ON OUR TOES IN THE HAMPTONS: BUILDING OUR HEAVEN

Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, playwright, organizer, and educator is a 2022Kennedy Center Next 50 Fellow,the inaugural Distinguished Writer in Residence at Wesleyan University, a MacDowell Arts Advocacy Awardee, a NAACP Image Award nominess and a New York Emmy nominee for How to Build a City (All Arts). Browne has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Arts for Justice, Baldwin for the Arts, Hawthorden, Mellon Research, Rauschenberg, UCross, and more.

Her acclaimed books include Vinyl Moon; Chlorine Sky (optioned by Steppenwolf Theatre); Black Girl Magic; and the frequently challenged works Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice and Woke Baby. She is also the founder of the Woke Baby Book Fair, a national celebration of diverse children’s literature.

Browne’s poetry collection Chrome Valley, praised by The New York Times and Publishers Weekly, won the 2024 Paterson Poetry Prize; and she is the recipient of the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. Her most recent young adult novel, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Browne holds an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Marymount Manhattan College and serves as the inaugural Poet-in-Residence at Lincoln Center.

Damien LeChateau Sneed is an Emmy- and Dove Award–winning composer, conductor, music

director, producer, performing artist, arts educator, orchestrator, scholar, minister, and cultural strategist whose life and work stand at the intersection of sacred authority, classical excellence, media fluency, and institutional leadership. Widely regarded as one of the most consequential multi-hyphenate artists of his generation, Sneed’s career moves seamlessly between the sanctuary and stage, the conservatory and concert hall, the broadcast studio and opera house, embodying a vocation that is at once artistic, theological, pedagogical, and civic in scope.

Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, Sneed’s musical and spiritual formation began in the Black church. This early immersion in sacred sound—spirituals, hymns, gospel traditions, and charismatic worship—formed the bedrock of his artistic imagination and continues to shape his understanding of music as both testimony and calling.

A proud son of Howard University where he earned his bachelor’s degree, Sneed also completed a master’s program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and undertook doctoral studies in orchestral conducting at the University of Southern California. He has collaborated with an extraordinary range of artists, including Aretha Franklin, Jessye Norman, Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Ashford & Simpson, Jennifer Holliday, Faith Evans, Lawrence Brownlee, Denyce Graves, and J’Nai Bridges. He has served as music director for Grammy Award–winning gospel artists, including Richard Smallwood, Yolanda Adams, Hezekiah Walker, Marvin Sapp, Elbernita “Twinkie” Clark, Karen Clark Sheard, and Kim Burrell. He is a 2014 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient, a 2020 Dove Award winner, and a 2021 NAACP Image Award winner for his work as a featured producer and writer on The Clark Sisters’ The Return.

Sneed is the founder and artistic director of Chorale Le Chateau, a professional vocal ensemble that is internationally recognized for its vivid interpretations of repertoire that spans Renaissance sacred works, art song, jazz, spirituals, gospel, symphonic collaborations, and contemporary idioms. Under his leadership, the ensemble became the principal choral force for Wynton Marsalis’s monumental Abyssinian Mass: A Gospel Celebra7on. Sneed’s work extended beyond performance into broadcast history as conductor, music director, producer, and on- camera creative voice for the Emmy-winning PBS documentary Everyone Has a Place. His other television credits include music director of BET’s Sunday Best (season four), Celebra7on of Gospel, Bobby Jones Gospel, Joyful Noise, and the Soul Train Music Awards.

As a composer, Sneed has emerged as one of the leading voices shaping sacred and socially engaged classical music in the 21st century. His commissions include Empower (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Marian’s Song (Houston Grand Opera), The Tongue & The Lash (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), Testament (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater), and a 2023 iteration of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis).

In April 2025, Sneed’s orchestral work Reflec7ons of Resilience: Five Spirituals received its world premiere at Carnegie Hall Isaac Stern Auditorium – Perelman Stage, performed by the Gateways Festival Orchestra and multiple Grammy Award–winning mezzo soprano J’Nai Bridges. The work reimagines the spiritual tradition through symphonic language, honoring its origins while expanding its expressive and orchestral possibilities.

