The First Bluebird in the Morning

Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism.

Mr. Simon was named as one of the recipients for the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence. The Sphinx Medal of Excellence is the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, recognizing extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians. Along with a $50,000 career grant, Sphinx annually awards the Medals of Excellence to three artists who, early in their career, demonstrate artistic excellence, outstanding work ethic, a spirit of determination, and an ongoing commitment to leadership and their communities. His latest album, My Ancestor's Gift, was released on the Navona Records label in April 2018. Described as an “overall driving force” (Review Graveyard) and featured on Apple Music’s “Albums to Watch”, My Ancestor's Gift incorporates spoken word and historic recordings to craft a multifaceted program of musical works that are inspired as much by the past as they are the present. 

As a part of the Sundance Institute, Mr. Simon was named as a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow in 2018. His string quartet, Elegy, honoring the lives of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner was recently performed at the Kennedy Center for the Mason Bates JFK Jukebox Series. With support from the US Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation, Simon traveled with the Asia/America New Music Institute (AANMI) on a two-week tour of Japan in 2018 performing concerts in some of the most sacred temples and concert spaces in Japan including Suntory Hall in Tokyo,  Japan.  Other recent accolades include being a Composer Fellow at the Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music, winning the Underwood Emerging Composer Commission from the American Composers Orchestra in 2016, the prestigious Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Award in 2015, and the Presser Award from the Theodore Presser Foundation in 2015. He has also served as a contributing arranger for the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation's Music by Black Composers series for violin.

Recent commissions have come from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Reno Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, Arizona State University Symphony Orchestra, Irving Klein String Competition, Morehouse College celebrating its 150th founding anniversary, the University of Michigan Symphony Band celebrating the university’s 200th anniversary, Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire (American Music Festival) as well as serving as the young composer-in-residence with the the Detroit Chamber String and Winds in 2016. Mr. Simon’s music has been performed by Tony Arnold, the Third Angle New Music Ensemble, Hub New Music Ensemble, the Asian/American New Music Institute, the Flint Symphony, the Color of Music Festival, University of North Texas Symphony Band, University of Miami Symphony Band, Georgia State University Wind Ensemble and many other professional performance organizations. His piece, Let America Be America Again (text by Langston Hughes) is scheduled to be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary chronicling the inaugural Gabriela Lena Frank Academy of Music. He has served as a member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and now serves as Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. 

Acting as music director and keyboardist for Grammy Award winner Jennifer Holliday, Carlos Simon has performed with the Boston Pops Symphony, Jackson Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony. He has toured internationally with soul Grammy-nominated artist, Angie Stone, and performed throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. 

Mr. Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. Additionally, he studied in Baden, Austria at the Hollywood Music Workshop with Conrad Pope and at New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop. 

Carlos Simon is a member of many music organizations including ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), where he was honored as one of the "Composers to Watch" in 2015 and will take part in the ASCAP Film Music Workshop in Los Angeles, California in 2019. He is also an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Music Sinfonia Fraternity and a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Society of Composers International, and Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society. His compositions have been published by the Gregorian Institute of America (GIA) Publications and Hal Leonard Publications.

Sandra Seaton is a playwright and librettist. Her plays have been performed in cities throughout the country, and her libretto for the solo opera From the Diary of Sally Hemings, set to music by composer William Bolcom and commissioned by mezzo soprano Florence Quivar,  has been performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall and  the Kennedy Center. In a review of the solo opera’s premiere at the Library of Congress, Seaton’s text was praised by the Washington Post for its “subtle, penetrating power.” A CD of From The Diary of Sally Hemings, with soprano Alyson Cambridge and pianist Lydia Brown, is available from White Pine Music and Hal Leonard. Seaton’s one-woman drama Sally, in which an aged Sally Hemings recalls her life with Jefferson, starred Zabryna Guevara as Sally Hemings.

In 2019 Seaton received a commission from the Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative with composer Carlos Simon to create a libretto for an original work Night Trip about a young woman’s life-changing journey to the South to visit her relatives. In January^,2020, the opera premiered at the Kennedy Center. A review in the Washington Post singled out “Seaton’s candid, vernacular text” for “gradually revealing dramatic and poetic substance.”

