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DESCRIPTION:Twice GRAMMY®-nominated composer Shawn E. Okpebholo doesn’t just write music—he engages history, culture, and community through sound. Named the 2024 Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music by the Chicago Tribune and one of Musical America’s Top 30 Professionals of 2023, he has also received two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Nigerian American artist sees himself as a storyteller, educator, and bridge-builder, creating music that resonates globally while remaining rooted in the individual stories that shape our shared humanity. His music has been praised as “devastatingly beautiful” (The Washington Post), “lyrical, complex, singular” (The Guardian), “dreamy, sensual” (The Boston Globe), and “affecting” (The New York Times). Rooted in history yet unmistakably contemporary, his work embodies what The Washington Post has called a voice that is “fresh and new and fearless.” Okpebholo’s GRAMMY®-nominated album Lord, How Come Me Here? reimagines Negro spirituals and American folk hymns through a deeply personal and historically grounded lens. His recording Songs in Flight continues that legacy, earning a double five-star review from BBC Music Magazine and a GRAMMY® nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. His music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, United States Air Force Strings, Imani Winds, WindSync, UrbanArias, Sparks & Wiry Cries, and the Copland House Ensemble, and featured at Tanglewood, Aspen, and Newport Classical. His chamber opera The Cook-Off, written with Pulitzer Prize–winning librettist Mark Campbell during his residency with Chicago Opera Theater, continues to receive productions nationwide. Collaboration is central to Okpebholo’s creative life. He has worked with vocalists Rhiannon Giddens, J’Nai Bridges, Lawrence Brownlee, Will Liverman, Nicholas Phan, and Karen Slack, as well as instrumentalists Rachel Barton Pine and Adam Walker. His chamber music has been performed by Eighth Blackbird, the Grossman Ensemble, and ~Nois Saxophone Quartet; his choral music by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, American Spiritual Ensemble, and Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street. His orchestral works have been performed by the Chicago, Cincinnati, and Houston Symphonies, the San Francisco and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, Oakland Symphony, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, and Lexington Philharmonic, where he served as Saykaly Garbulinska Composer-in-Residence. His music has been presented at Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center, the Concertgebouw, Kennedy Center, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, and featured on PBS NewsHour and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. His art song “The Rain” was named one of NPR’s 100 Best Songs of 2021. The 2026–27 season includes the world premiere of his newest song cycle, The Beautiful, at Tanglewood with tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Myra Huang, exploring migration, belonging, and American identity. Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music opens its opera season with The Cook-Off, and Okpebholo will hold a short-term visiting professorship at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The Yale Symphony Orchestra will perform his violin concerto, The Sky Between, with violinist Heather Wittels. In March 2027, the Handel Choir of Baltimore and Baltimore Chamber Orchestra will give the world premiere of What the Earth Remembers, created with poet Marcus Amaker—a large-scale oratorio on climate, memory, resilience, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. He holds master’s and doctoral degrees in composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and serves as the Jonathan Blanchard Distinguished Professor of Composition at Wheaton College Conservatory of Music.122881 "music", "lecture", "guest lecture", "composer", "shawn okpebholo"
DTSTAMP:20261001T182741
DTSTART:20261001T133000
DTEND:20261001T143000
LOCATION:Music Building
SUMMARY;LANGUAGE=en-us:Grammy-nominated composer Shawn Okpebholo discusses history, culture, and community through sound.
UID:e5ef635862314f6077d0ebf5f0722847@lcw.lehman.edu
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