His chamber opera The Tongue & The Lash, created with librettist Karen Chilton, was inspired by the historic James Baldwin–William F. Buckley debate in 1965 in Cambridge and delves into the timeless and urgent questions of race, privilege, and morality in America. This moving opera, grounded in prophetic scripture, will be mounted again by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on March 19, 2026.

As a record label founder, recording artist, and producer, Sneed has built a discography that documents his multi-genre work in classical, jazz-inflected, sanctified soul, and other hybrid musical forms on his boutique label, LeChateau Earl Records. Through his production company, LeChateau Entertainment, he conceives, produces, and releases recordings and multimedia projects for major institutions, networks, and partners. Kaleidoscope—his next project with Apple Music—is scheduled for release this June. It features works by a constellation of Black composers—Robert Nathaniel Ded, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Hale Smith, Scott Joplin, and Richard Smallwood—alongside Sneed’s own composition commissioned by the Library of Congress, placed in conversation with other composers such as Beethoven, Gurlitt, and Copland.

Sneed serves as a tenured associate professor at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts and is also on the faculty of The Juilliard School. For more information – visit damiensneed.com.

Kevin Thompson, acclaimed by the New York Times as a “stentorian bass”, “possesses a voice with extraordinary range, depth, color combined with a commanding stage presence…a mountain of a voice, with resonance from the Escorial of Philip II to the throne of Boris Godunov, and the majestic court of Sarastro…” (San Francisco Classical Voice).

This season 2025-2026, he returns to Washington National Opera as Antonio in Le nozze di Figaro, debuts Herny in Jake Haggie’s Intelligence at Virginia Opera, and brings two signature roles Timur to Detroit Music Hall in Turandot, and the Bonze to Fort Worth Opera for their Madama Butterfly. This summer, he will sing Don Basilio Il Barbiere di Siviglia with  Charlotteville Opera.  Last season, Mr. Thompson joined Florentine Opera as the Bonze in Madama Butterfly, Washington Opera Society as the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Opera Southwest for Verdi’s Requiem, Eureka Symphony for Messiah, Colline in La Boheme in Puglia, Italy, and Man in Window/ Old Man Youth/ Convict at Bard Music Festival for Martinů's Julietta. 

In recent seasons, the acclaimed bass performed and reprised his performances of Il Commendatore in Don Giovanni for Opera Colorado and San Antonio Opera, Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail for Opera Grand Rapids, and Il Re in Aida with Fort Worth Opera. Mr. Thompson has made house debuts at Atlanta Opera as Charles Jenkins in Forsyth County is Flooding, with Washington National Opera in Elektra, as both Der Pfleger des Orest and Ein Alter Diener, Utah Opera in Rigoletto as Sparafucile, as well as the Duke of Verona in Roméo et Juliette for Dallas Opera. He has sung the King/ Baobab/ Hunter in The Little Prince with Utah Opera, Timur in Turandot with Fargo Moorhead Opera, and he sang Father Truelove in The Rake’s Progress with Lakes Area Music Festival; the Old Hebrew in Samson et Dalila with Bob Jones Opera; Sparafucile in Rigoletto with Nashville Opera; the First Nazarene in Salome with Tulsa Opera; Oroveso in Norma with Festival Opera; and he was seen in the world premiere of Southern Crossingsby Zaid Jabri at Barnard College in New York City; Odyssey Opera he performed Rachmaninoff’s Troika: The Old Gyspy in Aleko, Ivan in The Miserly Knight, and The Ghost of Virgil in Francesca da Rimini; Canterbury in Saint-Saëns’ Henry VIII and Pistol in Vaughan Williams’ Sir John in Love; the Old Hebrew in Samson et Dalila with Bob Jones Opera; Oroveso in Norma with Festival Opera; Sparafucile in Rigoletto with Nashville Opera; and the First Nazarene in Salome with Tulsa Opera; He has sung in two world premiere of Southern Crossings by Zaid Jabri at Barnard College in New York City and as Church Jenkins in Forsyth County is Flooding with Atlanta Opera.

