Tamar-kali | The Swann

The  Swann Town Hall  is a community-centered gathering that invites artists, audiences, and collaborators connected to Mabou Mines to engage with the themes and early artistic material from The Swann, a chamber opera currently in development. Inspired by the life of William Dorsey Swann—a formerly enslaved person who became the first self-identified “queen of drag” in the United States—the work explores early forms of Black queer resistance, joy, and self-determination.

The Town Hall supports a congregational conversational environment where call and response informs the evolution of the piece. The event will begin with a screening of the short digital aria originally commissioned by Catapult Opera, followed by a listening session featuring newly recorded selections from the developing score. These excerpts provide an early sonic and narrative window into the opera’s dramaturgy, musical language, and thematic core.

Following the listening session, members of the creative team will engage in a moderated conversation about the genesis of the project—its historical research, artistic intentions, and collaborative process. Audience members will then be invited into the dialogue, sharing reflections, questions, and perspectives that can inform the next stages of development.

Brad Walrond moderates the panelists – composer Tamar-kali,  librettist Carl Hancock Rux and director James Blaszko

This Town Hall format aligns with Mabou Mines’ longstanding commitment to artist-driven experimentation, interdisciplinary performance, and the reimagining of theatrical form. Known for creating bold new works that challenge conventions and elevate underrepresented narratives, Mabou Mines provides an ideal environment for a project like The Swann, which blends operatic storytelling, digital media, and historical inquiry.

The gathering is both a preview and a laboratory: a space where creative material meets community insight. Feedback from this exchange will help guide the continued evolution of the opera—from musical development and narrative structure to future performance formats and audience engagement strategies. Ultimately, the Town Hall reflects the spirit of The Swann itself: a work rooted in history, but animated by contemporary voices, collective imagination, and the belief that storytelling can deepen our understanding of identity, freedom, and cultural memory.

photo by Scott Ellison Smith

Tamar-kali (Mabou Mines Associate Artist) is an award-winning composer, vocalist and performer whose practice extends from alt rock, chamber and opera to film and symphonic work with radical depth and emotional precision. She scored the acclaimed films Mudbound, The Assistant, Shirley and Little Richard: I am Everything among others. Her original score for history making cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s directorial debut ‘The Fire Inside’ made 2025’s Oscar Shortlist. She has collaborated with visionaries including Steve McQueen, Bill T Jones, Josephine Decker and Julie Dash. As a performer, her work has graced world-class stages. Tamar-kali is one of the most compelling sonic storytellers of our time.

James Blaszko (director) is a first-generation American director and creative producer. After staging and translating Sapphira Cristál’s maxi challenge-winning performance of “O mio babbino caro” for RuPaul’s Drag Race on MTV, as well as directing her popular music video of the same aria, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts commissioned Blaszko to open their 2024 Summer for the City Festival with Soundcake, starring Cristál, Monét X Change, and Thorgy Thor. He has directed several other concert works and special events including Tamar-kali’s Freedom is a Constant Struggle (Lincoln Center), We Count (Harare International Festival of the Arts) and Ride of the Valkyries! (Boston Lyric Opera) narrated by David Hyde Pierce. Most recently, Blaszko served as Lena Waithe’s creative producer on her sold-out playwright and stage acting debut, trinity at Baltimore Center Stage. He continues to tour Liza Jessie Peterson’s The Peculiar Patriot to theatres and prisons across the country, with its next stop at New York Theatre Workshop in May 2026. @jamesblaszko

Brad Walrond (moderator) is a poet, author, conceptual/performance artist, and one of the foremost writers and performers of the 1990s Black Arts Movement centered in New York City. Brad’s poetics, performance, and multi-disciplinary work interpolate between virtual reality, identity formation, and human consciousness at the intersection of race, gender, sex, and desire. By interrogating the great power and contradictions inherent to identity, Brad aims, with his work, to provoke futurist explorations of how we co-create historical, remembered, and imagined time. His conceptual practice urgently asks how can we cultivate futures worthy of the common threads of our human inheritance.