Composer

Volti and Left Coast meet in a new work by Chris Castro for storyteller and musicians, which explores the connection between sound and the spoken word in tales from the west coast. The human relationship to our environment forms a through-line from romantic to experimental musical sensibilities.

EPSG:4326

Sound Stories

First Church of Christ, Scientist

Noe Valley Ministry

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the centerpiece of the final classical concert of the 25-26 season, a symphony that is universally known and truly knows no boundaries. We will open with an exciting new work by American composer Shawn Okpebholo, Stellar Fanfare Prelude for Orchestra, written in 2024 for the Chicago Symphony. We are proud to welcome the young American cellist Sterling Elliott, a 2021 Avery Fisher Grant recipient and winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition.

Stellar, Sterling & Beethoven 5

Baylor University

Bernstein & Beyond

Artis–Naples

Hymns of Bantu with Abel Selaocoe

University of Minnesota

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

WindSync embraces classics from across centuries of music writing, using their vibrant “fourth wall”-breaking approach to performance to make standard repertoire a fresh experience. Whether originally written for wind quintet instruments or specially arranged for them, WindSync combines familiar favorites and folk music songbooks and traditions with an actively growing body of freshly inked works, threading it all together to tell compelling stories about music history and human selves. On the heels of All Worlds, All Times, their debut album that “will make you want to get up and dance” (The WholeNote), the quintet hit number-one on the Billboard Classical chart with the works of Miguel Del Aguila, recorded in the famed Studio Two at Abbey Road.

WindSync

Ravinia Festival

Karen Slack, the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner and a featured soloist from The Jonah People, is one of today’s most celebrated sopranos. Widely admired for her voice of extreme beauty and dramatic depth, she returns to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center with her latest work, African Queens. This performance features new music written specifically for her by both African and American composers, each song reflecting the beauty, humility, passion, and power of a different queen. The program includes works by Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Carlos Simon, and Joel Thompson, with texts by Lorene Cary, Alicia Haymer, Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton, and Creative Collaborator Jay Saint Flono. Presented without the Nashville Symphony, this concert promises a rich tapestry of musical and narrative elements that celebrate the legacy and influence of African queens through a contemporary lens.

African Queens – Karen Slack

Nashville Symphony Schermerhorn Symphony Center

A Black History Month concert featuring works by Grammy-nominated composer Shawn Okpebholo with poetry by Duke University’s Associate Professor of English Tsitsi Jaji. Shepherd School of Music Artist Teacher of Opera Studies Lyndsi Maus performs alongside Shepherd opera students.

Black Vocal Works: a Celebration of Poetry in Song

Alice Pratt Brown Hall

Students of the Shepherd School present a concert of repertoire written by black composers to celebrate Black History Month.

A Black History Month Concert

This concert honors the American chamber music tradition, with music performed by the touring ensemble affiliated with Copland House.   Features piano trios by Aaron Copland (Vitebsk) and Leonard Bernstein, and short works by Joan Tower (Petroushkates), Shawn Okpebholo (Harlem Dance Hall: The Savoy) and Viet Cuong.

Copland House Ensemble

University of Louisville

MainStage 1: New Beginnings

St Mark's Episcopal Church

First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley

St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco

Sign up for our unique concert endeavor, ICA Steinway Soirées. These events
are limited to 20 people and provide an incredible opportunity to hear world-class musicians in a casual, intimate environment. Enjoy heavy appetizers, an exquisite dessert, and wine.

ICA Steinway Soirée 

The Godon Residence

This brilliantly curated program featuring music by both African and American composers, strikingly represents vocal works of the past and present. Each song reflects the beauty, humility, passion and power of each Queen being celebrated. The evening centers eight new songs written for Karen by some of today’s most acclaimed composers—Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Carlos Simon, and Joel Thompson with text by Lorene Cary, Alicia Haymer, Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton and Creative Collaborator for the African Queens project Jay Saint Flono.

African Queens: A Recital by Karen Slack soprano and Kevin Miller piano

Aspen Meadows Resort

The dynamic, 2024 Grammy Award-winning Imani Winds return to collaborate with Portland’s own BodyVox on our latest chamber music and dance creation! Beautiful Everything will be an extraordinary evening of inspiring music and innovative dance celebrating beauty, hope, optimism, and joy. The Imani Winds will perform the West Coast Premiere of Shawn E. Okpebholo’s Rise for Wind Quintet, a CMNW co-commission. Sure to draw crowds, don’t miss this entertaining fusion of music and motion at the glorious Patricia Reser Center for the Arts!!

Imani Winds + BodyVox: Beautiful Everything

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

In 2019, Cornell University started “Freedom on the Move,” a database of “runaway ads” from the United States’ early newspapers—names, dates, descriptions, rewards. The database notes that it compiles “thousands of stories of resistance that have never been accessible in one place. Created to control the movement of enslaved people, the ads ultimately preserved the details of individual lives—their personality, appearance, and life story. Taken collectively, the ads constitute a detailed, concise, and rare source of information about the experiences of enslaved people.” (Cornell Department of History’s Edward Baptist, primary investigator for FOTM) These advertisements also provide a testament to their bravery: each of these people in the over 30,000 entries attempted self-emancipation.

Songs In Flight

Hayti Heritage Center

Gustavo Dudamel called Francisco Fullana “an amazing talent”.
Winner of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the “frighteningly awesome” (Buffalo News) Spanish-born Fullana, has made a name for himself as both a performer and a leader in innovative music education.

Beethoven Violin Concerto

Ambassador Auditorium

After winning the Concert Artists Guild and Fischoff competitions, WindSync established itself as a vibrant chamber ensemble performing wind quintet masterworks and championing new works by today’s composers. Experience their youthful, pop-rock musical sensibility!

Windsync

Newman Recital Hall (AHF 151)

Music for Food Benefit Concert

Cleveland Institute of Music

Join us for Colorado Springs Philharmonic Pre-Concert talks. Go behind the curtain and inside the score with these 30-minute pre-concert conversations.

Rachmaninoff

Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts

The 2023/24 Season of MusicNOW illuminates works by a dynamic collective of Black composers, the Blacknificent 7. Jasmine Barnes performs a work by Dave Ragland, and Damien Geter joins Barnes for her world premiere. From Thompson’s In Response to the Madness, which explores the composer’s angst in response to the chaos found today around the world, to Ragland’s Eight Tones for Elijah — a loving tribute to young violinist Elijah McCain who was killed by the police on his walk home — the program surveys current social themes. Also featured are works by Chicago’s own Shawn Okpebholo and Damien Geter. Nimble and accomplished improvisers, CSO Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery and Carlos Simon perform of-the-moment interludes, woven between the other works on the program.

Montgomery and the Blacknificent 7

Symphony Center

It’s hard to keep eyes and ears off this accomplished and charismatic artist. “I want people to feel like they’re listening to someone who has something thoughtful and meaningful to say,” says Lawrence Brownlee, who returns to SF Performances after his 2018 debut. Brownlee is deeply thoughtful about his connection to audiences, through selection of repertory and musical storytelling.

Composer

Shawn Okpebholo

Events

Upcoming events

May 8, 2026

American Chamber Music · Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra

Past events

20 - 21 Mar, 2026

Sound Stories · Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Mar 19, 2026

Stellar, Sterling & Beethoven 5 · Waco Symphony Orchestra

About

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