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JASMINE BARNES
COMPOSER
BIOGRAPHY
“[R]efreshing..., engaging..., exciting” – San Francisco Classical Voice (Review of Barnes’ Love and Light)
Jasmine Arielle Barnes stands at the forefront of contemporary music as an Emmy Award-winning composer and celebrated vocalist whose influence resonates across the globe. Renowned for her extraordinary skill in vocal composition, Barnes navigates a rich tapestry of genres, formats, and instrumentations, creating a unique and compelling musical presence.
Barnes’ recent projects showcase her creative synergy with acclaimed Poet Laureate and activist Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.Highlights include the highly anticipated world premiere of SheWho Dared at Chicago Opera Theater, as well as the world premieres of On My Mind at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and Revise?with Apollo Chamber Players. In addition, Barnes’ Kinsfolknem, a concerto for wind quartet, had its debut at Carnegie Hall before touring select renowned symphonies across the nation. This season, Barnes will create a composition for wind quintet, commissioned by Patagonia Winds, as well as unveil a highly anticipated choral and orchestral composition set to Langston Hughes' texts, commissioned by the Seattle Choral Company.
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Barnes has also been commissioned for high-profile performances such as Plumshuga at STAGES Houston, a groundbreaking arrangement of spirituals for Karen Slack and Will Liverman at Carnegie Hall with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, a composition for Lawrence Brownlee’s recital tour Rising, and a song cycle performed by renowned tenor Russell Thomas at Los Angeles Opera. Her impressive catalogue also includes commissions like Might Call You Art with CityMusic Cleveland, Portraits: Douglass & Tubman with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Maternità for Takesha Meshé Kizart and Anima Mundi Productions, and I Will Follow You into the Dark with American Lyric Theatre.
Barnes is currently a resident artist for Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ New Works Collective. She has previously enriched institutions such as American Lyric Theater, Chautauqua Opera, and All Classical Portland with her innovative artistry. Her work is highly sought after by prestigious organizations nationwide, including the New York Philharmonic, The Juilliard School, Washington National Opera, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Barnes’ 10-minute opera The Late Walk, commissioned by Bare Opera as part of the Decameron Opera Coalition, has been preserved in the Library of Congress and serves as a key study feature in Sonja Dierks’ book Narrative Oper. Her exceptional contributions to music have earned her the 2021 Florence Price Award for Composition and the Black Brilliance Award from The Pleiades Project. She was also honored as the Gwendolyn J. Brinkley Fine Arts Award Winner by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. (South Central Region, 2021) and was a finalist in All Classical Portland's Recording Inclusivity Initiative.
In addition to her musical accomplishments, Barnes is a distinguished educator. Formerly the Head of Compositional Studies and Jazz Voice Studies at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, TX, her teaching has garnered widespread recognition. She is a five-time recipient of the National YoungArts Foundation Educator Award, a Teacher Recognition Award from the American Composers Forum, and a NextNotes High School Music Creator Competition award winner. Barnes has also collaborated with the Dallas Opera to create a student competition for composing an original piece for the celebrated chandelier at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas.
Barnes earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in Music from Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD, where she studied composition under Dr. James Lee III. Her debut composition concert, Reality, Race, and Religion, marked her as a trailblazer, being the first composition major at Morgan State University and setting a precedent for future students.
Current as of September 1, 2024
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"... It was refreshing. It was engaging. It was exciting…” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Love and Light – “The more melodically and emotionally complex half featured a trio of world premiere works commissioned by Thomas… and Love and Light by Jasmine Barnes… Barnes’s Love and Light, which concluded the recital, further explored the freedom of coming out to face one’s true self. “A shadow of fear, not allowed to shine. I’ve mastered threat in silhouette” — a sentiment reminiscent of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Manand the smoldering spirit in the pages of James Baldwin — gay, Black, and proud. It was refreshing. It was engaging. It was exciting."
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"...comfortably tonal..." – By Tim Smith
Portraits: Douglass & Tubman – "The composer writes in a very direct, comfortably tonal manner that serves the texts well."
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"... precisely imagined antiquity..." – The Washington Post
The Burning Bush – "The night closed with “The Burning Bush,” an opera from the Baltimore-based team of composer Jasmine Barnes and Joshua Banbury — and set in a surrealist version of that city’s long-ago vaudeville scene. While pianist Roderick Demmings Jr. stayed onstage to coax out the score’s precisely imagined antiquity, soprano Suzannah Waddington (as an allegorical MC) and baritone Daniel J. Smith (as a vaudevillian “invisible man”) carried the opera’s miniature acts right into the audience. It was a clever way of reflecting the spectacle made of violence against Black people (in this case, Freddie Gray), and inviting revision of the stories (and histories) too often consumed as entertainment."