Castle of our Skins

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Castle of our Skins Celebrating Black artistry through music

​Castle of our Skins is a Black arts institution dedicated to fostering cultural curiosity and celebrating Black artistry through music. In classrooms, concert halls, and beyond, Castle of our Skins invites Black heritage and culture exploration, spotlighting both unsung and celebrated figures of past and present.

10/08/2026

We’re bringing Charles Brown’s A Song Without Words back to the stage for Sacred Transcendence.

Based on the singing of Blind Willie Johnson, this work offers a musical reimagining of a voice and tradition that continue to resonate across generations.

You may remember it from Season 10, when Brianna Robinson and Sarah Bob performed A Song Without Words as part of Love Affects at the Boston Athenaeum.

Now, we’re bringing it back.

🎥 Check out this performance from Season 10 then hear it live at Sacred Transcendence next week.

📍 Oct. 17 | 3 PM
Twelfth Baptist Church | Boston (Twelfth Baptist Church )

📍 Oct. 18 | 3 PM
Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts | Fairfield, CT (The Fairfield University Quick Center for the Arts )

Come hear it again—or experience it for the first time.

🎟️ Join us. Get tickets at castleskins.org

10/06/2026

Dozens of Black student artists. 5 cohorts. One growing community. 🖤

Over the past five years, the BSU Intercollegiate Fellowship has brought Black student musicians from colleges and conservatories across Boston together to collaborate, create, build community, and make their mark.

Some came looking for their people. Some came looking for creative opportunities. All became part of a growing legacy of Black artistry in Boston.

Now, we’re looking for the next cohort. 👀

If you’re a Black student musician at a Boston-area college or conservatory, the 6th Annual BSU Intercollegiate Fellowship is for you.

Come make music. Find community. Build relationships. Have some fun. And become part of the legacy.

🎶 Applications due October 9
🔗 go to Castleskins.org/as-students + share this with a Black student musician who needs to see it!

10/01/2026

THROWBACK TO THE BSU FELLOWSHIP 🖤🎶

Some of our favorite COOS stories started with two students looking for community and a creative opportunity.

In this throwback, BSU Fellow DeShaun Gordon-King performs In Their Footsteps, composed by fellow and longtime COOS collaborator Joi Harper.

At the time, they were students coming together through the BSU Fellowship. Today? They’re part of the COOS Crew—performing with us, developing curriculum, collaborating with artists and students, and helping shape what’s next.

That’s the thing about the BSU Fellowship. It’s not just about one concert. It’s about finding your people, making connections, creating together, and building relationships that can continue long after the final note.

You never know where a creative opportunity might lead.

The 6th Annual BSU Intercollegiate Fellowship application is open now through Oct. 9th. Apply today at the link in bio or at castleskins.org

If you’re a Black student artist at a Boston-area college or conservatory, come build with us.

Thank you for having us, Boston Housing Authority ( )!Yesterday, COOS teaching artist Ken Allen presented our signature ...
09/30/2026

Thank you for having us, Boston Housing Authority ( )!

Yesterday, COOS teaching artist Ken Allen presented our signature edu-tainment workshop, A Little History, to the folks at Holgate Apartments. We appreciate the warm welcome and spirit of curiosity.

Visit castleskins.org/as-families-and-educators to learn more about our edutainment offerings!

America’s Black Hospital Movement 📖🎻Join journalist, historian, and author Carlton Houston and violinist Grant Houston f...
09/29/2026

America’s Black Hospital Movement 📖🎻

Join journalist, historian, and author Carlton Houston and violinist Grant Houston for an evening of storytelling, history, and music at the Countway Longwood Author Series.

The program explores Carlton Houston’s book, The Houston Negro Hospital: The Untold Legacy of Riverside General, which tells the story of the Black hospital movement in early 20th-century Houston and the people who fought to build and sustain an institution that represented dignity, hope, and access to health care.

Grant Houston—frequent Castle of our Skins collaborator and acclaimed violinist—will perform alongside pianist Dina Vainshtein, bringing music by prominent Black composers of the era into the evening’s historical narrative.

📅 Monday, October 5, 2026
⏰ 5:30–7:30 PM
📍 Countway Library, Room 103
695 Huntington Ave., Boston

🎟️ Register: countway.info/houston

We’re always excited to see COOS musicians bringing their artistry into spaces where music, history, and storytelling intersect. Go support Grant and this fascinating conversation!

🌟 There’s still time to apply! 🌟Our 6th Annual Black Student Union Fellowship application closes October 9th— don’t miss...
09/28/2026

🌟 There’s still time to apply! 🌟

Our 6th Annual Black Student Union Fellowship application closes October 9th— don’t miss your chance to be part of this growing community of Black student-musicians across Greater Boston.

