Phillips / Numinous Grey Land CD

The Grey Land is a story of a Black mother trying to survive the reality in this land that doesn't fully see her continued hope: that the great American experiment will one day become a belonging place where anyone can dream of "stillness and stars" free from fear and want; a place where the beautiful promise of happiness, liberty, and life may yet manifest true to finally include her family too. The Grey Land's libretto explores those themes of humanity and identity through the lens of the intractable triumvirate of race, class, and power in American society. The opera's score and non-traditional narrative, which integrates a variety of writings from Joseph C Phillips Jr, Sonia Sotomayor, Frederick Douglass, the Mothers of the Movement, Isaac Butler, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Carolyn Bryant Donham), accesses black culture and music, embracing social and musical multitudes and the "dichotomies of high and low, inside and outside, tradition and innovation." The Grey Land features soprano Rebecca Hargrove, narrator Kenneth Browning, and Joseph C Phillips Jr conducting his 28-musician chamber orchestra, Numinous.