Baritone making series of firsts with Tucson song fest debut

Will Liverman is opening his 2026 performance year this weekend with a trio of firsts:

First time in Arizona.

First time in Tucson.

First time on the lineup with Tucson Desert Song Festival.

Another first: His performance this weekend with True Concord Voices & Orchestra is the first event of the 2026 festival.

"I'm very excited," the Grammy-winning bass-baritone said during a phone call from home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, earlier this week.

Liverman, a regular on the Metropolitan Opera stage in New York City and with Lyric Opera of Chicago, where he was a member of the Ryan Opera Center emerging artists program, is doing double duty at the festival. In addition to three performances with True Concord from Friday, Jan. 16 to Sunday, Jan. 18, Liverman is performing a recital on Tuesday, Jan. 20, at Holsclaw Hall at the University of Arizona School of Music. 

True Concord's "Music of the Pioneers" concert fits the Song Festival's "America Sings!" theme as well as the choir's season-long "The American Dream" theme, celebrating the country's 250th anniversary. 

"Music of the Pioneers" includes Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs," sacred and classic African-American spirituals arranged by William Grant Still and folk songs by Stephen Foster. 

Liverman said Copland's music played a role in his opera career; the first opera he did, at the Glimmerglass Festival in 2010, was Copland's "The Tender Land."

"I fell in love with his writing," he said, adding that "Old American Songs" "kind of fully leans into the idea of the classic American sound."

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"Very simple but very incredibly refined," he explained. "And the rhythm and the harmony; they feel like really conversational, which is why I think they're so accessible and kind of like immediate."

The Copland songs include "Shall We Gather at the River," a song that expresses dreams of a better life, and "Simple Gifts," which elevates the quintessential mid-19th century Shaker melody to the role of "an indelible American anthem," according to program notes. 

Liverman's recital on Tuesday will include "kind of a hodgepodge of some of my favorite things that I've done over the years," he said.

The program draws from his earlier album "Dreams of a New Day," a project he released a few years ago, including the song "Mortal Storm," composer Robert Owens' 1969 setting of poems by the iconic Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes.

Liverman's program draws heavily from prominent African-American composers inspired by Hughes' writings, including Margaret Bonds' song based on "Three Dream Portraits" and "I Dream a World,' which composer/pianist Damien Sneed set to Hughes 1940s poem envisioning a world where everyone, regardless of race, religion or sex, is treated with respect.

He's also performing Florence Price's "I Grew a Rose," based on the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, and H. Leslie Adams' "Night Songs."

"It's a program that features all black composers, and it's repertoire that I find near and dear to me and with composers that I really admire," said Liverman. "I'm really excited for this program."

Liverman is also turning the spotlight on his own composing with "Four Private Parables," drawn from a new song cycle he composed. Liverman has been composing since just before the pandemic, including his first opera, "The Factotum," which he wrote with DJ King Rico. The opera reimagines Rossini's "Barber of Seville," fusing opera, hip-hop, gospel, funk, and R&B. Lyric Opera of Chicago commissioned the work and premiered it in 2023. 

"I'm slowly like branching out and writing has been something that's been really fulfilling for me over the past two years or so, so," he said, including the original songs he composed for his two-part "The Dunbar/Moore Sessions," based on the writings of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson. "Volume II," released last June, is up for a Grammy on Feb. 1. 

Pianist Madeline Slettedahl will accompany Liverman at Holsclaw Hall, 1017 N. Olive Road, at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Tickets are $53.50 through trueconcord.org. 

True Concord is doing 4 p.m. performances of "Music of the Pioneers" on Jan. 16 at Green Valley's Valley Presbyterian Church, 2800 S. Camino del Sol; Jan. 17 at Catalina United Methodist Church, 2700 E. Speedway; and Jan. 18 at Catalina Foothills High School, 4300 E. Sunrise Drive. Get tickets and more information at trueconcord.org.