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Oberlin Conservatory convincingly tells Omar’s story (Dec. 8)

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by Stephanie Manning

The Cleveland premiere of Rhiannon Giddens’ and Michael Abels’ Pultizer Prize-winning opera Omar on December 8 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center proved that concert productions of opera can succeed without sets, elaborate costumes and extensive staging. Indeed, the Oberlin Conservatory presentation offered more than enough to keep the audience in the crowded house enthralled.

The Opera, which was also presented at Oberlin’s Finney Chapel two days earlier, is based on the 1831 autobiography of Muslim scholar Omar ibn Said, the only such work written by an enslaved person during their enslavement, and the only such document written in Arabic.

Rhiannon Giddens’ brilliant libretto chronicles the life of ibn Said, beginning in present-day Senegal and following him through his capture, journey via the Middle Passage, and enslavement in North and South Carolina. [Read more…]

Oberlin to present Rhiannon Giddens’ and Michael Ables’ Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar

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by Mike Telin

“What makes that document so remarkable is that it is a window into a world that we don’t talk about and that we don’t teach about, and it’s just miraculous that it survived,” composer Rhiannon Giddens told Martha Teichner during a Spoleto Conversations interview. “We have so few of these documents and each one holds multitudes in it. We have so little and it’s a miracle that we have it at all.”

The document that Giddens is referring to is the 1831 autobiography of Omar ibn Said, the only known autobiography written by an enslaved person during their enslavement, and the only document written in Arabic by an enslaved person.

During that same interview, composer Michael Ables noted that the document was written at a time when it was illegal to teach enslaved people to read and write. “And why is that? Because they knew that knowledge is power, and Omar’s power to speak to us today is expressed through the fact that he was educated.”

[Read more…]

Oberlin Artist Recital Series:
a conversation with “musical alchemist”
Francesco Turrisi

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by Mike Telin 

For nearly 150 years, Oberlin College and Conservatory’s Artist Recital Series has been a centerpiece in the musical offerings of Northeast Ohio. Now, after a two-year absence, the series returns with a noon performance in Finney Chapel on Tuesday, October 4 featuring musical trailblazer Rhiannon Giddens. The Grammy Award winner, MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, and Oberlin alum will be joined by multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. Click here to find out more about Giddens. Tickets are available online.

Turrisi, himself an award-winning multi-instrumentalist, has been called a “musical alchemist” and a “musical polyglot.” In 1997 he left his native Italy to study jazz piano and early music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Since then he has released five albums as a leader and two as co-leader with the ensembles Tarab (which blends Irish and Mediterranean traditional music) and Zahr (which celebrates the connections between southern Italian traditional music and Arabic music).

Since Turrisi teamed up with Giddens in 2018, the duo has released two albums that combine Mediterranean music with music from the African diaspora in the Americas — There Is No Other (2019) and They’re Calling Me Home (2021), which won a Grammy for best folk album.

[Read more…]

Rhiannon Giddens: Oberlin Stage Left 

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by Staff

Rhiannon Giddens, a 2000 Oberlin Conservatory alumna who has forged a remarkable — and remarkably wide-ranging — career in music, returns to her Oberlin roots for an appearance on Oberlin Stage Left on Thursday, December 10 at 7:30 pm.

She will perform with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, with whom she created her most recent recording. Their set will span traditional Irish and Scottish tunes, as well as blues, bluegrass, gospel, and more. It will be preceded by a conversation between Giddens and music theory professor Jan Miyake that touches on the performer’s career and her longstanding commitment to social justice issues.

[Read more…]

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