Acclaimed soprano Karen Slack speaks with KGNU’s Sanford Baran about her career, inspirations, and upcoming recital in Denver, featuring the “African Queens” project. Slack reflects on her non-classical music upbringing and pivotal moments that led her to opera. She discusses her frustration with traditional operatic roles and the lack of representation for Black stories, which inspired her to create the “African Queens” project—a tribute to unsung African queens and warriors. As an advocate for inclusivity in classical music, Slack emphasizes the importance of creating opportunities for underrepresented voices and pushing boundaries in the art form.
Sanford Baran: Today we have the distinct pleasure of speaking with one of the nation’s most celebrated sopranos, Karen Slack. Known for her powerful and emotive performances, Karen has captivated audiences around the world with her exceptional artistry. She is also a leading voice in advocating for greater representation and inclusivity within the classical music industry.
Karen will be in recital in Denver on October 2nd, presented by Friends of Chamber Music, featuring the regional premiere of the African Queens project. This brilliantly curated program spotlights the stories of unsung African queens and warriors brought to life through the works of acclaimed composers and powerful texts.
We’re thrilled to have Karen with us today to discuss this unique project and her remarkable career. Karen, welcome to the show.
Karen Slack: Thank you, I’m happy to be here.
Sanford Baran: To start, could you tell us how you first discovered your passion for opera, and what inspired you to pursue a career as a soprano? Were there any pivotal experiences or key influences in your early years that guided you on this path?
Karen Slack: Yes, I’ve had several significant periods in my life where opera just pulled me towards it. Growing up, I always loved music, but my parents were not classical music fans. I grew up listening to R&B, soul music and the golden era of hip hop. I grew up very much in an urban, middle class family.
Nothing about my upbringing said opera, but there was always music in public schools back in those days. I played violin in the fourth grade. I didn’t particularly care for it. I always say if someone had given me a cello, I would have maybe been a string player, but I didn’t like violin much.
I always had a big, powerful voice, loud and high. I got to lead the Star Spangled Banner in the sixth grade. When I was in seventh grade, my music teacher was like, “Karen, you need to take singing seriously.” I’m like, “Yeah, I want to be a veterinarian.” That’s all I ever wanted to do is become a veterinarian. But my teacher kept pushing me and then in eighth grade she said, you’re going to audition for Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. She pushed me to audition there and I did and I got in, still never thinking I’d be a professional singer.
It was my high school choir teacher who blasted opera every single morning. All the greats. Franco Corelli, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Margaret Price, any of the great singers. I just fell in love with the sound because it was the first time I had heard a sound that sounded like mine. Loud and high, right?
I knew opera was incredible. I knew that classical music was incredible. We studied all the big choral pieces in high school and I fell in love with opera when I was 15. In the 10th grade, I got to see Denyse Graves sing Carmen, I think it was the year before she made her Met debut. She was singing Opera Philadelphia, and we were the first class, the sounds of learning class. Now it’s pretty standard that all final dress rehearsals are open to students, but back in the early nineties, I’m not sure if it was as prevalent for companies to open up those performances. It changed my life to see Denyse Graves up there singing and acting and just commanding the stage. Someone who looked like me. Then I knew for sure that opera was for me.
Sanford Baran: As we look ahead to your upcoming recital in Denver, featuring the African Queens project, could you share what inspired you to create this unique program? How did you go about selecting the stories of these specific queens and warriors for the recital?
Karen Slack: The Queens project has been something that’s been in the making for a number of years. Probably eight years, definitely pre-pandemic. As I was going around doing recitals and programming recitals and trying to figure out the things that I wanted to sing about, it was frustrating for me as a woman, as an American woman, as a woman of color, as a black woman, to only be able to tell certain types of stories, right?
Most of the composers are European if you’re doing standard repertoire, and everything’s so flowery about love and loss. The subject matter is pretty much the same across the board. Specifically Black composers of a certain time were not able to speak about current subjects for their time, or things that may be controversial in a way that we are now allowed to speak about. So the programming was frustrating.
It was frustrating for me in opera, because of not being able to tell the stories you want to tell that are reflective of who you are as an artist. By the time new operas are chosen and people are cast in things, subject matter is already decided. Composers are decided. Everything’s already been decided in a room without much consultation of artists, unless you are a big name artist.
I was always just frustrated and I didn’t want to continue to be the wife of, the daughter of, the mother to. I didn’t want to do that. So I realized that I had to create my own opportunities. I had to create my own evenings. I had to try to get my own consortiums and commissions and all of these things if I wanted to do the things that I wanted to do.
I started researching African queens, about the queens of the continent. I was blown away from the stories that came from antiquity, straight through even the present day and all through the diaspora. I said, “Why aren’t people writing about these women who were leading armies, who were defeating in battle for centuries?”
These are the things that inspire all of us, particularly in the present climate that we’re in. We need these uplifting, powerful stories. Once you start, once you peel one layer back, you find all these other stories. So I was just finding all of these stories that were inspiring to me and I had the opportunity to work with many of the composers that are on this, Blacknificent 7 and this consortium of composers.
I knew them very well. And when I presented them the idea of writing a song cycle or writing a project, and I told them it was African queens, everyone just jumped at the opportunity to do that. Because there are even operas and chamber pieces for each queen so that she can have her own evening.
Sanford Baran: It’s exciting to see new commissions and contemporary works being featured in your recital. What was the experience like for you to collaborate with the composers and bring African queens to life? How did you find the process of infusing your voice into these new works?
