Following up the 2016 world premiere of a revised version of Terence Blanchard’s opera Champion: An Opera in Jazz, these historic performances featuring the GRAMMY-winning Turtle Island Quartet and a selection of guest vocalists will focus on music from Blanchard’s groundbreaking new opera Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on journalist and author Charles M. Blow’s powerful memoir chronicling his early life in rural Louisiana.

With a libretto written by NAACP Image Award-winning actress, director, and screenwriter Kasi Lemmons, Fire Shut Up in My Bones premiered at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2019 and opened the 2021-22 season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in September 2021. The NYC performances marked the first time an opera written by a Black composer or a Black librettist has been staged at the Met in the organization’s 136-year history.