Seaton’s other works include a spoken word piece, King: A Reflection on the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with spirituals sung by Metropolitan Opera tenor George Shirley and the song cycle Vegetarian Wedding with composer Erik Santos.

Among her twelve plays, The Bridge Party, Seaton’s first play, has been anthologized in Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women. The play, set in Tennessee, portrays a group of black women whose weekly bridge game is interrupted by news of a lynching.  Ruby Dee starred in a performance at the University of Michigan. Seaton’s play The Will, a drama about a black Tennessee family during Reconstruction, and her Civil Rights era play Music History, about African-American college students, have been performed widely and included in a number of college courses.

Seaton’s Chicago Trilogy, three one-act plays: A Chance Meeting, The Lookout, and Black for Dinner, are based on short stories by the African American Chicago writer Cyrus Colter.

In 2020 at the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, Call Me By My Name, Seaton’s performance piece about Henrietta Lacks, starring Tracey Bonner, was performed at the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival. In 2021 her play with music, The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, starring Denyce Graves, with original music by Carlos Simon, premiered at the Glimmerglass Festival. In 2022 her ploratoria, Dreamland: Tulsa 1921, with composer Marques L.A. Garrett, will premiere with Dallas’s Turtle Creek Chorale and travel to Carnegie Hall in July 2022.  The First Bluebird in the Morning, with composer Carlos Simon, premiered with LA Opera in September 2021.  

For more information, go to SandraSeaton.com.

Jamar Roberts is the Resident Choreographer of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where he also danced as a company member from 2002 to2021. Roberts has made four works on the company, all to critical acclaim: Members Don’t Get Weary (December 2016), Ode (December 2019), A Jam Session for Troubling Times (December 2020) and Holding Space (May 2021). He has also set his work entitled Gemeos on Ailey II.

Mr. Roberts is a graduate of the New World School of the Arts and the Ailey School and has danced for AAADT, Ailey II, and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Mr. Roberts won the 2016 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer and has performed as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London and made multiple television performance appearances.

He has been commissioned by the Vail Dance Festival, the Juilliard School Dance Division for both live and virtual works, New York City Ballet, the March on Washington Film Festival to create a dance on film tribute to the Honorable John Lewis, New York City Center’s 2020 Virtual Fall for Dance Festival, and as a Works and Process at the Guggenheim Virtual Commissioned artist where he created the acclaimed short work on film entitled Cooped. His latest creation on film at Works and Process at the Guggenheim entitled A Chronicle of a Pivot at a Point in Time premiered on film in the summer of 2021 and will be restaged for a live performance in the near future.

He was most recently featured on the cover of Dance Magazine in June of 2021, having previously been on the cover in June 2013 and being named “25 to Watch” in 2007. His next work will premiere on New York City Ballet in 2022.

Lloyd Knight is a principal dancer for the Martha Graham Dance Company, which he joined in 2005. He performs the major male roles of the Graham repertory, including those in Appalachian Spring, Embattled Garden, Night Journey and many others. Dance Magazine named him one of the “Top 25 Dancers to Watch” in 2010 and one of the best performers of 2015.

Mr. Knight has starred with ballet greats Wendy Whelan and Misty Copeland in signature Graham duets and has had roles created for him by such renowned artists as Nacho Duato and Pam Tanowitz. He is currently a principal guest artist for the Royal Ballet of Flanders directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

Born in England and raised in Miami, he trained at Miami Conservatory of Ballet and New World School of the Arts.

During the 2020/21 season, British-American tenor Joshua Blue will sing Rinuccio in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. He was scheduled to make a return to Washington National Opera to sing the role of Jacquino in Beethoven’s Fidelio conducted by Robert Spano and directed by Francesca Zambello; perform Beethoven’s Symphony #9 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center and Oberlin Conservatory of Music; and sing Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Jacksonville Symphony and Eugene Symphony led by Francesco Lecce-Chong.