In concert Mr. Thompson has scenes as the title role in Boito’s Mefistofele with Opera Omaha for the Opera Outdoors Concert; he sang Verdi’s Requiem and Opera Gems Gala Concert with Roanoke Opera; Verdi’s Requiem with Chautauqua Symphony; Idaho Civic Symphony, he sang Mozart Requiem with St. Louis Symphony and Eureka Symphony; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with The Florida Orchestra; Missa Solemonis with The Washington Chorus and the Trinty Church Wall Street NYC and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with The Florida Orchestra. Solo Concert engagements includes Bass Arias in Concert with Johnson City Symphony and Special guest artist with the Mobile Symphony’s annual Christmas concert.

In the pandemic season of 2020/2021, Mr. Thompson made his debut in Bulgaria with Ruse State Opera singing the role of Polonius in the world premiere of Hamlet by Joseph Summer. In the same season, Thompson was seen in Rigoletto twice: as Sparafucile with Shreveport Opera, and as Monterone with Tulsa Opera. Thompson also joined Tulsa Opera for their Greenwood Overcomes concert, in addition to engagements with Pocono Mountains Music Festival and Opera Omaha.

Mr. Thompson has performed in opera houses and concert venues throughout the world, under the baton of many an esteemed conductor, including Austria, Bulgaria, China, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, South America, Switzerland, and the United States. Thompson has made debuts with New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, New Orleans Opera, Tulsa Opera, Opera Carolina, Bard Opera, National Philharmonic, The Florida Symphony, Opera Santa Barbara, Odyssey Opera, Hannover Staatsoper, Fundación Teatro Nacional Sucre in Ecuador, Teatro Verdi Trieste, Hong Kong Opera, Teatro Regio Parma, Ruse State Opera, Theater Kiel, the Gasteig in Munich, and the Wexford Opera.

Many of Mr. Thompson’s previous roles include: Ramfis and Il Re (Aida); Osmin (Die Entführung as dem Serail); Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte); Mephistophélès (Faust); Oroveso (Norma); Sparafucile and Monterone (Rigoletto); Grand Inquisitor (Don Carlos); Banco (Macbeth); Lodovico (Otello); Il Commendatore (Don Giovanni); Raimondo (Lucia di Lammermoor); Don Basilio (Il Barbiere di Siviglia); The Old Gypsy (Aleko); Colline (La Boheme); Judge Turpin (Sweeney Todd); Ned (Treemonisha); El Captain (Florencia en el Amazonas); Hans Schwartz (Die Meistersinger); and Stefano Colona (Rienzi). As a concert soloist, Thompson’s engagements have included Verdi’sRequiem; Mozart’s Requiem; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Missa Solemnis, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater; Haydn’s The Creation and the Lord Nelson Mass; and Stravinsky’s Les Noces.

Mr. Thompson was born in Washington, D.C. He is an alumnus of The Juilliard School in New York, San Francisco Opera’s prestigious Merola Program, and the Santa Fe Opera Program. Recordings include Verdi’s Requiem with Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra, Haggadah shel Pesach by Dessau with the American Symphony Orchestra, Thy will be done by Rice with the National Choral Society, Polonius in Joseph Summer’s Hamlet and as King Soliman in Gounod’s La Reine de Saba with Odyssey Opera. Visit www.KevinThompsonBass.com for additional information.

Photo: Kevin Master

Angela Renée Simpson is a celebrated soprano, educator, and arts advocate whose dynamic career spans national and international opera stages, arts institutions, and leadership in nonprofit service. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Freeport, NY, she pursued a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance degree at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, CUNY, where she laid the foundation for her future as a world-class artist. Her commanding portrayal of Serena in Porgy and Bess has brought her to acclaimed venues including Teatro alla Scala, Washington National Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Carnegie Hall, establishing her as one of the foremost interpreters of operatic repertoire.

Angela’s passion for vocal education is equally distinguished. As a sought-after teacher and mentor, she has guided hundreds of students—from aspiring high school vocalists to working professionals—through her private studio and work at institutions like the Charlotte Academy of Music. She specializes in college audition preparation, vocal technique, and career readiness, with an emphasis on empowering emerging Black classical singers.

