Stories in the Building
By Mark Thomas Ketterson
Success, as the saying goes, happens when opportunity meets preparation. It’s an old saw that has proven itself time and again, especially in the performing arts. But wonderful things also happen when successful people create their own opportunities.
Which brings us to Karen Slack.
The Philadelphia-born soprano, a 2008 alumna of the Steans Music Institute at Ravinia, is a familiar presence on operatic stages throughout the United States and abroad, where her luscious, lyrico-spinto instrument has graced the music of Verdi, through Wagner, to Gershwin, Heggie, and beyond. Slack has possibly made her most notable impact, however, in her support of contemporary music. Some among the most promising composers of the day have achieved their first public hearing through her voice. The resourceful diva can also be found online, hosting her live Facebook talk show KikiKonvos.
Photo: Kia Caldwell
On August 1, Ravinia audiences can experience the latest of Slack’s commissioning projects with the world premiere of African Queens, a program of new vocal compositions from Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Carlos Simon, and Joel Thompson, who have grown together in recent years to become the creative collective “The Blacknificent Seven.” Slack also includes songs from several other leading lights of the contemporary vocal music scene, as well as classic works from Florence Price and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The recital is set for multiple outings across the country on the co-commissioners’ stages and beyond in upcoming seasons—as the lead commissioner of the project, Ravinia enjoys the pride of hosting the premiere. Multifaceted pianist Kevin Miller, who grew up a singer before adopting the collaborative instrument, supports Slack throughout.
Slack did not come from a musical family. “We were a basketball family,” she laughs. “But the radio was always on!” She is quick to highlight that she received her exposure to classical music in the public school system at a time when arts education remained a strong presence there. Not that it stuck immediately; she initially played violin and hated it, and determined she would become a veterinarian.
“I always secretly loved recitals and chamber music. Very few people who sing my repertoire also love chamber music.”
Her musicality was impossible to ignore however, and once Slack began singing in choir, it was obvious that something special was going on. Inspired by the recordings of Jussi Björling, Kirsten Flagstad, and Jessye Norman she heard at school, she began vocal study. Her future was sealed when she attended a performance of Carmen at Philadelphia Opera with Denyce Graves (she admits that to this day she will occasionally slip into that same seat at the Academy of Music and reminisce). Slack entered a competition sponsored by the Rosa Ponselle Foundation, hoping to win a couple thousand dollars. She aced it to the tune of fifty grand and studied through the foundation for almost two years. She subsequently landed at the Curtis Institute of Music and was then taken in by the Merola program at San Franciso Opera, followed by an Adler fellowship. In 2006, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in the title role of Verdi’s Luisa Miller.
Despite her success, conversation with Slack reveals her to be a disarmingly warm and down-to-earth woman who examines the dynamics of the music industry with unusual insight. Ravinia sat down with Slack to discuss her career and the creation of African Queens.
Karen Slack performing in Bennett Gordon Hall as a Program for Singers fellow at Ravinia Steans Music Institute in 2008
You had already made your Met debut when you came to study at Ravinia’s Steans Institute. Why was the Steans experience important to you?
I always wanted to go to Steans. I always secretly loved recitals and chamber music, and that is the career I have now. But as an opera singer in training, you can’t really say that. Very few people who sing my repertoire also love chamber music. Steans gave me the opportunity to come fully into myself. I got to sing all this beautiful, lush repertoire, and not focus on opera. I loved this so much. I have always wanted to come back.
You have championed contemporary music throughout your career. How did this specialty emerge?
I felt most of the artists who were doing this kind of work didn’t look like me or have a voice like mine. Very few big-voiced singers or African American singers were getting these opportunities. Contemporary music was always in my recitals. I would call friends in voice departments and say “hey, I’ll come for two dollars and do a recital and a masterclass” so I could build my skill set. In the same way, I would commission people. I’d call a composer with an idea, and we would collaborate. I’m not comfortable in a box, and I was always fighting that. When I stopped fighting and started creating and leading by example, everything started opening up for me. There is agency in building your own, especially if you are building things that are needed.
