A Call for Letters to America
A 50th Anniversary Project of the Durham Symphony Orchestra
In conjunction with the DSO performance of Green’s Letters to America, and together with its partners, the DSO is inviting submissions of “letters to America” capturing the varied experiences of Black Womanhood. Authors will be invited to join one of two Her Voice Matters workshops, led by North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green and Brittany J. Green. The Her Voice Matters workshops will provide safe, supportive spaces in which to explore the themes arising from the letters, to discuss literary craft, and to experience meaningful, empowering, and community-building possibilities. Letters will be featured at the DSO’s May 6th concert and other platforms and authors will receive two complimentary tickets to the May 6th concert.
March 26, 2pm Pauli Murray Center, Workshop 1, submit by March 22.
April 22, 7pm Hayti Heritage Center, Workshop 2, submit by April 20.
The Letters to America Project is the culminating event of the Durham Symphony’s 50th Anniversary season, anticipating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The centerpiece of the concert is Green’s Letters to America, co-commissioned by the DSO and featuring Grammy Award-winning soprano Karen Slack. The DSO performance follows the world premiere in Carnegie Hall. In conceiving the work, Green and Slack ask: What would America look like if it listened to the voices of Black women? What would it feel like? What beauty would emerge from the pain, frustration, and radical imagination of Black women if their voices were heard, valued, and uplifted?
The Her Voice Matters salons will provide safe, supportive spaces in which to explore the themes arising from the letters, to discuss literary craft, and to experience meaningful, empowering, and community-building possibilities. The goal is to explore and celebrate Black womanhood intergenerationally, allowing the letters to reach beyond individual narratives and to showcase the lives of Black women in all their fraught complexities. Selected letters will be displayed in the lobby at the performance, printed in the concert program, and posted to the DSO website and other outlets in and around Durham. The goal is for this project to have a life well beyond the performance, in both time and space. The letters will serve as a legacy of the voices of Black women in this moment, uplifting many voices: enslaved ancestors, freedwomen, queer women, religious leaders, community leaders, artists, political and cultural activists, as well as unborn generations of daughters. The results will be a celebration prioritizing Black women’s history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in our communities.
We hope that you will respond to our invitation, joining us at one of the three Her Voice Matters workshops and coming to hear the May 6 th Durham Symphony performance!
For submission details and other information click here.
Program
Georges Bizet: Act 1 Prelude from Carmen
William Henry Curry: Symphony: Dark Testament (world premiere)
Brittany J. Green: Letters to America
Karen Slack, Soprano
I. Dawn, stolen
II. Dear America
III. Black Like Me
IV. Black Pearls
Intermission
Dvorak: Symphony 9 “From the New World”
I. Adagio – Allegro molto
II. Largo
III. Scherzo, Molto Vivace
IV. Allegro con fuoco
Artists
Brittany J. Green (she/her; b. 1991) is a North Carolina-based composer, performer, and educator. Described as “a creative force of attention-seizing versatility” (The Washington Post) and “cinematic in the best sense” (Chicago Classical Review), Brittany’s music works to facilitate collaborative, intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses. The intersections between sound, video, movement, and text serves as the focal point of these musical spaces, often questioning and redefining the relationships between these three elements.
Brittany’s music has been featured at concerts and festivals worldwide including Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, World Saxophone Congress, New York City Electronic Music Festival, the American Piano Awards, and performances at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, the DiMenna Center, and Miller Theater. Her collaborators include Rebekah Heller, Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and JACK Quartet. Brittany has held residencies with the Louisville Orchestra, Copland House, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. The 2025-2026 season includes the Saykaly Garbulinska Composer Residency with Lexington Philharmonic, a collaboration with the New York Philharmonic for Dudamel Conducts Eroica and The People United, An Experiment in Voices at Tanglewood with poet Aracelis Girmay and violist Ashleigh Gordon, and Letters to America at Carnegie Hall with GRAMMY-award winning soprano Karen Slack and the American Composers Orchestra.
