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When Riverhead High School graduate Taylor Burgess left home to study opera in Amsterdam, it reset her perspective on the world, her home, and her place in it. And this weekend, she will bring some her experience back to our community in an evening filled with heartfelt song.<\/p>\n
This Sunday, Feb. 8, coming off of performing in \u201cPorgy and Bess\u201d at the Metropolitan Opera, Ms. Burgess will give a special concert at the Jamesport Meeting House of works inspired by the Harlem Renaissance \u2014 a uniquely American arts movement in the 1920s that amplified the voices of Black writers, poets, composers and musicians.<\/p>\n
Pictured Above: Soprano Taylor Burgess returns home for a concert at the Jamesport Meeting House this Sunday |. Cindy Clifford photo<\/p>\n
Ms. Burgess, 29, began studying jazz and operatic vocal styles with Shoshana Hershkowitz, now conductor of the Stony Brook Chorale, at the age of 14. During high school, she thought she might become a teacher, but Ms. Hershkowitz urged her to not rule out becoming a professional singer.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe saw that I had a passion for music, and it didn\u2019t take long to learn new songs,\u201d said Ms. Burgess in an interview with The Beacon this week. \u201cOther than teaching music, I never had the idea that I could study performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Burgess, who graduated from Riverhead in 2014, studied jazz and opera at SUNY Purchase and received a Performer Certificate from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. She\u2019s now based in Amsterdam, after studying at the Dutch National Opera Academy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was the only, as well as the first, Black student to graduate from the program,\u201d she said. \u201cIn America, they like to pigeonhole Black singers into doing Black repertoire, but my story is my own for the sharing \u2014\u00a0I love performing standard repertoire or new repertoire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Europe, I don\u2019t mind telling the Black American story, which is very unique from being Afro-European,\u201d she added. \u201cOur culture is rooted in slavery, and it really does shape how a culture sees the world. Many Afro-Europeans migrated in the 20th or 21st Century, and they have a very different outlook than, say, a Black American who has southern roots. We look similar, but we\u2019re not the same, and that\u2019s a beautiful thing. We learn from one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Burgess again went through a cultural readjustment coming back to the U.S. in 2024 to join the cast of \u201cFire Shut Up in My Bones,\u201d the first opera by a Black composer, Terence Blanchard, ever performed at the Metropolitan Opera, and then in The Met\u2019s production of Gershwin\u2019s \u201cPorgy and Bess\u201d this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, any door that leads to The Met is worth walking into, as long as you still have your pride and dignity,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat was very special \u2014 I\u2019d been working predominantly in Europe and had never been in a space full of Black singers until that moment,\u201d she said of her experience in \u201cFire Shut Up in My Bones.\u201d \u201cFor a lot of my colleagues there, most of their experience had been because of Black operas. It was interesting to see how choosing to live in Europe had opened up the doors for me to experience anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Burgess\u2019s program in Jamesport, which is in honor of Black History Month, is titled \u201cWinter Moon: A Tribute to the Harlem Renaissance.\u201d She will be accompanied by pianist and composer Eunha So, whose work bridges classical structure, jazz improvisation, and contemporary expression.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to do a solo performance before leaving the States, of works that are very dear to my heart, and very relevant to the times we\u2019re living in,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope people feel inspired, and maybe even enchanted by the music they hear \u2014 it\u2019s not the usual repertoire. I\u2019m not really doing anything traditional, and for me that was certainly intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program follows the path of two song cycles, she said, which include impressionistic musical works by Harry T. Burleigh\u00a0and\u00a0Duke Ellington, and a Debussy piano piece, \u201cReverie,\u201d which was adopted as a jazz standard, \u201cMy Reverie,\u201d in the 1930s, popularized by vocalists including Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. <\/p>\n
She will also be performing selections from a song cycle based on poems by Langston Hughes, written by contemporary Jewish composer Ricky Ian Gordon, and works based on the poems of Laurence Hope, the pen name of British poet Violet Nicolson.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer work reminds me a lot of Emily Dickinson \u2014 she was a tortured soul who ended up taking her life, but she wrote the most gorgeous poems that truly anyone can relate to,\u201d said Ms. Burgess.<\/p>\n
The program also includes a musical work by one of Ms. Burgess\u2019s former professors, Pete Malinverni, interwoven with poems written by James Weldon Johnson, a writer, activist and one of the architects of the Harlem Renaissance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWriters are also artists \u2014\u00a0I\u2019m very lyrically driven,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you can find something timeless, you need to bring it back from time to time. The Renaissance is now. We\u2019re always going through a renaissance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feb. 8 will be your only chance to see this program on this trip back to the U.S. Ms. Burgess had to cancel a second date due to auditions in Parish and a debut of a film she\u2019s in, which will be screened within a staged opera, \u201cTheory of Flames,\u201d opening March 6 at the Opera Forward Film Festival in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like people to witness this new perspective on classical music \u2014\u00a0it can be dynamic, colorful and relatable,\u201d she said of Sunday\u2019s concert. \u201cIt\u2019s important that people can relate to what they\u2019re witnessing. Attending opera can feel very bourgeois, but classical music really did start out as the peoples\u2019 music. My message is it\u2019s still very relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWinter Moon: A Tribute to the Harlem Renaissance,\u201d will be performed on Sunday, Feb. 8 at 5 p.m. at the Jamesport Meeting House, 1590 Main Road in Jamesport. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students and youth and children up to age 18.<\/p>\n
Tickets are available online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Keep Independent News on the East End<\/p>\n The Beacon is able to provide all of our content online free of charge thanks to support from our readers. Be a vital part of keeping our community informed!<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n
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