.png)
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.
READ MORE
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."
__________
"...comfortably tonal..." – By Tim Smith
Portraits: Douglass & Tubman – "The composer writes in a very direct, comfortably tonal manner that serves the texts well."
__________
"... 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."