Tell us about African Queens. How did the concept for this recital come about?
African Queens has been in the making for about eight years. Although I was doing a lot of contemporary opera, I wasn’t always telling the stories I wanted to tell. I wanted to tell stories about women that weren’t simply adjacent to the men. But I couldn’t find characters to really dig myself into, specifically from African American composers.
I came across a story about the Aba Women’s War in Nigeria in 1929. I had no idea that these women had protested and fought against inequities like this. I started researching Africa, and all these queens came popping up! We have had so many women rulers in Africa besides Cleopatra, leading armies and fighting colonization. These were the stories I needed to tell.
During pandemic I interviewed some amazing composers on my show KikiKonvos. They later became a group, “The Blacknificent Seven”! Dave Ragland told me they wanted to write something for me as a thank-you for bringing them all together. So, I put together about fifteen Queens with one of my collaborators and got everybody on Zoom. They were all for it. That’s how African Queens was born.
Blacknificent Seven members (from left) Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Joel Thompson, Jasmine Barnes, Damien Geter, Jessie Montgomery, and Carlos Simon take a bow after their CSO MusicNOW concert December 3, 2023—their first program together as the collective. A group discussion on Karen Slack’s KikiKonvos livestream during the pandemic led to the composers regularly conversing and formally banding together, and the experience comes full circle with their African Queens songs for Slack premiering at Ravinia on August 1. (Photo: Anne Ryan/CSO)
Ravinia is the premiere, and like I said, I always wanted to sing at Ravinia, but the opportunity never came [after the Steans Program for Singers]. I never imagined it would be through African Queens. I’m thrilled. This feels like coming home.
“Steans gave me the opportunity to come fully into myself. I got to sing all this beautiful, lush repertoire.”
The classical music industry has been grappling with issues of equity and inclusion. As someone who is an important figure in the Zeitgeist—how are we doing?
I think we’re doing okay, not great. There are so many challenges in the way we create art, and so many communities. You can’t judge San Francisco the same way you judge Chicago, or Memphis, or Nashville. I think the main thing is that people are trying. There are those who are resistant to change and want everything to be as it used to be, but there is no way that it can.
My hope is that as we try to diversify our institutions, we don’t forget that experience matters. Everyone wants something young, something new. This is a conversation that hasn’t happened. There is a whole generation of artists who want to be part of change but have no work. Ageism is looming over us. That’s a part of diversity, too.
Photo: Kia Caldwell
You have been named Artist-in-Residence for Lyric Opera of Chicago and are positioned to become an important ambassador for the art form here. What can we expect from this?
That really came from Afton Battle [vice president of Lyric Opera’s Lyric Unlimited initiative]. They had seen the work that I’m doing. I do a lot of outreach. I call teacher friends and talk to their classes about opera, because I hope that the life of even one kid might be changed by that. I can talk to any kind of person about how amazing this art form is; I don’t care if you are Bill Gates or the guy down the street making sandwiches. I hope to be fully myself and make sure that communities understand that we are not some ivory tower on a hill—we are their opera company, with no apologies for opera being big and loud and transformative.
Is there anything you want Chicago audiences to know about you?
That I love their city! I’m a Philadelphian, so I’m not an imposter, I’m coming in as a cousin from a sister city. I love the vibrancy and the arts scene. I want people to know that I’m passionate about bringing art and storytelling to all of Chicago’s communities and to bring it in a vibrant way.
My career has been ebbs and flows. People see you in certain ways, and we wait for that person who tells us, “You are the one.” But the things I created for myself are where my success came from. It wasn’t because I was on every intendant’s first-choice list. Yet I’ve been able to carve out a significant career.
That is what I’d like people to understand: you can do that. It hasn’t been easy. It takes work and belief in yourself. That is what has driven me—the belief that I have something to say and something to offer to the people. ■
Mark Thomas Ketterson was the long-term Chicago correspondent for Opera News. He has also written for Opera magazine, Playbill, the Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Edinburgh Festival, Washington National Opera, and Wolf Trap.