In addition to her artistic and teaching work, Ms. Simpson has been an active member of the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA) serving on the Board of Directors for more than 12 years, and as Vice Chair since 2022. She also leads CAAPA’s signature national initiative as Program Director of the George Shirley Masterclass Series, which provides free recitals and campus-based masterclasses for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Under her leadership, the Series has grown in reach and impact, building meaningful collaborations across the country and offering life-changing exposure to professional coaching and performance opportunities.

Angela also hosts the podcast Juicy Interludes with Angela, where she shares behind- the-scenes stories, creative reflections, and inspiring conversations centered around artistry, personal evolution, and legacy-building. Known for her vocal brilliance, visionary leadership, and deep care for the future of classical music, Angela Renée Simpson remains a vital force in shaping both the performance and education landscape of the performing arts.

Founded by Ronald K. Brown in 1985 and based in Brooklyn, New York, EVIDENCE, A DANCE COMPANY, integrates African dance with contemporary choreography, music, and spoken word.  In the four decades since the company’s founding, Brown has created a rich and diverse body of work that is significant in its pioneering blend of classic and traditional forms. Additionally, Brown is one of the nation’s most celebrated choreographers.  He has created over 30 works for EVIDENCE, and has garnered commissions from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, The Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, Ballet Hispanico, Malpaso Dance Company, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Jennifer Muller/The Works, Jeune Ballet d’Afrique Noire, and Harlem Stage, to name a few. The company’s repertory holds many treasures, but perhaps none more luminous than Brown’s masterpiece Grace, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2025. Today the company tours extensively in the US, reaching annual audiences of more than 25,000, and globally including visits to Cuba, Brazil, France, Mexico, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Through a profoundly unique repertory of dance works and community-based, intergenerational education programs, Brown’s work is designed to empower, educate and connect.  EVIDENCE works in partnership with the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, The Billie Holiday Theatre, and The Joyce Theater Foundation. 

Photo: J. Boogie Love

Founded in 1968 by visionary artist Dr. Barbara Ann Teer, National Black Theatre (NBT) is a Tony-nominated cultural institution with a pioneering legacy in American theatre and a national reputation for producing bold new work by Black artists. In 2023, NBT made Broadway history with the transfer and co-production of James Ijames’s Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated Fat Ham, becoming only the third Black theatre company to bring a production from Off Broadway to Broadway. The following season, NBT produced the Tony Award-winning revival of Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious, marking its first Tony-winning Broadway production. Across its history, NBT has collaborated with and championed transformative artists from James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Ruby Dee to contemporary visionaries including Nona Hendryx and Bill T. Jones, while also helping launch the careers of influential voices such as Dominique Morisseau. NBT has invested more than $10 million in over 350 original works by Black artists and has earned major industry recognition, including an Emmy nomination, multiple New York Times Critics’ Picks, and Obie, Lucille Lortel, Audelco, and Drama Desk honors. Its legacy is preserved within the permanent collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Portrait Gallery. Under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Sade Lythcott and Executive Artistic Director Jonathan McCrory, NBT continues to expand its national presence on and off Broadway while building a major new cultural arts center in Harlem at 125th Street and 5th Avenue.

The Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts believes that the classical arts flourish when they reflect all voices—and when the Black diaspora is seen, heard, and celebrated. Our vision: “Bringing COLOR to the CLASSICS™.” We are dedicated to making the classical performing arts accessible to the Black community through education, performance, and community engagement.

From neighborhood libraries and senior centers to celebrated concert halls, CAAPA creates spaces where multigenerational audiences and Black composers, musicians, and scholars come together in excellence and inspiration. More than performance, we are about transformation—building pathways for artists, learners, and audiences to explore, create, and thrive in the classical arts.

Founded in 2002 and growing into a vibrant nonprofit rooted in the DMV and beyond, CAAPA stands on four key values: Creativity • Community • Education • Collaboration. We invite you to join us—to experience the music, to deepen your connection to culture, and to help us foster a world where Black classical performing arts not only survive, but truly thrive