Jubilee: A Folk Opera - Concert Reading

Join us for a concert reading of Jubilee: A Folk Opera, adapted from the 1966 novel Jubilee by Margaret Walker. Walker holds the distinction of being the first Black woman to win the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1942. 

This work-in-progress tells the semi-fictional story of Vyry Brown, a character inspired by Walker’s great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown. Born into slavery, Vyry fights to protect her family as they move through Emancipation and Reconstruction, reaching for a freedom that remains contested across generations.

Scored with blues, jazz, and gospel influences, Jubilee: A Folk Opera weaves Walker’s poems from This Is My Century (set to music by Randy Klein) into a powerful narrative shaped by Joan Ross Sorkin’s original arias and recitative. Themes of love, family, and survival are woven throughout the work.

In its final developed form, this opera will feature six principal singers and two choruses—an African American “enslaved people’s chorus” and a mixed-race “modern people’s chorus.” It will incorporate dynamic digital projections of historical imagery to create a vivid, contemporary stage world. 

This opera asks the audience to come along and consider: “What does it mean to be free? Were African Americans freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Surrender, Reconstruction, or the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Or maybe freedom is still a dream.” Conceived as both performance and catalyst for change, Jubilee: A Folk Opera invites new conversations about history, freedom, and change. The goal is to offer resilience, hopefulness and healing. 

At Yale Schwarzman Center you will experience this work-in-progress during its most creative initial development. 

Music: Randy Klein
Libretto: Joan Ross Sorkin
Conductor: Julius Williams

Registrants of the Yale Innovation Summit must register for this event separately. 

This concert reading of Jubilee: A Folk Opera is a precursor to a June 14 presentation of the work to be hosted by Jackson State University.

Randy Klein

(a note from the composer)

‘I first met Margaret Walker in 1995. I was asked to compose the score for a PBS/BBC documentary/film titled, Richard Wright, Black Boy, directed by Eyes On The Prize producer, Madison Davis Lacy. The production for the documentary took place at the public broadcasting station in Jackson, Mississippi, formerly called Mississippi ETV. This documentary contained an interview of Margaret Walker speaking about Richard Wright. And, up to this time, it was the only encounter that I had with Ms. Walker. It wasn’t until some years later, in 2000, on a subway ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan, that Margaret Walker and I met again. This time she spoke from a placard above and across from where I was sitting. Printed on the placard was her poem Lineage. As the subway train rumbled on, I was lost in the sincerity of her words, ‘My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they?’ I scribbled the poem down on a piece of paper and composed music to it that evening. This was the beginning of For My People – the Margaret Walker Song Cycle. For twenty-five-plus years, my music has slowly married to her words, and today they emerge as a new folk opera. Margaret Walker’s heartfelt truths touched me. Now is the time for all of us to celebrate Jubilee.’