Helga Davis is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist who works as an actress, singer, writer and composer, as well as a radio and podcast host. [1]
Helga Davis performed as a principal actor in the 25th-anniversary international revival of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass's opera Einstein on the Beach. The New York Times described Davis' performance as "Compelling." [2] Robert Wilson described Davis as "a united whole, with spellbinding inner power and strength." [3] David Keenan, of The Wire magazine, described Davis as "a powerful vocalist with an almost operatic range and all the bruised sensuality of Jeanne Lee." [4]
Davis' music career has included a stint in the rock band Women in Love, in the 1990s. [5] More recently, Davis has starred in operas and theater pieces internationally, including Robert Wilson's The Temptation of St. Anthony, libretto and score by Bernice Johnson Reagon; her and Toshi Reagon's Octavia E. Butler's Parable Of The Sower,Milton by Katie Pearl and Lisa Damour; The Blue Planet, a multimedia theater piece, by Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke; and Soho Rep's Jomama Jones, Radiate, which was included in The New Yorker theatre critic Hilton Als’s top ten list. [3] Among the many works that have been written for Davis are Faust's Box, written and directed by Italian contemporary music composer Andrea Liberovici; Oceanic Verses by Paola Prestini, with libretto by Donna DiNovelli; and Elsewhere by Missy Mazzoli and Maya Beiser. [6]
Davis hosts the "Helga" podcast, live events for New Sounds and WQXR-FM's Q2 Music. [3]
Davis is the recipient of the BRIC Fireworks grant and the ASCAP Multimedia Award, as well as the 2019 Greenfield Prize. [1] Davis was appointed the Visiting Curator for the Performing Arts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston, for 2018-2021. [7]
Davis was born and raised in Harlem, in New York City. [8] She performed in high school theater productions, studied piano and sang in a church choir. [5]
Philip Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically.
Einstein on the Beach is an opera in four acts composed by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson, who also collaborated with Glass on the work's libretto. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formalist approach based on structured spaces laid out by Wilson in a series of storyboards which are framed and connected by five "knee plays" or intermezzos. The music was written "in the spring, summer and fall of 1975." Glass recounts the collaborative process: "I put [Wilson’s notebook of sketches] on the piano and composed each section like a portrait of the drawing before me. The score was begun in the spring of 1975 and completed by the following November, and those drawings were before me all the time."
Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, he became the second Latino so honored, after Nicholas Dante.
Robert Wilson is an American experimental theater stage director and playwright who has been described by The New York Times as "[America]'s – or even the world's – foremost vanguard 'theater artist.'" He has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer.
Toshi Reagon is an American musician of folk, blues, gospel, rock and funk, as well as a composer, curator, and producer.
Carl Hancock Rux is an American writer and multidisciplinary artist, historian and social activist. The author of a collection of poetry, Pagan Operetta, a novel, Asphalt and the play Talk. Rux has been published as a contributing writer in numerous journals, catalogs, anthologies, and magazines including Interview magazine, Essence magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Iké Udé's aRude Magazine, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art and American Theatre (magazine), among others. Rux's writings and monographs on visual art include essays on the work of conceptual artist Glenn Ligon ; the introduction for Nick Cave’s Until; and the Guggenheim Museum’s Carrie Mae Weems retrospective.
Lee Henry Hoiby was an American composer and classical pianist. Best known as a composer of operas and songs, he was a disciple of composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Like Menotti, his works championed lyricism at a time when such compositions were deemed old fashioned. His most well known work is his setting of Tennessee Williams's Summer and Smoke, which premiered at the St Paul Opera in 1971.
Eric Salzman was an American composer, scholar, author, impresario, music critic, and record producer. He is known for advancing the concept of "New Music Theater" as an independent art form differing in scope, both economically and aesthetically, from grand opera and contemporary popular musicals. He co-founded the American Music Theater Festival and was, at the time of his death in 2017, Composer-in-Residence at the Center for Contemporary Opera.
Richard Wesley is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is an associate professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing.
Diedre Murray is an American cellist and composer specializing in jazz and musical theater. She also works as a record producer and curator.
George Steel is a musician living in New York City. He has worked in New York and around the world for 25 years as a conductor, composer, producer, singer, pianist, musicologist, and teacher. In January 2018, he was appointed Abrams Curator of Music at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
John Schaefer is an American radio host and author. A longtime host at WNYC, Schaefer began hosting the influential radio shows New Sounds in 1982 and Soundcheck in 2002, and has produced many different programs for other New York Public Radio platforms. Schaefer is also the author of the book New Sounds: A Listener's Guide to New Music, first published in 1987.
Dog Days is an opera by David T. Little, to a libretto by Royce Vavrek after the short story by Judy Budnitz.
The Temptation of St. Anthony is an opera rooted in the gospel tradition based on the novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony by Gustave Flaubert, directed by Robert Wilson with book, libretto and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon and costumes by Geoffrey Holder. The production debuted in June 2003 as part of the Ruhrtriennale festival in Duisburg Germany with Carl Hancock Rux as Saint Anthony and Helga Davis as Helarion. Subsequent performances included the Greek Theater in Siracusa, Italy; the Festival di Peralada in Peralada, Spain; the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria in Santander, Spain; and Sadler's Wells in London, Great Britain; the Teatro Piccinni in Bari, Italy; the Het Muziektheater in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Teatro Arriaga in Bilbao and the Teatro Espanol in Madrid, Spain. The opera made its American premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's BAM Next Wave Festival in October 2004. The official "world premiere" was held at the Paris Opera Garnier becoming the first all African American opera to perform on its stage since the inauguration of the Académie Nationale de Musique - Théâtre de l'Opéra in 1875.
Andrea Liberovici is an Italian composer of contemporary classical music and a theatre director.
David Garland is a singer-songwriter, composer, instrument designer, illustrator, graphic designer, journalist, and former New York city radio personality.
Missy Mazzoli is an American composer and pianist who is a member of the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music. She has received critical acclaim for her chamber, orchestral and operatic work. In 2018 she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera House. She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band dedicated to performing her music. From 2012-2015 she was composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Her music is published by G. Schirmer. Mazzoli received a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, and in 2018 was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Composition. In 2018, Mazzoli was named for a two-season term as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mazzoli was named the Bragg Artist-in-Residence at Mount Allison University beginning in 2022.
Reginald Lamar Cox, known professionally as M Lamar, is an American composer, performer, and artist. He is an operatic countertenor and pianist whose work incorporates film, sculpture, installation, and performance.
Opera Fusion: New Works (OF:NW) is a partnership between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) dedicated to fostering the development of new American operas. This collaboration is jointly led by Evans Mirageas, the Harry T. Wilks Artistic Director at Cincinnati Opera, as well as Robin Guarino, Professor of Opera at CCM. Since its founding in 2011, OF:NW has developed twenty-three new American operas. From the program's inception in 2011 through 2022, co-founders Marcus Küchle and Guarino served as co-artistic directors.