IMG Artists Presents Damien Sneed In 'Our Song, Our Story: The New Generation Of Black Voices'

IMG Artists Presents Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient Damien Sneed, the multi-talented composer, conductor, musician, and vocalist, who kicks off 2022 with Our Song, Our Story: The New Generation of Black Voices at four locations. Created, curated, and directed by the award-winning musician, Our Song, Our Story is an evening of music highlighting some of the world's most well-known operatic arias, art songs, and spirituals. The concert tour will feature Raehann Bryce-Davis and Brandie Inez Sutton, two of today's most exciting operatic talents, accompanied by a string quartet and Damien Sneed on piano.

This beautiful and diverse production will feature an array of music that pays homage to the legendary contralto Marian Anderson (1897-1993) and soprano Jessye Norman (1945-2019), who served as trailblazers and role models for African Americans in opera. Program selections will include music by Donizetti, Schumann, Strauss, Verdi, Margaret Bonds, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Harry T. Burleigh, Hale Smith, Duke Ellington, Nkeiru Okoye, B.E. Boykin, and others. In addition, the program includes a newly commissioned work by Sneed.

Joining Sneed for the tour will be a quartet of classically trained musicians: Njioma Grevious on violin, Amyr Joyner on violin, Drew Alexander Forde (also known as ThatViolaKid on social media) on viola, and Caleb Vaughn-Jones on cello.

Sneed was recently commissioned by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater to create an original score for Testament, a contemporary response to the 60th Anniversary of Revelations for the dance company's first virtual season which premiered on December 17, 2020. He was also recently commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis to compose a chamber opera, The Tongue & The Lash, with libretto by Karen Chilton imagining a post-debate conversation between James Baldwin and William Buckley which premiered on June 10, 2021.

He has previously performed with soprano Brandie Inez Sutton on several projects, including his The Soul Now Sings: A Christmas Musical Journey at The Greene Space at WNYC/WQXR in 2015. Sutton also performed with Sneed at the special posthumous Pulitzer Prize presentation ceremony for Aretha Franklin, held May 28, 2019, in New York City. This was the first-ever Pulitzer ceremony to include live music. Sutton and Sneed were also featured among other noted opera, theater, and music performers for Jessye Norman At 75, a live virtual event held on September 15, 2020. After making her debut at Carnegie Hall, Sutton has been blessed to perform with the National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Danish Symphony Orchestra, the Radio Orpheus Symphony Orchestra in Moscow, and the Krasnoyarsk Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared on opera stages such as Semperoper Dresden, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Hamburgische Staatsoper, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Alter Oper Frankfurt. Sutton is currently on the roster of The Metropolitan Opera in New York City; she has performed as Clara in The Met's early 2020 production of Porgy And Bess and is set to return to The Met stage on December 22, 2021, as the Fairy Godmother in its holiday production of Cinderella.

Award-winning mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis has been hailed for performances on recital stages and in opera houses around the world. Her 2021/22 season includes company debuts at Teatro alla Scala as Ulrica in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, and at La Monnaie de Munt as La Zia Principessa in Puccini's Suor Angelica, and performances of Der Komponist in Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Preziosilla in Verdi's La Forza del Destino at Théâtre du Capitole, Azucena in three productions of Verdi's Il Trovatore at The Glimmerglass Festival, LA Opera, and Staatstheater Nürnberg, as well as her company debut at Konzert und Theater St Gallen as Joan of Arc in Tchaikovsky's Maid of Orleans.

During the 2020 pandemic shutdown, Bryce-Davis co-founded the Black Opera Alliance and recorded her performance of composer Gaetano Donizetti's aria, "All'afflitto e dolce pianto" ("To the afflicted"), a video featuring Bryce-Davis' gorgeously full-bodied voice along with news headlines, photos, and personal video clips in honor of those fighting for equity and social justice around the world. Bryce-Davis made her debut at Carnegie Hall in 2018, where she performed the Grammy-nominated world premiere of "Sanctuary Road" by Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Moravec and has been invited to return every season. She is a winner of international competitions across the world including New York City; Vienna, Austria; Portofino, Italy; Cape Town, South Africa; and Istanbul, Turkey.

Our Song, Our Story: The New Generation of Black Voices tour dates include Wharton Center for Performing Arts/Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI (Tuesday, January 18, 2022); Schwartz Center for Performing Arts/Emory University in Atlanta, GA (January 28, 2022); Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, FL (Saturday, January 29, 2022); and Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, FL (Sunday, January 30, 2022).

Presented by IMG Artists, Our Song, Our Story: The New Generation of Black Voices is produced by Damien Sneed and Gwendolyn Quinn.

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