BEYOND THE YEARS: UNPUBLISHED SONGS OF FLORENCE PRICE
BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM 2025
KAREN SLACK & MICHELLE CANN Check In At The CNB "First Look" Cam | 2025 GRAMMYs
KAREN SLACK & MICHELLE CANN Interview | 2025 GRAMMYs
KAREN SLACK Wins BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM | 2025 GRAMMYs
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Soprano Karen Slack – known for performances that “ripped the audience’s hearts out” (Opera News) – and pianist Michelle Cann – “one of the most visible components of the music of Florence Price (Chicago Tribune) – unveiled Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price on Azica Records on July 26, 2024. Produced by Azica’s Alan Bise and ONEcomposer, an organization that celebrates musicians whose legacies have been historically excluded, this GRAMMY-winning album features 19 unpublished songs by Price, including 16 world premiere recordings. Beyond the Years is an opportunity to connect historically excluded musical legacies with present-day artistic excellence, motivated by the woman who first inspired this initiative: Florence Beatrice Price.
RECITAL PROGRAMS
AFRICAN QUEENS
Vocal Works Celebrating African Queens: A Dazzling Collaboration of Music and Storytelling | LEARN MORE
Touring in recital in the 25/26 season, this brilliantly curated program, featuring music by both African and American composers, vividly represents vocal works of the past and present. Each song reflects the beauty, humility, passion, and power of the Queens being celebrated.
African Queens premiered at Ravinia Music Festival on August 1, 2024 and has since conducted beautiful performances at Aspen Music Festival, Denver Friends of Chamber Music, and Music Academy of the West. Future performances in Spring 2025 include Washington Performing Arts, 92nd Street Y, Nashville Symphony, and Newport Classical.
The evening centers eight new songs written for Karen by some of today’s most acclaimed composers- Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Carlos Simon, and Joel Thompson with text by Lorene Cary, Alicia Haymer, Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton and Creative Collaborator for the African Queens project Jay Saint Flono.
Each new, approximately 6-8 minute vocal work will focus on a different queen, and the connective tissue between each story and song will be woven together through interspersed narrative text.
Karen Slack and Kevin Miller perform Joel Thompson's "Queen Nanny's Lullabye" at Music Academy of the West.
BEYOND THE YEARS
Karen Slack presents works from her newest Grammy Award-winning album, Beyond the Years. The recital will present performances of previously unknown pieces by Florence Price, followed by a post-concert discussion between the artists and moderated by WFMT radio host LaRob Rafael on the impetus for recording the album.
Soprano Karen Slack – known for performances that “ripped the audience’s hearts out” (Opera News) – and pianist Michelle Cann – “one of the most visible components of the music of Florence Price (Chicago Tribune) – unveiled Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price on Azica Records on July 26, 2024. Produced by Azica’s Alan Bise and ONEcomposer, an organization that celebrates musicians whose legacies have been historically excluded, this GRAMMY-winning album features 19 unpublished songs by Price, including 16 world premiere recordings. Beyond the Years is an opportunity to connect historically excluded musical legacies with present-day artistic excellence, motivated by the woman who first inspired this initiative: Florence Beatrice Price.
BEYOND THE YEARS single promo | DESIRE
OF THEE I SING!
Of Thee I Sing! Songs of Love and Justice is a critically acclaimed recital created by Karen Slack in the late Summer of 2020 during the height of the pandemic and just after the murder of George Floyd. The center of this moving program is the raw and powerful yet hopeful Langston Hughes poem, The Kids Who Die (1938), and a commissioned setting of that riveting text by American composer Scott Gendel. Gendel's stirring tour de force is presented alongside vocal masterworks by distinguished American composers from H.T Burleigh to Clayton White, Undine Smith Moore, H. Leslie Adams, Ricky Ian Gordon, Adolphus Hailstork and Jake Heggie.
Curated by Ms. Slack with intention and care, this impactful program features songs exploring the themes of love and justice as a reminder to the audience that no matter your race, ethnicity, politics etc., we are all human! Through these soaring melodies and beautiful texts, Ms. Slack offers a musical journey rooted in a shared understanding that without LOVE there can never be liberty or JUSTICE for all.
