Amanirenas, the one-eyed queen of the Kingdom of Kush, successfully led her troops to prevent the Roman Empire in 25 BC from expanding southward from Egypt into Africa. She is one of the amazing women who will be celebrated in song by Grammy-award-winning soprano Karen Slack this weekend at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts.
Hailed for her performances at Metropolitan Opera and concert halls around the world, Slack expands her operatic vibe with a program titled “African Queens.” With performances at The Reser in Beaverton at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13 and 14, it will feature seven new arias that will cover a wide range of fearless women from the African continent.
“Queens was about eight years in the making,” said Slack via Zoom. “The program was born out of frustration with the types of opera roles that are fairly standard for women. In opera, you’re someone’s mom, someone’s wife, someone’s girlfriend. It’s never your story. Even in modern operas, you’re often a victim of some man’s not very bright decision.”
In her quest for new material for such a program, Slack did her own research.
“I found all these incredible stories about African queens,” said Slack. “There were women who had gone on to do extraordinary things. I started with the Aba Women’s War in Nigeria and 1929. Then I started looking into women on the continent and going back into antiquity. That’s how the concept for a concert program was born.”
During the pandemic Slack had a live show on Facebook called KikiKonversations that featured discussions about the arts. One of her shows was moderated by Terrance Blanchard and included several young African-American composers.
“Some of the composers didn’t know each other, but they really enjoyed the opportunity to talk,” recalled Slack. “They thanked me for bringing them together. So I mentioned that I had an idea for an evening of song in which each composer would choose a queen and write about her. So that’s where the ‘African Queens’ program began.”
The group of composers includes some of the foremost in the nation. They are Jasmine Barnes, Jessie Montgomery, Shawn Okpebholo, Dave Ragland, Carlos Simon, Joel Thompson, and Portland Opera’s Music Director Damien Geter.
“I call Damien my work husband, because we have worked together since 2020 when we were both artistic advisors for Portland Opera,” said Slack, who is currently Portland Opera’s Artistic Ambassador.
“Queens is my first large-scale project,” she added. “In opera, you have to wait for a company to put a season together and then they put together the cast. With concert recitals, it’s the other way around because the presenters want to know what artists are creating. I love that!”
The Portland Opera presentation of “African Queens” will be the eleventh time that Slack has performed the program. She has used the performances to retool and refine it.
“When I did it at the Ravinia Festival, the concert program looked different from what it is currently,” said Slack. “I had to add different pieces. But I found that that didn’t work very well. So, I went back and decided to bring in composer Fred Onovwerosuoke, who is known as FredO. I put two of his meditations in the program. Then I asked my dear friend Will Liverman to write a piece. It is called A Prayer, and it is an English translation of the opening piece, Precatio, by Dave Ragland, which is Latin.”
A Parterre Box review praised Slack’s performance of “African Queens” at the 92nd Street Y in New York City earlier this year, stating, “These songs took a different attitude from the usual art song slice of life or legend to feature the solo singer’s varied skills. She wasn’t merely displaying her voice, though she has plenty; she was invoking icons and archetypes, bringing her chosen audience to consciousness of a half-forgotten glory.”
According to Slack, her singing in African Queens is operatic in scale, but none of the pieces are excerpted from an opera. They feel operatic. There’s spoken prose and poetry, and that gives the performance a modern feel.
She will be accompanied by pianist Kevin Miller, who was nominated in 2024 for a Grammy for his recording with tenor Lawrence Brownlee of songs by African-American composers.
Plans are in the works to record “African Queens” for commercial release next year or in 2027. In January, an orchestral arrangement of the songs will receive its world premiere by Slack and the Naples Philharmonic of Naples, Florida.
Resilience is one of the many themes in the songs that Slack will sing, and it really resonates with her and audiences.
“Queens has a bit of defiance in it,” said Slack. “I am going to do the things I want to do, and sing about what I want to sing about – put Black women not as victims but as victors.”