The free Houston Grand Opera performance, a salute to Black voices and culture, will feature George Shirley, Lawrence Brownlee, Nicole Heaston and more.
Founded in 2020 by acclaimed bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who was impressed by the diversity he saw while performing in Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers” the previous year, Giving Voice mingled popular arias with spirituals and popular standards. It was an immediate success, selling out the Wortham’s Cullen Theater and inspiring like-minded concerts by opera companies nationwide.
“For me, it’s not even necessarily what I’m singing,” smiles Heaston. “I’ll be too enamored with listening to him.” The piece reckons with the then-recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, young Black men killed at the hands of police. Thompson’s previous work, “Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” had likewise been prompted by the similar deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin, among others. “Draw Us Near” became a prayer, born out of fatigue and frustration.
By now “Draw Us Near” has been performed by numerous churches, schools, and choral ensembles. For some of them, “it may have been the first time that they have been trying to address the disparity in the composers that they program; and it was just sort of an indication that they were willing to examine that disparity in future seasons,” Thompson says.
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