Anthony Davis

Born: February 20, 1951, Paterson, New Jersey

Broken in Parts

• Composed: 2024
  
• Premiere: These performances by the CSO are the work’s world premiere.
  
• Instrumentation: soprano soloist, 2 flutes, oboe, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, trombone, bass trombone, timpani, drum set, marimba, vibraphone, xylophone, harp, strings
• Duration: approx. 25 minutes

Opera News has called Anthony Davis “A National Treasure” for his pioneering work in opera. He is recognized internationally not only for his important contributions to opera but also as a distinguished composer of symphonic, choral and chamber works. Davis has been on the cutting edge of improvised music and jazz for more than four decades and continues to explore new avenues of expression while retaining a distinctly original voice. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his opera The Central Park Five in 2020.

Anthony Davis has composed eight operas. X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, played to sold-out houses at its world premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986. It was the first of a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. A recording of the opera was released in 1992 on the Gramavision label and earned a Grammy nomination in 1993 for “Best Contemporary Classical Composition.” In May 2022, the Detroit Opera debuted a new production that traveled to the Metropolitan Opera in November 2023. Under the Double Moon, with a libretto by Deborah Atherton, premiered at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 1989 and Tania, an opera based on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst with a libretto by Michael John LaChiusa, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in 1992. Tania was recorded and released for Koch International in October of 2001 and received its European premiere in Vienna in November 2003. His fourth opera, Amistad, about a shipboard uprising by slaves and their subsequent trial, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November 1997. Amistad was created in collaboration with librettist Thulani Davis and was directed by George C. Wolfe. A new production of the opera, directed by Sam Helfrich, debuted at the Spoleto USA Festival in Charleston, South Carolina in May 2008 and a recording of the opera was released on New World, also in 2008. Davis’ opera Wakonda’s Dream, with a libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa, had its world premiere with Opera Omaha in March 2007. Lilith, an opera about Adam’s first wife based on Allan Havis’s acclaimed play with a libretto by the playwright, debuted in 2009 followed by Lear on the 2^nd Floor, an opera inspired by King Lear, in March 2013. His most recent opera The Central Park Five, with a libretto by Richard Wesley, was given its world premiere at Long Beach Opera in 2019. 

In addition to his work in opera, Davis currently has two music theater works in development: Shimmer, a music theater work with Sarah Schulman and Michael Korie, based on Schulman’s novel about an aspiring reporter, who is lesbian, and an aspiring playwright, who is Black, trying to get ahead in the McCarthy Era, and Tupelo, based on the life of Elvis Presley, written with Arnold Weinstein.

Anthony Davis has composed numerous works for orchestra and chamber ensemble on commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Kansas City Symphony and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also composed the music for the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, Part One, which premiered in May 1993, and for Kushner’s companion piece Part Two, Perestroika, which debuted in November 1993.

Davis’ catalogue also includes two choral works: Voyage Through Death to Life Upon These Shores, a harrowing tale about the slave trade and the fateful Middle Passage, written for a cappella voices and based on Robert Hayden’s poem "Middle Passage"; and Restless Mourning, an oratorio for mixed chorus and chamber ensemble with live electronics, which sets the poetry of Quincy Troupe and Allan Havis as well as the 102nd Psalm of David in a powerful evocation of the 9/11 tragedy. The Carolina Chamber Chorale premiered the work at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in May 2002.

A graduate of Yale University in 1975, Davis is currently a distinguished professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. In 2008, he received the “Lift Every Voice” Legacy Award from the National Opera Association acknowledging his pioneering work in opera. In 2006, Davis was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and has also been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Massachusetts Arts Council, the Carey Trust, Chamber Music America, Meet-the-Composer Wallace Fund, the MAP fund with the Rockefeller Foundation, and OPERA America. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2020 and has been an artist fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Civitella Ranieri and at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy.

Anthony Davis’ music is published by Episteme Music and administered worldwide by Schott Music.

I first got to know Quincy Troupe when we were both colleagues at the University of California, San Diego. He had just completed the autobiography of Miles Davis and he was a charismatic figure in San Diego. We collaborated on a number of projects together, including live performances featuring his poetry with my improvisations and compositions for piano. I still hear his voice, relentless, an avalanche of images and metaphors, barely taking a breath as the power of his language was surreal and dramatic, with a rhythm like Elvin Jones performing with John Coltrane. I set several of his poems to music, including “Bells” and “Sound, Breaking Away,” both for bass-baritone and piano. On the evening after 9/11 my wife and I were invited for dinner at Quincy’s home. He was already feverishly writing an epic poem about the day, titled “9/11: Emergency Calls Coming into Manhattan.” Later that week, Tim Koch from the Carolina Chamber Chorale called me about writing a piece about 9/11. I immediately thought of Quincy and his poem became the text for the first movement Blue and the third movement Things Will Never, Ever Be the Same. His harrowing and courageous text for the piece allowed me to explore 9/11 from wildly different points of view.

Broken in Parts is our most recent collaboration. The poem addresses the issues of language itself, the breakdown of communication and meaning. How do we reclaim our voice? Can our severed tongue be restored by summoning all our resources from the past, from our history, from the ancient and mystical. The poem presented many musical challenges. The images and metaphors, literally, never stop. There are no periods in the poem, every idea morphs into the next. I always came back to hearing Quincy’s voice, exploring a rhythmic language where the speech rhythms become more Thelonious Monk or Miles Davis with the jagged edge of syncopation and, yet, discovering how lyricism can peak through allowing the voice to soar. I am so excited to work with the wonderful soprano Latonia Moore, who is one of the great singers today. She always brings passion and a searing beauty to everything she does. It is also an honor to work with Louis Langrée again. His performance during the pandemic of my clarinet concerto You Have the Right to Remain Silent with Anthony McGill and Earl Howard was a remarkable ray of light in a dark time.

–Anthony Davis