canadian-born composer Zosha Di Castri. Anthony Davis, famed for his operas X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and The Central Park Five, was present to take in his terrific jazz-drenched clarinet concerto, You Have the Right to Remain Silent. LA Phil Creative Chair John Adams conducted.
It all went more than well. This was a consistently stimulating evening of new music, sometimes in surprising ways.
A Pulitzer-Winning Composer Puts His Operatic Spin on Edith Wharton
The composer and pianist Anthony Davis is known for drawing inspiration from real-world figures in his operas.
“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” — recently mounted by the Metropolitan Opera — and “The Central Park Five,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, are both grave, ripped-from-the-headlines stories about well-known people.
But Davis has also written rollicking adaptations of literary material. Less frequently produced but no less interesting are chamber operas like “Lilith” — a saucy and inventive take on the story of Adam’s first wife that features a divorce court in the Garden of Eden. Similarly, “Lear on the 2nd Floor” is a riff on Shakespeare that brings “King Lear” into contemporary discussions about medicine and Alzheimer’s disease.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Seth Colter Walls
The composer and pianist Anthony Davis is known for drawing inspiration from real-world figures in his operas.
“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” — recently mounted by the Metropolitan Opera — and “The Central Park Five,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, are both grave, ripped-from-the-headlines stories about well-known people.
But Davis has also written rollicking adaptations of literary material. Less frequently produced but no less interesting are chamber operas like “Lilith” — a saucy and inventive take on the story of Adam’s first wife that features a divorce court in the Garden of Eden. Similarly, “Lear on the 2nd Floor” is a riff on Shakespeare that brings “King Lear” into contemporary discussions about medicine and Alzheimer’s disease.
Slate: Malcolm X’s Story, Told Through Opera by Anthony Davis
This week, host Isaac Butler talks to Anthony Davis, a Pulitzer Prize winning opera composer whose work includes the 1986 opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which was recently revived and produced for the Metropolitan Opera. In the interview, Anthony discusses the inspiration for X and the many genres he drew from to compose its music. He also talks about how to craft a story using music and why it’s important to him to make political art.
After the interview, Isaac and co-host June Thomas discuss creative career pivots and the act of finding inspiration from eavesdropping.
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Anthony and Isaac talk about their mutual love of science fiction.
SLATE
By Isaac Butler
This week, host Isaac Butler talks to Anthony Davis, a Pulitzer Prize winning opera composer whose work includes the 1986 opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which was recently revived and produced for the Metropolitan Opera. In the interview, Anthony discusses the inspiration for X and the many genres he drew from to compose its music. He also talks about how to craft a story using music and why it’s important to him to make political art.
After the interview, Isaac and co-host June Thomas discuss creative career pivots and the act of finding inspiration from eavesdropping.
In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Anthony and Isaac talk about their mutual love of science fiction.
Listen here.
Photo Credit: Micah Shumake
UC San Diego Today: A Standing Ovation for Opera Icon Anthony Davis
This January, UC San Diego Distinguished Professor of Music Anthony Davis was inducted into the Opera Hall of Fame. The honor comes on the heels of an immensely successful production of “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at the Metropolitan Opera, a work he composed 37 years ago, and which drew packed houses nearly nightly. “It was a fantastic experience, one of the highlights of my life,” he shared.
A Pulitzer prize-winning musician who has written eight operas thus far, Davis is unafraid to spotlight some of society’s most pervasive problems—from racism and police brutality to immigration reform and political unrest. Yet the weighty topics are counterbalanced by a sense of play and an affinity toward “trickster” characters that are difficult to pin down. His four-decade dedication to composing music that elevates unsung voices contributed to his selection by Opera America as an artist who has strengthened the field—one of only five composers to be honored in the history of the award.
UC San Diego Today
By Erika Johnson
This January, UC San Diego Distinguished Professor of Music Anthony Davis was inducted into the Opera Hall of Fame. The honor comes on the heels of an immensely successful production of “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at the Metropolitan Opera, a work he composed 37 years ago, and which drew packed houses nearly nightly. “It was a fantastic experience, one of the highlights of my life,” he shared.
