We Wear the Mask

Del'Shawn is an award-winning baritone, composer, and pianist. Having won awards from international competitions, he has had solo debuts on stages ranging from Lincoln Center to the International Musical Eistedfodd.

As a 2020 American Prize semi-finalist for choral music, he has composed music for an array of instrumentation. Del'Shawn was selected to participant in Great Plains Composition Workshop with Wichita Symphony Orchestra and premiered a new work for string solo titled, “A Mother’s Cry,” in memory of the Black sons and daughters lost to police brutality and gun violence. He was recently commissioned by the Thompson Street Opera Company to compose a new work titled, "Mamie's Song,” that depicted the moment Mamie Elizabeth Til Mobley first saw the ravaged body of her son, Emmett.

Del'Shawn is one of ten black composers that was selected to participant in the inaugural NATS Composer Mentoring Program for Composers during which he will have the opportunity to work from celebrated composer Juliana Hall for several months. His commissioned setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” with premiere with the Cincinnati Song Initiative this spring.

Del’Shawn’s new composition, “Memories,” will be workshopped and premiered with the Julius Quartet in February 2021. It was written in honor of the beautiful souls lost during the Holocaust. A lover of musicals, Del’Shawn is the lead composer of the musical adaptation of the book Stars in the Sky; a book about the first African American flight attendants. It will have an industry reading in NYC later this year.

America

Baritone singer and composer Anthony E. Philpott has enjoyed a varied career in music.  As a soloist, he has performed in opera, musical theater, oratorio, and recital.  As a chorister, he has performed with various ensembles, including five seasons with the Spiritual Renaissance Singers of Greensboro (NC).  As an independent music scholar, archivist, and lecturer, he has presented at New York’s legendary Town Hall, and the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum (formerly the historic Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, NC).  His musical training began in his hometown of St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. at the University of the Virgin Islands.  He is a Music Performance graduate of North Carolina A&T State University.  His teachers include Dr. Van Anthoney Hall, tenor, and Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Elvira Green.

Forthcoming is his debut scholarly work, “A Hall for All: A Century of Black Classical Musicians at the Town Hall,” which traces the rise to prominence of Black classical musicians, as directly related to their debut performances at this historic New York venue.  He is currently engaged in other research and music preservation projects.  Beyond performance and music research, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Raleigh Symphony Orchestra (Raleigh, NC), and is President of the Carol Brice Music Association, North Carolina’s state-wide branch of the historic National Association of Negro Musicians, Inc.

Sissieretta Jones, Carnegie Hall, 1902: O Patria Mia

Composer George Tsz-Kwan Lam (b. 1981) grew up in both Hong Kong and Winthrop, Massachusetts. George is interested in works that intersect music, theater, and musical placemaking, including his recent cello-percussion duo The Emigrants for New Morse Code (Lawrence, Kansas), based on collected oral history from the New York City immigrant musician community.

In 2018, George served as the Chautauqua Opera Company’s third composer-in-residence, for which he composed three works for the company’s young artists and for the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra. George Lam has previously served as Assistant Professor of Music at York College, The City University of New York, and is currently Associate Professor of Music at Hong Kong Baptist University.

April Rain from Three Selected Songs

The eclectic music of composer Jeremiah Evans has been heard in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. As a graduate of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas TX, he would later study composition with Mary Jeanne van Appledorn at Texas Tech University.

His music was performed at the 16th London New Wind Festival, South Africa's National Arts Festival in Grahmstown, Eastern Cape, by the San Francisco Bay Area's Sounds New Contemporary Ensemble and by New York City's Locrian Chamber Players. His music has also been performed by the African-American Composer Initiative in Palo Alto CA and on faculty/guest artist recitals at the "American Roots" Concert Series at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, at the Bob Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University, Long Beach and at Concordia College in Bronxville, NY.

In 2019, Videmus Inc. included his art songs for high voice in the African Diaspora Music Project which presents a listing of recommended repertoire for singers who wish to enter the George Shirley African-American Art Song and Operatic Aria Competition. His Metropolitan Express for solo piano was recorded by International Steinway Artist, Althea Waites as part of her third CD release titled Celebration: Music by American Composers (Kuumba Music). A performance of his music by acclaimed concert pianist Jonathan Faiman was described by the New York Times as having "fresh sound" with "jazzy inflections" and "impressionistic milkiness". His music has also been broadcasted on Radio Arts Indonesia.