"Black Music Revealed" with guest speaker Anthony Davis

Anthony Davis is the featured guest lecturer for "Black Music Revealed: Black composers, performers, and themes from the 18th century to the present," a Fall 2020 seminar presented by Professor Paul Phillips and viewable on Zoom. | RSVP required for non-Stanford attendees.

Opera News has called Anthony Davis "A National Treasure" for his pioneering work in opera. His music has made an important contribution not only in opera, but in chamber, choral, and orchestral music. He has been on the cutting edge of improvised music and jazz for over three decades. Davis continues to explore new avenues of expression while retaining a distinctly original voice. Mr. Davis has composed operas including X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X with a libretto by Thulani Davis (New York City Opera, 1986); Under the Double Moon, with a libretto by Deborah Atherton (Opera Theatre of St. Louis, 1989); Tania, an opera based on the kidnapping of Patty Hearst with a libretto by Michael John La Chiusa (American Music Theater Festival, 1992); and Amistad (Lyric Opera of Chicago, 1997).

He has composed numerous works for orchestra and chamber ensembles commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, St. Lukes Chamber Ensemble, Kansas City Symphony, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His other works include the music for the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Part One, Millennium Approaches and Part Two, Perestroika (1993). 

A graduate of Yale University in 1975, Mr. Davis is currently a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. In 2008, he received the "Lift Every Voice" Legacy Award from the National Opera Association acknowledging his pioneering work in opera. In 2006, Mr. Davis was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Mr. Davis has also been honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Massachusetts Arts Council, the Carey Trust, Chamber Music America, Meet-the-Composer Wallace Fund, the MAP fund with the Rockefeller Foundation and Opera America. He has been an artist fellow at the MacDowell Colony and at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy.