World Premiere Of EMMETT TILL, A New American Opera At The Gerald W. Lynch Theater Set for March 23

Emmett Till, A New American Opera - a powerful concert performance conceived by playwright and librettist Clare Coss and composer Mary D. Watkins and in association with John Jay College, Opera Noire International, The Harlem Chamber Players and Harlem Arts Alliance will have its world premiere on March 23rd with an encore performance on March 24th at the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre at John Jay College.

Both performances begin at 7 pm. Conducted by 2021 Pulitzer Prize winner Tania León, the production centers around the brutal murder of Emmett Till and explores themes of social justice, the flaws within the justice system, white silence and allyship, racial inequality and the complexities of the human experience.

Based on Coss' award-winning play Emmett, Down in My Heart (2013), Emmett Till, A New American Opera reimagines the events around the tragic murder of Till, a 14 year-old African-American boy from Chicago who was viciously lynched in Mississippi in 1955. Following his mother's brave decision to have an open casket so that the world would see what was done to her son, the lynching of Emmett Till became a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement and stands as a turning point in the racial reckoning of this country. In the opera, the story is approached through the lens of Roanne Taylor, a young white woman who teaches high school science in Drew, Mississippi. Roanne is against Jim Crow laws, segregation and the racial inequality that she sees around her but remains silent. She is the opera's only fictional character and represents what Martin Luther King Jr. called the ultimate tragedy - "the silence of the good people."

Featuring both a Black Chorus and a White Chorus, Emmett Till weaves the horrific murder of Till with Mamie Till-Mobley's transformation from private citizen to activist, Uncle Mose Wright's bold decision to break the Delta code and testify at the trial, and Roanne Taylor's journey toward a sense of responsibility. From his mother Mamie Till-Mobley's phenomenal courage to the perils of white silence to the stark failure of the justice system, Watkins and Coss have created a profoundly stirring new opera that forces the audience to examine the ugliness of systemic racism and the consequences of silence in the face of violence and injustice.

The story of Emmett Till has a personal significance for Coss who was attending Louisiana State University at the time and was haunted by his murder. Decades later, she was compelled to find a way to honor his mother's ongoing fight to "keep telling Emmett's story":

"Emmett Till was murdered not far upriver from where I was a junior at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. No one in my largely white world would talk about what happened, a child brutally tortured and lynched - the breakdown of justice. White supremacy and Jim Crow ruled. Over the years, the pain of Emmett's murder continued to plague my heart. In 1992, I awoke one morning with a spiritual mandate to write a play about Emmett Till," said Coss. "I approached writing about him through my conviction that this tragedy is shared, in the way the tragic history of this country is shared. White people as perpetrators and witnesses of white supremacy have a stake in this story. I want people to understand that it was not so long ago. Emmett Till is in our lifetime. He is in MY lifetime. I want people to understand the grave parallels between the world over 60 years ago to today's world - from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin to Daunte Wright. It is still happening and we must continue to shed light on these stories. I am reminded of Mamie Till-Mobley's words 'The world must see what was done to my son. The world must help me tell the story.' And so we will."

Subsequently after the successful debut of the play, Emmett, Down in My Heart, in 2013 Coss was encouraged by musician friends Lucille Field and Patsy Rogers to translate the play into a libretto. They introduced Coss and Watkins and, together, the two began their creative journey, followed by five years of development, workshops and three sing-throughs - to bring Emmett Till, A New American Opera to life. For Watkins, this project is also intensely personal and has been a labor of love:

"Setting music to Clare's Emmett Till libretto has been an exciting challenge for me. I remember when Emmett Till was murdered, and the horror and sadness of it that affected me so deeply. I grew up in Colorado yet knew first-hand about discrimination. The difference between my southern sisters and brothers and me was that I was one Black person among fifty or sixty White people at any given time every day of the week except Sunday. I lived in a white neighborhood where some of my neighbors were blatant racists...and I dealt with that pain through drawing, story-telling and music," said Watkins. "I never expected that I would write an opera about Emmett Till's lynching, but I am deeply grateful that I have been given this opportunity to examine one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. I am an eclectic composer, and this opera has given me the space to exercise a wide range of musical expression to establish empathy for the characters and the complex emotional texture of the period."

After each performance WQXR host Terrance McKnight will moderate a talk back with the artists.

Clare Coss is a playwright, librettist, and activist. Her play, Emmett, Down in My Heart, inspired her libretto, Emmett Till, a new opera created in collaboration with composer Mary D Watkins. Her play, Emmett, Down in My Heart, translated into German by Afro-German Theater Company Label Noir, Tief in meinem Herzen is now a theater film to premiere in Berlin 2022. She is a member of The League of Professional Theatre Women, PEN, The Dramatists Guild, and the Columbia University Seminar on Women and Society. For eight years she served as Board Member for The Thanks Be To Grandmother Winifred Foundation and enjoyed her ten year tenure as Poetry Editor for Affilia, a journal of women and social work. For forty years, Clare Coss maintained her dual career as psychotherapist and writer. Her productions include Emmett, Down in My Heart, Dr. DuBois and Miss Ovington, and Lillian Wald: At Home on Henry Street. She is the recipient of a NYSCA artists grant for the premiere of Emmett Till.

Mary D. Watkins is a prolific composer, arranger, producer, pianist, and recording artist. She has won critical praise and awards for her numerous symphonic works, film scores, songs, and pieces for classical and jazz instrumentalists. Soul of Remembrance is one of her most popular orchestral works. It has been recorded by the New Black Music Repertory Ensemble of Chicago (Albany Records 2009), and it has been performed recently by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, and many other orchestras. She has also composed three full-length operas on historical themes: Queen Clara (about Clara Barton, 2005); Dark River: The Fannie Lou Hamer Story (2009); and Emmet Till, the Opera (2019). She has recently completed a segment of an opera about mass incarceration for White Snake Projects, which premiered online in May 2021. Mary D Watkins was recognized with a 2022 Composers Now Visionary Award.

Tania León (b. Havana, Cuba) is highly regarded as a composer, conductor, educator and advisor to arts organizations. Her orchestral work Stride, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Recent commissions include works for Los Angeles Philharmonic, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Grossman Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, and pianist Ursula Oppens with Cassatt String Quartet. Appearances as guest conductor include Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, Gewandhausorchester, Orquesta Sinfonica de Guanajuato, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Cuba.

A founding member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, León instituted the Brooklyn Philharmonic Community Concert Series, co-founded the American Composers Orchestra's Sonidos de las Américas Festivals and is the founder/Artistic Director of Composers Now, a presenting, commissioning and advocacy organization for living composers.

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