A Pulitzer prize-winning musician who has written eight operas thus far, Davis is unafraid to spotlight some of society’s most pervasive problems—from racism and police brutality to immigration reform and political unrest. Yet the weighty topics are counterbalanced by a sense of play and an affinity toward “trickster” characters that are difficult to pin down. His four-decade dedication to composing music that elevates unsung voices contributed to his selection by Opera America as an artist who has strengthened the field—one of only five composers to be honored in the history of the award.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Marty Sohl/Met Opera
Classical Voice North America: ‘X’ At Last Marks Spot For Anthony Davis In World Of Modern Opera
When the New York City Opera officially premiered Anthony Davis’ first opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, in 1986, the composer garnered considerable attention, and his career appeared poised for a big take-off.
But things quickly stalled. X was not revived in the immediate decades that followed. Though he continued to write more operas, including Amistad, which debuted at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997, Davis’ career did not live up to the initial burst of adulation.
Then, everything suddenly changed, starting in 2020. His latest opera, The Central Park Five, won him a long-overdue Pulitzer Prize for Music, still the ultimate honor for composers. And in November 2023, a revised version of X made it to the stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, a production that served as a huge vindication.
Classical Voice North America
By Kyle MacMillan
When the New York City Opera officially premiered Anthony Davis’ first opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, in 1986, the composer garnered considerable attention, and his career appeared poised for a big take-off.
But things quickly stalled. X was not revived in the immediate decades that followed. Though he continued to write more operas, including Amistad, which debuted at Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997, Davis’ career did not live up to the initial burst of adulation.
Then, everything suddenly changed, starting in 2020. His latest opera, The Central Park Five, won him a long-overdue Pulitzer Prize for Music, still the ultimate honor for composers. And in November 2023, a revised version of X made it to the stage of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, a production that served as a huge vindication.
Read more here.
Photo Credit: Winslow Townson
The Daily Beast: How Anthony Davis Put Malcolm X, and Black Power, Center Stage
Pulitzer-winning composer Anthony Davis on Malcolm X at the Met, challenging racism in opera, championing Black power in his work—and why artists must “step up” against bigotry.
In the opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (New York City’s Metropolitan Opera, to Dec. 2), the iconic title character sings, “As long as I’ve been living, you’ve had your foot on me, always pressing,” and “You’ve had your foot on me a very long time.” The words may have been written in 1986, but, as its composer Anthony Davis told The Daily Beast, they are piercingly prescient for baritone Will Liverman to sing in 2023.
“That’s George Floyd, that’s the image,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, that cycle of violence still exists, and it existed prior to Malcolm too. On stage you see the names of all the victims of that history of racist violence. That violence has always been with us; it is part of the legacy to slavery too. The opera puts it in a larger historical context, and then has a cathartic release too.”
Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2019 opera The Central Park Five, based on the high-profile 1989 case of five Black and Hispanic teenagers convicted and later exonerated of attacking a female jogger in Central Park. He is only the second Black composer to have their work presented by the Met. X—with a libretto by Thulani Davis, Anthony’s Grammy Award-winning cousin and longtime collaborator, and a story by his brother Christopher—premiered at New York City Opera in 1986, and it was “very exciting” to finally see it staged at the Met, said Davis.
The Daily Beast
By Tim Teeman
Pulitzer-winning composer Anthony Davis on Malcolm X at the Met, challenging racism in opera, championing Black power in his work—and why artists must “step up” against bigotry.
In the opera, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X (New York City’s Metropolitan Opera, to Dec. 2), the iconic title character sings, “As long as I’ve been living, you’ve had your foot on me, always pressing,” and “You’ve had your foot on me a very long time.” The words may have been written in 1986, but, as its composer Anthony Davis told The Daily Beast, they are piercingly prescient for baritone Will Liverman to sing in 2023.
“That’s George Floyd, that’s the image,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, that cycle of violence still exists, and it existed prior to Malcolm too. On stage you see the names of all the victims of that history of racist violence. That violence has always been with us; it is part of the legacy to slavery too. The opera puts it in a larger historical context, and then has a cathartic release too.”
Davis won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2019 opera The Central Park Five, based on the high-profile 1989 case of five Black and Hispanic teenagers convicted and later exonerated of attacking a female jogger in Central Park. He is only the second Black composer to have their work presented by the Met. X—with a libretto by Thulani Davis, Anthony’s Grammy Award-winning cousin and longtime collaborator, and a story by his brother Christopher—premiered at New York City Opera in 1986, and it was “very exciting” to finally see it staged at the Met, said Davis.
