The art songs about Queen Nzinga and Queen Amina did not exist, so Karen Slack paid seven composers to write them.
Slack, the Grammy Award-winning soprano who grew up in North Philadelphia and is now creative advisor for vocal studies and opera at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she once studied, commissioned Jessie Montgomery, Carlos Simon, Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland and Joel Thompson for African Queens. The evening sets seven women from African and diasporic history to new music: Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba, Queen Amina of Zazzau, Queen Nanny of the Jamaican Maroons, Queen Amanirenas of Kush, Queen Nandi of Zulu, Queen Ufua and the Queen of Sheba. Slack sings all seven parts.
“I wanted to celebrate women who, throughout history, were warrior women and queens,” she said.
She came to it the long way. At Philadelphia’s High School for Creative and Performing Arts, the music teacher David King handed her Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman. At 15, she watched the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves sing Carmen at the Academy of Music and thought, “If she can do it.” She still goes back and sits in that seat sometimes.
She brings African Queens to the Church of the Holy Trinity as part of Bent But Not Broken 4.0, and an album is scheduled for 2027. Her ask of Philadelphia is plain: go to the symphony, go to Curtis, sit through an opera, and leave room for whoever is 15 and watching.