In the 2019/20 season, Mr. Blue performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Thomas Wilkins, for the opening festival of The Reach at the Kennedy Center. Opera engagements featured role debuts as Tamino in the Maurice Sendak production of The Magic Flute with Washington National Opera in addition to scheduled roles of Alfred in Die Fledermaus at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni with the Berkshire Opera Festival. Additional performances at Washington National Opera included singing the role of the Philistine Messenger in Samson and Delilah, conducted by John Fiore, and a contract to perform Man 1 in the D.C premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s Blue directed by the work’s librettist, Tazewell Thompson. Concerts last season marked a return to Carnegie Hall to join Musica Sacra for Handel’s Messiah; his first performances in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with the Florida Orchestra; and the premiere of a fascinating new program called T'ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do: Songs from Gay Harlem with the New York Festival of Song with pianist Steven Blier.

​Highlights of the 2018/19 season for Mr. Blue included debuts at the Kennedy Center as Alfredo in La Traviata with Washington National Opera led by Renato Palumbo and Act I of La Bohème in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Gianandrea Noseda. He joined Wolf Trap Opera to sing the role of Harlekin in Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis conducted by Geoffrey McDonald and traveled to Japan to cover the role of Monsieur Triquet in Eugene Onegin conducted by Fabio Luisi and directed by Peter McClintock at the Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival. Mr. Blue was tenor soloist in Verdi’s Requiem with the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall and the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra under conductor James Gaffigan. Mr. Blue also sang the American premiere of the rarely heard Franz Liszt opera Sardanapalo at the Library of Congress. Additional roles with Washington National Opera included Monsieur Triquet in Eugene Onegin; Hippo/Holy man/Dog/Water Seller in Tesori’s The Lion, The Unicorn, and Me; and David in Benavides’s Pepito as part of the American Opera Initiative Festival.

Mr. Blue’s previous seasons have included his debut at Carnegie Hall in Handel’s Messiah with the Oratorio Society of New York; performances in Moravec’s Sanctuary Road at Merkin Concert Hall with New York Festival of Song; the American premiere of Philip Glass’s The Trial at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; and performing the roles of Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos with Austin Opera and Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore  with the Music Academy of the West. Mr. Blue was a semi-finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and sang on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in 2018. He has also received the Ellen Lopin Blair award for first place in the 2017 Oratorio Society of New York solo competition and was noted as an Emerging Artist in the 2017 Opera Index Competition in New York City.

Mr. Blue earned his bachelor’s degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and graduated from The Juilliard School with a master’s degree, studying voice with Dr. Robert C. White, Jr. In 2018, Mr. Blue was an Apprentice Singer with Santa Fe Opera’s summer festival. He is an alumnus of the Cafritz Young Artist program with the Washington National Opera.

Learn more at JoshuaBlueTenor.com.

Anja Wood is a versatile musician, performing and recording with icons including David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Dave Matthews, Barbara Streisand, Chris Cornell and Harry Connick, Jr. She has played with countless other performers, like Pearl Jam, Rufus Wainwright, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Anja plays in the orchestra for Hamilton on Broadway, and is heard on the Hamilton cast recording, which went triple platinum.

Anja resides in New York City with her two daughters. She is also the founder and President of the Lelt Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to acutely malnourished children in Ethiopia.

American pianist Howard Watkins is a frequent associate of some of the world’s leading musicians on the concert stage; he’s also an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. His appearances throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Russia, and Israel have included collaborations with Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry, Mariusz Kwiecień, Anna Netrebko, and Matthew Polenzani as well as violinists Xiang Gao and Sarah Chang at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Spivey Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the United States Supreme Court, Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the three stages of Carnegie Hall, and the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.

He has accompanied the classes of legendary artists Renata Scotto, Frederica von Stade, Régine Crespin, Birgit Nilsson, Sherrill Milnes, and George Shirley. Watkins has served on the faculties of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Mannes School of Music, the North Carolina School of the Arts, the International Vocal Arts Institute (Israel, Japan, and China), IIVA in Italy, the Brancaleoni Music Festival in Italy, the Tokyo International Vocal Arts Academy (TIVAA), and VOICExperience in Orlando, Tampa, and Savannah. He has also worked on the music staffs of Palm Beach Opera, the Washington National Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera.

A native of Dayton, Ohio, Watkins completed his Doctor of Musical Arts in accompanying and chamber Music at the University of Michigan. In 2004, he received the Paul C. Boylan award from the University of Michigan for his outstanding contributions to the field of music, and a special achievement award from the National Alumni Association of the University of Dayton. He is a resident of New York City.