By Dennis Polkow
“I have a deep love of classical music and its potential. It was one of the first things that I knew musically when I was younger.”
“My life in opera has been very nonstandard,” admits bass-baritone Davóne Tines in attempting to describe a unique and groundbreaking career. In his credits, there are leading roles in world premieres such as Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing, John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West, and Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones, as well as collaborations with director Peter Sellars, and then there’s a series of pioneering works-in-progress that Tines himself is helping bring into being.
“It’s been a balance between things I’m asked to do and things I have a direct collaborative hand in. All of my work tends to be on some sort of spectrum between ‘gig’ and self-directed creation. Some projects, it’s really great to be part of the creative process, premiere it, and let it live in the world. Other things I become more attached to or more ingrained in the process or creation of, and I stay with those pieces longer. Because I have a close cohort of colleagues, we really believe in doing something and going back and doing it again. But you can only do that with so many things. I’m kind of in the process of that with four different shows or creations. Those are relationships that will last over years.”
The Black Clown, a musical theater piece which Tines says took seven years to create, premiered in 2018 but “we’re talking about what its life is into the future for anywhere from five to ten years. And that’s just one project.” Based on a poem by Langston Hughes, Tines says he was “blown away” because “Hughes so succinctly tells the story of a Black man identifying his oppression in the role of a clown by saying I have to dress myself and present myself a certain way. That’s how I survive, that’s how I exist. But contextualizing that through 300 years of—I won’t even say Black American history, I’ll just say American history—and then reaching the resolve of, I am so much more than all of the permutations I have to exist as. I am, in fact, my own independent being, and I will take that costume off.
“Hughes was able to crystallize what I feel and what so many marginalized people feel, whether they’re Black or of a different sexual identity—we all have some sort of connection to having to morph ourselves. That happens in a specific way with Black people, and it’s engrained an entire history of oppression, degradation, and trauma. But I’m going to bear that out and call it out for what it is, for my own survival and sanity. I can actually self-actualize outside of this context.”
Were You There is another project Tines has built with opera director and frequent collaborator Zack Winokur that he describes as “a meditation on racist police brutality.” “I wanted to create a meditative base on something pretty hard for us to engage,” Tines explains. “That turned into a staged music theater piece that premiered at the American Repertory Theater. We’ve done it with a number of symphonies and different organizations around the country, but now we’re trying to deepen that work by putting it in service to actual legislative change. That eventually will turn into a 50-state tour that will require an entire criminal justice reform curriculum, so you can imagine that’s a cumbersome project. These larger whale projects we really devote a lot of thought to while doing other things along the way. So it’s taken some time to get to where I am right now.
“I also created a program for orchestra called Sermon: Concerto No. 1, which is structured like a concerto, but in the style of an exegetic sermon: presenting a text and then expounding upon it. That’s something I made for the Philadelphia Orchestra that we did as a video in February, and then I’ll be performing it live with them in November. I’m also doing it as part of a residency at the Barbican and the BBC Symphony in October.
Seeking pioneering artistic visions in his collaborative projects as well as his solo creations, Tines held a starring role in the world premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s opera Only the Sound Remains at the Dutch National Opera in 2016 and its US premiere in 2018. Peter Sellars was the librettist and director for the productions, which accentuated the opera’s themes of human connections to the supernatural with canvas set pieces designed by Ethiopian American artist Julie Mehretu, depicting a sense of human life as a series of inkblots and slashing but calligraphic gestures.
“I think the clearest project that I am working on now is based on the life of Julius Eastman, a composer I have kind of idolized but also found more personal and creative connections with. I know that there’s a broad re-emerging of Eastman’s work, but I was privileged to be an initial part of that reawakening through this ongoing relationship I have with the Monday Evening Concerts series in Los Angeles. I’ve also come to know Eastman’s family—including his brother Gerry, who lives in Brooklyn and runs his own jazz club and is his own story-session jazz guitarist—I’m translating that personal connection and research into a show, but that will also be a long-term deeper dive. In September, we’ll premiere the first version of that show in New York, but then we have designs to have it be more fully commissioned by the Barbican and then the LA Phil. So [there’s the aspect of] things continue to grow.”
The program that Tines will sing in his Ravinia debut and first Chicago-area performance on August 31, Recital No. 1: Mass, is one that has had a four-year incubation process. “It’s a mashup between a standard classical form, recital, and a liturgical form, Mass. The idea is to use overt storytelling within these contexts and be very direct that this is about a ritual of humanity. I’m trying to walk through a [Mass] narrative that deals with human suffering and renewal and [also] claim that the concert space, the classical space, can be the space for that kind of human spiritual or just human condition engagement.
“I have a deep love of classical music and its potential. It was one of the first things that I knew musically when I was younger. I grew up in the Black Baptist church in Virginia. I also started playing violin when I was six, for 14 years, and I played piano for a long time. I sang with a number of professional choirs, including at the National Shrine in Washington, DC, and the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in New York … [and with] connections and experiences in Jewish liturgical music. I was very indoctrinated in the orchestral repertoire and choral literature, and then also with early music and choral singing at Harvard with the Harvard Collegium Musicum, a really special choir that specializes in Renaissance polyphony.
“I have always found myself being able to connect with that music because it’s always done for a reason. You don’t sing a Kyrie just because it sounds nice. You sing a Kyrie because you’re asking for help, because you’re asking for mercy. There is a clear directive of what that piece of music means when it’s being performed. It’s inviting people into the possibility of reassessing their lives in such a way that they might have to ask for help. Showing that vulnerability. It’s amazing that the Mass starts with a plea for help, the journey to say I have a problem. Credo, I believe that there is some way for this to change or there’s some force greater than myself to make that change. Gloria, to rejoice in that possibility. Sanctus, to claim that that thing is holy and special. And Agnus Dei, to acknowledge that a sacrifice of some sort has to be made for the change to occur. Whether that’s the sacrifice of a way of existing, the sacrifice of a former self, or owning up to what is the cause of this problem. The Agnus Dei is essentially one of the jet fuels for the change. But what I continue to find sitting in all of these different church contexts: Baptist church, Catholic Church, Greek Orthodox Church, I found that everybody was telling the same story in very different aesthetics.”
The sections of Recital No. 1: Mass include new settings by Caroline Shaw juxtaposed with arias from Bach cantatas and Passions along with settings of Black spirituals and hymns. “One thing I realized moving between these worlds,” Tines concludes, “is that there’s a certain ecstatic fervor and direct visceral connection of human experience in the form of making music in the Black church that primes me for how to see all liturgical music.” ■
Award-winning veteran journalist, critic, author, broadcaster and educator Dennis Polkow has been covering Chicago-based cultural institutions across various local, national, and international media for more than 35 years.