36 min listen
Kevin Simmonds and Anthony Davis in Conversation
Kevin Simmonds and Anthony Davis in Conversation
ratings:
Length:
34 minutes
Released:
May 18, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This week we visit the opera. Writer and musician Kevin Simmonds and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis discuss Black sound, Black church, and the future of opera. Davis has been making operas rooted in Black history for over thirty years. X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, premiered in 1986. Today you’ll hear from X, and his opera Amistad, which revisits the story of the Middle Passage.
Simmonds’s new book, The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse, skillfully travels through the life of one of classical music’s greatest virtuosos. Leontyne Price remains one of the twentieth century’s most revered opera singers, and the first Black opera singer to achieve such international acclaim. The book is structured operatically into overture, acts, and postlude, uncovering complex layers of music history, biography, and the body itself. How do our bodies sound? Why do they sound that way?
Simmonds reads from The Monster I Am Today, featured in the April 2021 issue of Poetry.
Simmonds’s new book, The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price and a Life in Verse, skillfully travels through the life of one of classical music’s greatest virtuosos. Leontyne Price remains one of the twentieth century’s most revered opera singers, and the first Black opera singer to achieve such international acclaim. The book is structured operatically into overture, acts, and postlude, uncovering complex layers of music history, biography, and the body itself. How do our bodies sound? Why do they sound that way?
Simmonds reads from The Monster I Am Today, featured in the April 2021 issue of Poetry.
Released:
May 18, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (99)
Jackson Holbert and John Darnielle in Conversation: When we learned that poet Jackson Holbert asked to speak with John Darnielle for this episode, it made so much sense to us. Holbert’s poems in the magazine are simple in construction, but the voice is incredibly distinct. The poems deal with heavy subjects in a way that feels normal, everyday. For those listeners who spent the 90s listening to cassettes of Darnielle’s musical moniker, The Mountain Goats, you know that Darnielle has one of the most deceptively simple and distinct vocal styles you’ll ever encounter. Holbert and Darnielle discuss everything from Iowa, a shared love of Slipknot, metal, and the physicality of writing. You’ll hear Darnielle read an unreleased lyric for a future song, and read from his latest novel, Universal Harvester. Holbert reads “The Uncle Poem” from the January 2021 issue of Poetry. by The Poetry Magazine Podcast