09/16/2023
Exciting news from the Retreat's founder & director, Kenneth Kiesler!
Hello everyone,
After a wonderful week in Sao Paulo, a particularly rewarding 27th summer of the Conductors to Retreat at Medomak, and a week at the Monteux Festival and School, I'm back to working with the gifted orchestra musicians and conductors at the University of Michigan School of Music Theatre & Dance. We started a couple of weeks ago, and there's a great new sense of energy and such an astonishing level of achievement...already!
I'm excited to share some news: The release of our landmark recording of two one act operas by the Harlem composer James P. Johnson on the Naxos label. For 17 years, since we recorded them in 2006, this project was almost always on my To-Do List. It seemed like an endless string of hurdles and obstacles, so I'm thrilled and excited, and a little relieved, that the release day finally arrived on September 8. Now the world can finally hear these works by one of the most influential artists of the 1930s, 40s and 50s, performed by a wonderful orchestra, great jazz pianist James Dapogny (who discovered the lost works), a splendid cast of singers including Kenneth Kellogg, Darnell Ishmel, Monique Spells, Olivia Duval, Rabihah Davis Dunn, Branden C S Hood, Elizabeth Gray, Emery Stephens, and the late Lonel Woods.
I would love to tell you how this all came about, but much of the story is in the Sept. 8 articles in the New York Times and Michigan News, so here they are, along with a photo of the front and back of the CD cover. By the way, the NY Times story includes a link to the complete recording of De Organizer. I hope you enjoy it!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/arts/music/james-p-johnson-mary-lou-williams.html
https://news.umich.edu/first-recording-of-lost-james-p-johnson-blues-opera-de-organizer-libretto-by-langston-hughes
