At War With Ourselves Preview Performance

Friday, April 3, 2020 – 7:30 p.m.

This concert is free and open to the public.

Michael Abels, composer

Nikky Finney, librettist

Performed by Kronos Quartet, members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and singers from the University of South Carolina.

The Kronos Quartet, perhaps the most legendary group in contemporary music, makes their Southern Exposure debut. Along with a choir led by conductor Valérie Sainte-Agathe, featuring members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and singers from the University of South Carolina, the acclaimed string quartet will perform At War With Ourselves, a major new evening-length work about race relations, social justice, and civil rights by composer Michael Abels and librettist Nikky Finney. This preview performance culminates of week of workshopping the piece at UofSC in preparation for its premiere in San Francisco. The concert also concludes a week of University-wide events about the intersection of music and race relations.

Based in Los Angeles, Abels is best known for his critically lauded score for the 2017 horror film Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele. A National Book Award-winning South Carolina native, Finney is currently the John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters at UofSC. The starting point for the development of At War With Ourselves will be Finney’s 2013 poem “The Battle of and for the Black Face Boy,” which she described as being “made of Civil War history, Black history, and modern American headlines.”

At War With Ourselves is being created with funding from a Hewlett Foundation 50 Arts Commission and the MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional co-commissioning support is provided by ASU Gammage at Arizona State University, Hancher Auditorium – The University of Iowa, Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, SFJAZZ, and University of South Carolina.