Brittany’s research explores the work of Julius Eastman, engaging methodologies from music theory, critical theory, and queer theory and situating it in a lineage of Black experimentalism and as a site of radical imagination and resistance. Additional research interests include investigating sound as a site of strategic opacity in the Black Church and engaging MaxMSP as a tool for developing creativity and design principles in K-12 Music Education. She has presented research at the North Carolina Music Educators Association Conference, Society of Composers Inc. National Conference, Darkwater Women in Music Festival, and East Carolina University’s Research and Creative Arts Week.
Brittany is a member of The Recording Academy, and Society of Composers, Inc., and holds awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Charles Ives Scholarship), ASCAP Foundation (Morton Gould Award), New Music USA (Creator Development Grant), and Alarm Will Sound (Matt Marks Impact Fund). Brittany holds degrees from UNC-Pembroke (BM Music Education), East Carolina University (MM Composition and Theory), and Duke University (AM Music Composition; Ph.D Music Composition). Brittany teaches composition and music theory at East Carolina University. In her free time she enjoys reading poetry, line dancing, video games, watching basketball, and spending time in front of the bonfire with family and friends.
Jaki Shelton Green, ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina appointed in 2018, is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. Some of her recognitions include Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List, 2021 UNC Chapel Hill Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence, 2021 recipient of the George School Outstanding Alumni Award, 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2019 North Carolina Humanities Council Caldwell Award, 2014 Induction into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, 2009 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate appointment, 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature.
Jaki Shelton Green recently retired as professor of documentary poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies. Her publications include Dead on Arrival, Masks, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, published by Blair Publishers. Feeding the Light, i want to undie you, The Communion of White Dresses published by Jacar Press, i want to undie you English /Italian bilingual edition published by Lebeg Publishers of Rome Italy. Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst, produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records and released a CD, i want to undie you in 2021.
Jaki Shelton Green is the owner of SistaWRITE providing writing retreats for women writers in Sedona Arizona, Martha’s Vineyard Massachusetts, Ocracoke North Carolina, Northern Morocco, The Loire Valley France, and Ireland. She has been involved with numerous public art collaborations and projects including the Dix Park Conservancy, City of Asheville Nasty Branch Riverwalk Project, visual artist Monique Luck, North Carolina African American Heritage Commission Africa to Carolina Art Installation.
Her poetry has been commissioned, performed, choreographed, and translated into symphonies, film, and paintings by visual artists, dance companies, and musicians including Flutronix, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, The Art Project of Chicago, The New York City Girls Choir, composers Louise Toppin and Regina Harris Baiocchi, Dr. Brittany Green, Wichita Falls Symphony, Wichita, Tx., Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, Duke University Black Music Lab Project, the Miami City Ballet, the Justice Project Theater, Murmurations Dance Company, Choreodance Company, Elon University Dance Department, Chuck Davis African American Dance Company at the Kennedy Center, DancaNova at Naropa Institute Two Near the Edge Dance Company, North Carolina State University Dance Department, North Carolina Central University Dance Department, jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon, North Carolina State University Craft Center, Gregg Museum of Art and Design, Moroccan Ministry of Education, The Mint Museum, of Charlotte, Charlotte Lit. Other collaborations include serving as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art (2021-2024), the History Museum of Charlotte, the Blowing Rock Arts and History Museum. Additionally, she serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine.
Praised as “one of opera’s strongest voices at present – both as a singer and a shaper of its culture” (The Washington Post), GRAMMY® Award-winning soprano Karen Slack is celebrated as both an extraordinary performer and a change-maker in classical music.
Recently, Slack has been on a nationwide tour for her critically-acclaimed African Queens, which continues into her 25-26 season, including an orchestral version presented by the Naples Philharmonic in Naples, Florida. Slack’s season engagements include world premieres of Tamar-kali’s new work with the Miró Quartet for the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of Kathryn Bostic’s Drag, and Brittany J. Green’s Letters to America, part of American Composers Orchestra’s program Hello, America: Letters to Us, from Us. She also appears with the Orlando Philharmonic, Chamber Music Cincinnati, and Spivey Hall.
