The Black Composer Project: From Dawn to Cosmic Night

The Black Composer Project: From Dawn to Cosmic Night
An Immersive Summer Concert Experience by Harlem Collective Opera

A cinematic journey through love, legacy, and the forgotten masterpieces of Black classical composers—performed inside an intimate 18-seat black box theatre in Harlem.

Step inside Harlem Collective Opera’s 18-seat black box theatre for The Black Composer Project: From Dawn to Cosmic Night — A Love Letter to the Black Soul, an immersive concert experience where opera, art song, storytelling, visual art, and culinary hospitality converge.

This extraordinary summer residency celebrates the brilliance of Black composers whose work reshaped American classical music, featuring rarely performed works by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, H. Leslie Adams, Undine Smith Moore, Nathaniel Dett, Adolphus Hailstork, George Walker, and Howard Swanson.

Through breathtaking live vocal performance, piano accompaniment, cinematic projections, and narrative storytelling, audiences are guided through an emotional and spiritual arc exploring:

• The awakening of the soul
• The beauty and complexity of Black love
• Dreams of freedom, identity, and self-definition
• The poetry embedded within Black classical song
• The connection between memory, ancestry, and legacy

Between musical selections, original cinematic video montages illuminate the lives, histories, and creative journeys of these groundbreaking composers—bringing their stories into vivid, present-tense experience through film, sound, and image.

With only 18 seats available per performance, every guest is placed inside an environment of radical intimacy—where performer and audience share the same emotional space. This is not a concert observed from a distance; it is an encounter lived in real time.

General Info
📅 Dates: Performance: July 30 and 31 | Post-Concert Gala: July 31
🕒 Time: Performance: 8:00 PM | Post-Concert Gala Dinner: 9:30 PM
📍 Location: Centenary United Methodist Church, 646 W 5th St, Winston-Salem, NC 27101, USA
⏳ Duration: Approximately 75 minutes.
👤 Age requirement: All ages welcome. Guests under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.
♿ Accessibility: Please contact the venue in advance regarding accessibility requirements.

The Black Composer Project: From Dawn to Cosmic Night is a rare opportunity to encounter the forgotten and foundational voices of Black classical composers in an intimate setting where music, memory, and storytelling surround you completely.