Read more here.
The New York Times: Anthony Davis’s Malcolm X Opera Finally Arrives at the Met
The epigraph of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is a quote from an interview in which, asked about the cost of freedom, Malcolm responds, “The cost of freedom is death.”
That tension — between hope and reality, between liberation and limitation — courses through a new production of “X” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, in the work’s company premiere. This staging dreams of a better future, with a towering Afrofuturist spaceship that, at the beginning, appears to be calling Malcolm X home. But the beam-me-up rays of light are pulled away to reveal a floating proscenium, gilded at the edges and decorated with a landscape mural. It is a replica of the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.
The New York Times
By Joshua Barone
The epigraph of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” is a quote from an interview in which, asked about the cost of freedom, Malcolm responds, “The cost of freedom is death.”
That tension — between hope and reality, between liberation and limitation — courses through a new production of “X” that opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, in the work’s company premiere. This staging dreams of a better future, with a towering Afrofuturist spaceship that, at the beginning, appears to be calling Malcolm X home. But the beam-me-up rays of light are pulled away to reveal a floating proscenium, gilded at the edges and decorated with a landscape mural. It is a replica of the podium at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1965.
Read more here.
The New York Times: The Family That Turned Malcolm X’s Life Into Opera
“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which arrives at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, was a family affair. The meditative yet dramatic work has a score by Anthony Davis to a scenario by his younger brother, Christopher Davis, and a libretto by their cousin Thulani Davis.
When they were working on the opera, in the early 1980s, the three were living in New York. Christopher appeared as Malcolm X in a play in Jamaica, Queens, and Anthony was playing experimental, improvised music in ensembles alongside Thulani’s poetry in productions downtown.
“There was a lot of energy in the air,” Christopher, 70, said in a recent interview at the Met alongside Anthony, 72 — with Thulani, 74, joining by video from her home in Madison, Wis.
The New York Times
By Zachary Woolfe
“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which arrives at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, was a family affair. The meditative yet dramatic work has a score by Anthony Davis to a scenario by his younger brother, Christopher Davis, and a libretto by their cousin Thulani Davis.
When they were working on the opera, in the early 1980s, the three were living in New York. Christopher appeared as Malcolm X in a play in Jamaica, Queens, and Anthony was playing experimental, improvised music in ensembles alongside Thulani’s poetry in productions downtown.
…
ANTHONY DAVIS When we moved to New York, Thulani and I were part of this scene of music and poetry, what were called choreopoems; Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls” was the most famous. And Thulani and I worked with Ntozake and Jessica Hagedorn on “Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon.” We ran at the Public Theater for several months.
Read more here.
The New York Times: ‘It’s Anthony’s Time’: A Composer Gets His Due
With a new production of Anthony Davis’s pathbreaking Malcolm X opera opening in Detroit, we are on the cusp of a broader reappraisal of his work.
DETROIT — As the orchestra of the Detroit Opera tuned itself for a recent rehearsal, the outline of a vast spacecraft loomed over the pit.
Underneath that ship, you could see a contrasting image: a pastoral painting, of a mountain range, with a river slicing a path between peaks, redolent of the backdrop behind Malcolm X as he spoke at the Audubon Ballroom in New York on Feb. 21, 1965 — moments before his assassination.
The New York Times
By Seth Colter Walls
With a new production of Anthony Davis’s pathbreaking Malcolm X opera opening in Detroit, we are on the cusp of a broader reappraisal of his work.
DETROIT — As the orchestra of the Detroit Opera tuned itself for a recent rehearsal, the outline of a vast spacecraft loomed over the pit.
Underneath that ship, you could see a contrasting image: a pastoral painting, of a mountain range, with a river slicing a path between peaks, redolent of the backdrop behind Malcolm X as he spoke at the Audubon Ballroom in New York on Feb. 21, 1965 — moments before his assassination.
Already, before a single note had been drilled of Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” — which opens on Saturday at the Detroit Opera House here and will travel to the Metropolitan Opera in 2023 — a conversation was in progress between imaginative and historical modes of thought.
Read more here.