Denyce Graves, Emmy and Grammy award-winning internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano, has taken on a new and exciting role. In 2021 she founded The Denyce Graves Foundation, committed to promoting equity and inclusion in American classical vocal arts through the championing of hidden musical figures of the past while uplifting young artists of world-class talent from all backgrounds.
The inspiration for creating this foundation was, as Ms. Graves often shares, her students. During the COVID-19 shut down, Ms. Graves spoke frankly with her students about their needs, hopes, and concerns as they pursued their degrees and prepared for professional careers as classical vocal artists. She was inspired to create a framework that would allow her to encourage and mentor even more students, offering them the kinds of support she received as a young singer, to nurture and encourage emerging talent. She wanted to help create a more inclusive classical vocal arts landscape that more accurately represents the diverse world in which we live for this next generation of singers. Following a year of discussions with musicians, scholars, teachers, directors, and others, the first of three pillars of DGF was created; Shared Voices.
Launched in the fall of 2022, Shared Voices, the flagship program of the Foundation, is an unprecedented collaboration that brings together students, faculty, and administrators from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and top conservatories and schools of music in the United States. Through classes, individual lessons, coachings, rehearsals, performances, and peer-to-peer exchanges, cohort members have access to industry experts and opportunities to expand their cultural horizons, develop networks, and gain new insights into potential opportunities for a fulfilling career. Faculty and administrators discuss expanding their curricular offerings across their institutions, ensuring that all students have the opportunity to learn and grow, experiencing the music of under-represented composers, and celebrating the legacies of outstanding musicians that have traditionally been omitted and ignored.
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Shared Voices is designed to introduce our singers to the wealth of outstanding art song and operatic repertoire written by Black and African American composers, musicians whose works and life stories are all too often absent from traditional classes. Through the lecture-recital project which each cohort member undertakes, singers choose and rehearse literature and conduct research, offering short presentations at their schools and in the community that highlight music that is meaningful to them and the classical music world. During the first year of Shared Voices, cohort members performed art songs, arias, and spiritual arrangements by William Grant Still, Florence Price, Undine Smith Moore, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, H. Leslie Adams, and others. They explored the careers of iconic performers including Robert McFerrin Sr., Dorothy Maynor, John McHenry Boatwright, Mary Cardwell Dawson, and Fred Thomas.
Selected through audition and nomination by their faculty, our inaugural cohort of 16 classical vocal artists from 8 institutions came together on September 30, 2022 to launch Shared Voices at the historic Howard University. This was the first time the cohort members had met in person, and it was a day filled with performances, informational sessions, and, out of the public eye, private time with Ms. Graves. The first year of Shared Voices provided opportunities for these driven and talented musicians to work with and learn from industry leaders including Peter McClintock, Markus Beam, and Fredara Hadley; sing on masterclasses with Pierre Vallet, Myra Huang, and Melissa Wegner; perform at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture; and appear with Ms. Graves on ABC’s Good Morning America. We celebrated the successes of our cohort members as they earned positions with prestigious training programs including Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Aspen Music Festival, and the Castleton Vocal Immersion Program; placed and won state, regional, and national competitions; and gave riveting performances at their institutions.
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The second year of Shared Voices launched from the Johns Hopkins Peabody Institute at the end of September, 2023, with the DGF Symposium, a weekend of classes, lectures, discussions, and masterclasses, created to help each singer prepare for the rigors of a career in opera. The Symposium also featured a mock audition with a stellar panel that included Francesca Zambello, Julia Cooke, Damien Sneed, Ryan Taylor, and Maestro Jun Kim.
Classical Singer Magazine has been, from its inception, a resource created by singers for singers. Building on that philosophy, DGF is proud to offer compelling articles written by members of the Shared Voices cohort. Topics will be as varied as our emerging artists and will include articles about the life and music of William Grant Still; the experiences of one tenor who, after months of singing with illness, underwent a tonsillectomy; and the connections one singer made when performing the music of W. A. Mozart and Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. We invite you to not only read these upcoming articles, but engage with our writers. Learning about and from each other is a fundamental part of the Shared Voices program, a part our cohort members want to share with you.