Karen Slack: I’m going to be 100 percent honest. It was hard. It is difficult, first of all, to be the boss, to lead. Everyone wants to be the leader. So you have to tell people what you need and what you want. For the logistical part, I think no one ever tells you how to bring projects like this together.
When all these creatives come in and everyone has their ideas and everyone has their vision, that part is difficult. Wrangling the cats, as I say, with composers, they’re all over because they’re doing multiple things along with your project. But also it’s very rewarding to be able to do that, to have enough support and agency to be able to bring a project to a creative and say, this is my vision and this is what I want.
That was really rewarding, especially coming from the straight standard operatic world where everything’s chosen for you. Many of them are my friends. All of them are pretty much my friends, which makes it tricky and also wonderful at the same time. Because when you need something, you want something, you gotta ask nicely.
Because each composer is so different, the challenge for me as an artist, as a singer, as the interpreter is trying to do everybody’s style in one evening. That is pretty tricky. I guess that’s my magic too, as Sean Okpebholo said, “You just have the interpretive part.” I didn’t realize how big this project was until I was in it and I’m like, “Oh boy, this is big”. But it’s so important and it’s necessary for me to do this, for this type of project to show other artists and other singers and other collaborators that yes, it might be so big, but you have to just do it.
You have to just launch into it and leap into it and have the big crazy ideas and build it. I think it’s the diversity of styles in each composer, which is to me so delicious and at the same time, incredibly difficult.
Sanford Baran: The program is particularly intriguing with its integration of text alongside the music. It includes works by a range of writers from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. How do these texts enhance the music and what role do they play in conveying the stories of the 1ueens?
Karen Slack: Deborah ‘s text is to Jasmine Barnes’ song, “I Am Not Your God”. I was trying to figure out how I tie these stories together, and trying to also incorporate so much about culture, because so much of Black culture is music, is dance, is theater, is spoken word. I wanted to incorporate as much of that as I could with the confines of what I had. I enlisted my friend who I met on Facebook, actually, his name is Jay St. Flono, a wonderful countertenor, a poet, author, all of these amazingly. He’s a young artist. I reached out to him and said, “I have a project for you. I think that you’d be perfect for it.” Because he would occasionally post his own poetry that was centered in the African diaspora. I thought he was the perfect person.
One day he posted something that was so impactful to me at the time. And when we were doing the research and trying to find the queens, I said, “I’m going to need you to write as much poetry as you can so that we can tie it in.” So some of Carlos’s piece has spoken word in it. Jessie’s piece opens up with some Congolese text to it. It’s just another add-on of interpretation, right? One of the poems is not attached to Damien Jeter’s piece about Amanirenas, who was the Queen of Kush. I used a poem that introduces his piece so beautifully. I didn’t realize that the audience was making sounds like they’re cheering on. The audience was very vocal when I did some of the spoken word. It was very call and response in a way, which I was not expecting at all either, but it’s welcome in this evening. It is another layer to this cake that we’re building. It’s difficult to sing and speak, because I’m using my voice to sing, but I think it’s important.
Sanford Baran: In addition to being a celebrated soprano, you’re recognized as a leading voice in creating and transforming spaces within classical music. How do you approach your role as a mentor and advocate, particularly in guiding young people who are considering a career in this field?
Karen Slack: I have to say during the pandemic, I really changed my life. I changed my career. I changed the trajectory of so many things. It was not intentional. I just say I got to do the things that I had been doing quietly out loud, any of my advocacy work or things that I already was doing.
I have no issue with talking about other people and how amazing they are. Sometimes I have that issue about myself, but if I believe in somebody, I believe in somebody. I am very passionate to push their names forward. I love speaking about how amazing I think this art form is, how amazing I think classical music is, how it has changed my life, how it has added to my life, how it has shaped me as a human to be able to share my gift. I speak very boldly and passionately about how I think everyone should love classical music.
I think that it is important to society. I am an artist’s artist. I am a singer’s singer as I say. I’m not interested in being the top of the Christmas tree, the angel. It’s just so beautiful. You don’t want to touch it. I want to be where the people are. I want to be in the middle where you get the most action and you get to connect with people. I’m very passionate about that. Again, it’s all aligned in my advocacy for the art form, my advocacy for artists, putting audiences first.
Centering not just myself, but what I do and who I am, right? I think it all is in alignment and it took the pandemic for other people in the industry to see those things in me. It took me creating platforms for myself, like KikiKonversations or other evenings of song that I produced so people could see that I’m more than my voice.
I’ve been in the industry for a very long time, since I was a kid. You get stuck in boxes because it’s easy to move people around when you put them in a box and you say, this is who you are. But what if they put you in a box and it’s not comfortable? It doesn’t fit?
It’s not really who you are or who you evolve into becoming. I hope to change that in our industry, that we just don’t silo people and put people in boxes just to easily move them around. I do understand how that works, but we lose generations of artists. And audiences suffer the most because people never get to their potential because they didn’t reach some stupid potential that some person thought that they had. Who’s to say that person was even right? So I just always say if I wanna do something, I have to create it myself. If I want to be something, I have to become it. I have to show people and I have to support other people who wanna do it, and you can’t wait. I don’t wanna wait. I just want to do it. So I’m happy to be recognized for that and I hope I continue to be supported in that way because it is all in service to our forum and our industry.
Sanford Baran: That’s truly inspiring. I deeply admire your vision and your commitment to bringing it to life, recognizing the artistic need within yourself and pursuing it with such passion.
It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. I’m excited to attend your recital in Denver and to experience your work firsthand. Thank you for sharing your journey and your artistry with us.
Karen Slack: Thank you for having me.
