Five Boroughs Music Festival Presents CASTLE OF OUR SKINS At Schomburg Center, November 18

Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) co-presents the New York City debut of Boston-based arts institution Castle of our Skins in Love Affects at the Langston Hughes Auditorium at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on Friday, November 18, 2022 at 7:00pm.

Love Affects pairs chamber music with text to explore how love influences our sense of self, humanity, heritage, and future, and is a revival of their inaugural concert program, performed in celebration of Castle of our Skins's 10th anniversary this season. Castle of our Skins - a Black arts institution dedicated to fostering cultural curiosity and celebrating Black artistry through music in classrooms, concert halls, and beyond - performs chamber music by Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson, William L. Dawson, Adolphus Hailstork, Charles Brown, and Undine Smith Moore.

The concert is co-curated with and features Castle of our Skins' 3rd Annual Shirley Graham du Bois Creative in Residence, Angel C. Dye. Dye is a poet, scholar of African American Literature, and the author of BREATHE (Central Square Press). She hails from Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX/Milwaukee, WI, is a graduate of Howard University, holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kentucky, and is currently a PhD in English student at Rutgers University.

Additional artists include soprano Brianna J. Robinson, violinists Matthew Vera and Mina Lavcheca, violist Ashleigh Gordon, cellist Lev Mamuya, and pianist Sarah Bob.

5BMF launches its Fall 2022 season with the Queens, Bronx, and Manhattan premieres of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume III on Friday, October 21, 2022 at 7:00pm at Flushing Town Hall; Saturday, October 22, 2022 at 7:00pm at the Bronx Music Heritage Center; and Sunday, October 23, 2022 at 3:00pm at Hebrew Union College. These anticipated performances, presented in collaboration with On Site Opera, will complete the Songbook's citywide tour which began in April 2022 with borough premieres in Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Songbook is performed by members of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble - sopranos Nicole Joseph and Gitanjali Mathur, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Duarte, tenor Haitham Haidar, and baritone Jonathan Woody - in addition to pianist Erika Switzer, violinist Pala Garcia, and cellist John Popham.