"It’s mere coincidence that composer Anthony Davis received word of winning the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music less than a month before protests over the killing of Breonna Taylor and then the shocking video of the murder of George Floyd. It is, however, no coincidence that the opera he won the prize for, The Central Park Five, was about bias in American law enforcement, and not just at the police level."
-San Francisco Classical Voice, February 6, 2021
Anthony Davis is a 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer for his opera The Central Park Five; cited by the Pulitzer jury as "a courageous operatic work, marked by powerful vocal writing and sensitive orchestration, that skillfully transforms a notorious example of contemporary injustice into something empathetic and hopeful."
The announcement was made by Charles Mason, Chair, Department of Composition who stated: "What an honor it is to have Anthony Davis join our faculty as Distinguished Composer-in-Residence. I’m thrilled for the extraordinary opportunity this presents for our students, who will receive private lessons from him, and look forward to performing excerpts of his operas at our Frost Music Live concerts in the Spring."
Davis is an internationally recognized composer of operatic, symphonic, choral, and chamber works. He is also known for his virtuoso performances both as a solo pianist and as the leader of the ensemble Episteme, a unique ensemble of musicians who are disciplined interpreters as well as provocative improvisers.
Among his additional celebrated operas, X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which played to sold-out houses at its premiere at the New York City Opera in 1986, was the first of a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. The recording of X was released on the Gramavision label in August 1992 and received a GRAMMY Nomination for "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" in February 1993.
Davis's second opera, Under the Double Moon, a science-fiction opera with an original libretto by Deborah Atherton, premiered at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 1989. His third opera, Tania, with a libretto by Michael-John LaChiusa and based on the abduction of Patricia Hearst, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in June 1992. A recording of Tania was released in 2001 on Koch, and in November 2003, Musikwerkstaat Wien presented its European premiere. A fourth opera, Amistad, about a shipboard uprising by slaves and their subsequent trial, premiered at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November 1997. Set to a libretto by poet Thulani Davis, the librettist of X, Amistad was staged by George C. Wolfe.
Anthony Davis and his cousin, poet, and historian Thulani Davis, are currently working on an opera, Greenwood, 1921, about the Tulsa race riots.
For more info please check out his most recent interview with SFCV here.