Since 2013, Castle of our Skins has been creating the space our founders Ashleigh Gordon and Anthony R. Green wished existed — one where Black artistry, connection, and creativity thrive.

The BSU Fellowship isn’t just about developing your skills — it’s about building relationships, sharing stories, and celebrating one another through music and community.

🎶 Fellowship • Growth • Community • Celebration 🎶

📅 Deadline: October 9, 2026
👉 Apply now: Castleskins.org/as-students

The history of the spiritual cannot be told without mention of Roland Hayes.Born in Georgia in 1887, Hayes came to Bosto...
09/25/2026

The history of the spiritual cannot be told without mention of Roland Hayes.

Born in Georgia in 1887, Hayes came to Boston in 1911 and began forging a career as a concert singer at a time when Black artists faced enormous barriers to performing in major concert halls.

In 1917, unable to find a manager willing to sponsor him, he rented Boston’s Symphony Hall himself, promoted the concert, and sold every seat—with hundreds more turned away. His program brought together European classical music and African American spirituals, placing Black musical traditions alongside the European repertoire presented on the concert stage.

A few years later, Hayes took that repertoire across the Atlantic. After traveling to Europe in 1920, he gave highly successful recitals in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Vienna. He returned to Boston in 1923 and became the first Black soloist to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, eventually appearing with the BSO ten times.

And through it all, spirituals remained an important part of Hayes’ concert repertoire.

He arranged and interpreted these songs for the concert stage, helping carry music rooted in Black communal and sacred traditions into new spaces and audiences. His arrangements were eventually collected and published in My Songs: Aframerican Religious Folk Songs Arranged and Interpreted by Roland Hayes in 1948.

At our season opener, Sacred Transcendence, we’re carrying that story forward with Hayes’ arrangement of “Plenty Good Room.”

More than a century after Hayes brought spirituals into concert halls, we’re still hearing artists reimagine these songs—finding new meaning, new sounds, and new ways to carry them forward.

That’s the spirit of COOS' 14th Season: Imprinted.

🎶 Sacred Transcendence presented by Vivo Performing Arts ( )
Saturday, October 17 | 3 PM
Twelfth Baptist Church | Boston

Sunday, October 18 | 3 PM
The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University ( ) | Fairfield, CT
Come hear where this musical lineage has been—and where it’s going next.

Learn more and get tickets at castleskins.org/upcoming-events

"For Black arts and education organization Castle of our Skins, receiving reparations represents a rare shift in how ins...
09/25/2026

"For Black arts and education organization Castle of our Skins, receiving reparations represents a rare shift in how institutions interact with Black creators and organizers.

“We never thought we would see the day when an institution would look honestly at the harm embedded in its history and make a meaningful commitment to repair,” Dr. Ciyadh Wells, executive director of Castle of our Skins, said in a statement.

“This investment will allow us to continue creating opportunities for cultural curiosity, bringing Black artistry and edu-tainment into classrooms, concert halls and community spaces. This is reparations, not simply philanthropy.”"

https://baystatebanner.com/2026/09/23/episcopal-city-mission-issues-2-75m-in-reparations-to-justice-organizations/

What happens when music carried through memory and community finds its way onto the page?And what happens after that?It ...
09/23/2026

What happens when music carried through memory and community finds its way onto the page?

And what happens after that?

It gets reimagined.

We’re opening Castle of our Skins’ 14th season with Sacred Transcendence—a journey through more than a century of Black musical ingenuity, tracing the spiritual from oral tradition and sacred gathering spaces into the concert hall and beyond.

Spirituals have never been fixed in time.

They have traveled across generations and communities, carrying faith, resistance, grief, hope, memory, and a call to gather. Along the way, Black composers and musicians have continued to reshape them—preserving their roots while finding new possibilities in their melodies, harmonies, structures, and stories.

At Sacred Transcendence, you’ll hear traditional spirituals, originally arranged by Harry T. Burleigh and later Roland Hayes, alongside works by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, William Grant Still, Shawn E. Okpebholo, James Dargan, and Charles Brown.

From "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" to "Deep River" to contemporary reimaginings, this program asks us to listen for the through-line: more than 300 years of Black creativity, community, and musical memory.

🎶 Sacred Transcendence
Saturday, October 17 | 3 PM
Twelfth Baptist Church ( )
Baptist Church | Boston

Sunday, October 18 | 3 PM
The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University ( ) | Fairfield, CT

Come experience the opening of Season 14: Imprinted.

Learn more and get tickets at castleskins.org

Address

20 Eustis Street
Boston, MA
02127

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