January 14, 2012
Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Program
Brooklyn Public Library (Main Branch at Grand Army Plaza)
Performed by Adrienne Danrich
Mila Henry, music director
June 21, 2011
WORLD PREMIERE
Make Music NY 2011 - "The Voice of Brooklyn"
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY
Performed by Adrienne Danrich
Mila Henry, music director
June 20, 2011
Preview performance
Dweck Auditorium
Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY
Performed by Adrienne Danrich
Mila Henry, music director
The third commissioned work of IHAS, "Brooklyn Cinderella" is a setting of poems by three Brooklyn children written in poetry workshops led by Brooklyn writer Angeli Rasbury.
Brooklyn Cinderella is a co-commission from AOP and The Walt Whitman Project.
Made possible, in part, with funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
WATCH
Adrienne Danrich sings BROOKLYN CINDERELLA Recorded June 21, 2011, Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY.
Presented at THE VOICE OF BROOKLYN, part of Make Music NY 2011.
The young poets read their poetry from BROOKLYN CINDERELLA Recorded June 21, 2011, Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY.
Presented at THE VOICE OF BROOKLYN, part of Make Music NY 2011.
Brooklyn Cinderella (2011)
Composed by Nkeiru Okoye
for piano and soprano "Kindergarten, Part I"- Najaya Royale
"Brooklyn Cinderella" - Tristan Regist
"If I Were a Doll" - Aliah Gilkes
"Kindergarten, Part II"- Najaya Royale
About the Creators
NKEIRU OKOYE (composer)
A native New Yorker of African American and Nigerian descent, Nkeiru Okoye has had her music performed on four continents. Okoye’s penchant for infusing popular and non-Western influences in a ‘classical’ framework shows in her most performed works, SONGS OF HARRIET TUBMAN (2007), PHILLIS WHEATLEY (2005, commissioned by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, and recorded by the Moscow Symphony), VOICES SHOUTING OUT (2002); RUTH: an Orchestral Choreopoem, (1998); THE GENESIS (1997) and AFRICAN SKETCHES. Okoye’s orchestral works have been performed by the Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, Virginia, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Mississippi, Richmond, New Jersey Chamber, Cambridge Symphony, Western Piedmont, Rutgers University, Central Jersey, Hopkins, and New Horizons Symphony orchestras, amongst others. Okoye has gotten awards, commissions and commendations from MEET THE COMPOSER, MetLife Creative Connections, John Duffy Composer Institute, Composer’s Collaborative, Inc., Yvar Mikhashov Trust for New Music (1999); and numerous awards by the NAACP. Okoye is a frequent guest lecturer and panelist. In 2005, Okoye was a composer mentor at the University of Ghana for the International Society of Contemporary Music’s World New Music Days. In 2006, she was named a British American Project Fellow. In 2007, Okoye was honored at Nigeria’s 40under40 ceremony, in Lagos. In 2010, she became a Resident Artist in American Lyric Theater's Composer Librettist Development Program in NY. Currently she is completing her folk opera, HARRIET TUBMAN: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom.
Nkeiru Okoye (in KEAR roo oh KOY yeh) has BM in composition from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and an MA and a Ph.D. in theory and composition from Rutgers University. In addition to being a composer, Dr. Okoye is a soft sculpture artist/creator of the “Canbie Collection” of multicultural dolls, which may be found in museums and galleries nationwide, most notably the Smithsonian. www.nkeiruokoye.com
Made possible, in part, with funds from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
NKEIRU OKOYE (composer)
