Karen Slack was clapping and stomping and raising her hands heavenward as she sang "And He brought joy, joy, joy to my soul" from Margaret Bonds' spiritual "You Can Tell the World."
"You can tell the world about this / You can tell the nation about that / Tell โem what Jesus has done," she sang, hitting the high end of her muscular soprano and letting that note hang in the air at Leo Rich Theater while the audience nearly filling the hall held its collective breath, waiting to see where it would land.
Grammy-winning soprano Karen Slack sings one of the songs in Tamar-kali's "Pleasure Garden" while Mirรณ Quartet violist John Largess, center, and second violin William Fedkenheuer play the cinematic score. Slack and the quartet performed the world premiere Wednesday as part of the Tucson Desert Song Festival.ย ย
Mirรณ Quartet violinist Daniel Ching bopped and swayed from his first chair while his colleague, cellist Joshua Gindele, couldn't hide the smile that swallowed his face moments into Slack's performance.ย
It was one of five songs in Margaret Bonds' "Creek-Freedman Songs" that came at the end of Slack and the quartet's Arizona Friends of Chamber Music concert Wednesday night. But the seminal Harlem Renaissance composer's influence was evident from the start including in the concert's centerpiece, theย world premiere of Tamar-kali's "Pleasure Garden" commissioned for theย Mirรณ by Arizona Friends.
The Mirรณ Quartet performed the world premier Wednesday, with Grammy-winning soprano Karen Slack, of "Pleasure Garden" by Tamar-kali.
Mirรณ violist John Largess told the audience during a pre-concert talk with Tamar-kali that Bonds inspired the quartet and the Grammy-winning Slack to create Wednesday's program focusing on the Harlem Renaissance's often overlooked women.
Tamar-kali took that inspiration to heart, using the texts from three of the movement's female poets โ Angelina Weld Grimkรฉ, Jessie Redmon Fauset and Helen Johnson โย to create her song cycle, "Pleasure Garden."
Tamar-kali, whose background includes fronting a punk rock band and fusing post-punk with classical and soul in her compositions, set those texts to a lush cinematic soundscape with sweeping string melodies punctuated by percussive thumps when Gindele and Largess played pizzicato in the backdrop of Ching and violinist William Fedkenheuer's bowing.ย
She layered pizzicato from all four instruments in one song, creating dramatic flourishes that played into Slack's powerful soprano. In another, the quartet played the same melody counterpoint with each coming in one step behind the other to create dramatic rhythms that brought to life images from poet Johnson's "Trees at Night":
"Torn webs of shadows / And / Painted 'gainst the sky โ the trembling beautyย / Of an urgent pine."
The Mirรณ framed the concert's first half with a sublime performance of Samuel Barber's String Quartet in B minor that they uncharacteristically split in two. They played the first movement to open the concert and the emotional and wildly popular adagio and allegro to close the first half.
Wednesday's concert was part of the 2026 Tucson Desert Song Festival, which continues through April 25. Coming up:
- Soprano Karen Chia-ling Ho sings the role of Cio-Cio-San in Arizona Opera's new production of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" at 2 p.m. Feb. 7 at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets available at azopera.org.
- Bass-baritone Davóne Tines joins the "shapeshifting" Baroque ensemble Ruckus for “What Is Your Hand In This?” at 3 p.m. Feb. 8 at Grace St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 2331 E. Adams St. The show is presented by Arizona Early Music. Get tickets at azearlymusic.org.
Read more about both events in Thursday's Caliente.
