Opera by Professor Laura Karpman debuts at Carnegie Hall

Four-time Emmy-winning film, television and theater composer and TFT faculty member Laura Karpman will pass another milestone in March, when her “multi-media opera” Ask Your Mama!, based on a book by Langston Hughes, premieres at New York’s famed Carnegie Hall. A collaboration between Karpman and five-time Grammy winning operatic sporano Jessye Norman, this concert event is part of the venue’s “A Measure of Honor!” series, curated by Norman.

Hughes’ cycle of poems Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods of Jazz imagined a kaleidoscope of musical styles — hot jazz, German lieder, cha-cha, patriotic songs, post-bop, Middle Eastern music, Afro-Caribbean drumming— to which Karpman turns to evoke the turbulent flux and flow of American cultural life. Ubiquitous is “The Hesitation Blues,” which asks “How long will I have to wait?,” an auditory emblem of the American dream deferred.

Karpman's 90-minute score weaves together music, film segments and spoken word passages with recorded selections from jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong, Big Maybelle, Pigmeat Markham and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, all seamlessly integrated with archival video and projected images by Rico Gatson, as well as Hughes's vibrant poetry. Jessye Norman will be joined on stage by jazz artist Cassandra Wilson, Grammy-winning hip -hop band The Roots, a percussion ensemble and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

For more information

See our Calendar listing for this event.

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"laura karpman" 

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