Slack’s Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price with pianist Michelle Cann in collaboration with ONEcomposer on Azica Records won the 2025 GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. In 2025, Slack was featured on Shawn Okpebholo’s album Songs in Flight, released with Cedille Records.
Slack has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Scottish Opera and many others. In concert, her credits include the Melbourne and Sydney symphonies, Bergen Philharmonic, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, and Philadelphia Orchestra. She made her New York Philharmonic debut in May 2024.
A recipient of the 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence and 2025 MPower Artist Grant, Slack is an Artistic Advisor for Portland Opera, serves on the board of the American Composers Orchestra, and holds a faculty position at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. In the 2024-2025 season, she served as Artist-in-Residence at both Lyric Opera of Chicago and Babson College.
A native Philadelphian, Slack is a graduate of the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, as well as the Adler Fellowship and the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera. Learn more at www.karenslack.com.
Maestro William Henry Curry was appointed Music Director of the Durham Symphony Orchestra in May 2009. From 1996 to 2016, he was the Resident Conductor and Summerfest Artistic Director of the North Carolina Symphony (NCS). He has also held Resident Conductor positions with the Baltimore Symphony, the New Orleans Symphony, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and has served as Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony.
After attending the Oberlin Conservatory, Curry became Assistant Conductor of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra and subsequently embarked on a career conducting major orchestras in the U.S. and overseas. His engagements have included the Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Detroit, and Atlanta Symphonies as well as the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Thailand, and the National Orchestra of Taiwan. In 1988, he was unanimously named winner of the prestigious Leopold Stokowski conducting competition.
His opera engagements have included the New York City Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Chicago Opera Theatre. In 2022, he made his debut with the North Carolina Opera in the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s opera Sanctuary Road. His recording of Anthony Davis’s opera X: the Life and Times of Malcolm X, recently revived at the Metropolitan Opera, was nominated for a Grammy Award. Ballet engagements have included performances of The Nutcracker with the New York City Ballet and the Charlotte Ballet. His own compositions are widely performed, and his Eulogy for a Dream (setting text from Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches) has been performed by over two dozen orchestras around the world and broadcast nationally. In 2022, his UNC-Chapel Hill commission, Dark Testament, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
A champion of American music, Maestro Curry has conducted premieres by (among others) Joseph Schwantner, William Bolcolm, Lukas Foss, and Adolphus Hailstork. And he has worked with a range of artists from Aaron Copland and John Williams to Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald.
In addition, Curry has been a teacher and mentor for young musicians at the Peabody Conservatory, the Baltimore School of Arts, and many music schools in the state of North Carolina. In his role as Resident Conductor of the NCS, he conducted over a thousand concerts for NC public school students, and he has taught music appreciation via William Peace University and the Olli-at-Duke adult education series.
In 2024, Curry joined the board of the North Carolina Arts Council and received the prestigious Governor’s Award (the State’s highest civilian honor) from Governor Roy Cooper. In December 2024, he received an Honorary Doctorate from UNC Greensboro in recognition of his extraordinary career and accomplishments. His memoirs are forthcoming from Indiana University Press.
Kristi Vincent Johnson is a Louisiana-born author, filmmaker, and choreographer whose work lives at the intersection of dance, film, and cultural storytelling. Her screen-based practice translates movement into narrative film through collaboration, site-responsive inquiry, and engagement with the lived experiences of Black communities.
Her dance films I Want to Ask the Trees and The Communion of White Dresses, inspired by the poetry of North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, have screened at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, San Francisco Arthouse Film Festival, and the Tryon Film Festival. Her work is recognized for its visual rigor and commitment to community-centered storytelling.
A 2021 North Carolina Campus Compact Engaged Faculty Scholar and 2024 Choreographic Fellow at Trillium Arts, Johnson holds an MFA from Texas Christian University and a doctorate from UNC Greensboro. She serves as Assistant Professor and Director of Dance at North Carolina Central University.