Featured Works

2017

PORTRAIT OF A QUEEN

Large Ensemble
for orchestra and female narrator

This piece traces the evolution of black people in America through the lens of the black woman.

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2019

SWEET CHARIOT

Large Ensemble
Wind Ensemble

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is perhaps one of the most well known African American spirituals. As beautiful and rapturing as its melody is, it should be.

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2020

WARMTH FROM OTHER SUNS

Small Ensemble
string quartet

Between 1916 and 1970, the mass exodus of African-Americans leaving the rural South, seeking homes in the urban West, Midwest, and Northeast became known as the Great Migration.

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2020

JOURNEY

Small Ensemble
string orchestra or string quintet

Journey is inspired by the following poem: Life is a Journey From once proximal end to other.

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2020

NIGHT TRIP

Opera
chamber opera

The uncles arrive in Chicago after dark at their sister’s apartment to pick up their niece Conchetta. Big city music. Conchetta is thrilled to go “home” to see her relatives—her grandmother, her aunts, her “play aunts.” She sings about the rough world of the big city and longs for the small town life in Tennessee.

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2021

Tales: a folklore symphony for orchestra

Large Ensemble
for orchestra

This piece explores African American folklore as well as Afrofuturists stories. This work is commissioned by the Sphinx Organization for its 25th Anniversary and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra.

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2021

Requiem for the Enslaved

Orchestral
For Violin, Cello, Flute/Piccolo/Alto Flute, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet in Bb, Trumpet, Piano Spoken Word Artist

Requiem for the Enslaved explores the sacred and historical, and honors the lives of those bought and sold. Original text by Marco Pavé.

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Carlos Simon