We invite you to get to know the composer, Margaret Bonds, and more about the music on the program with the resources below.

• Explore Georgetown University’s Margaret Bonds: Composer and Activist and read her biography

• Bonds’ “Credo” is the concert finale.  John Michael Cooper provides cultural context with his talk Margaret Bonds, Black Feminism, and the Credo of W. E. B. Du Bois.  

• “African Dance” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” are examples of Bonds’ settings of text by Langston Hughes. 

• View the manuscript and story of “When the Dove Enters In” and read scholar John Michael Cooper’s reflection on this composition in “The Light is Revealed”.

• Margaret Bonds and Langston Hughes: A Musical Friendship   

• The Posthumous Premiere of Margaret Bonds and Langston Hughes African Dance (Danse africaine)     

• Piano Music of the African Diaspora: Margaret Bonds’s Spiritual Suite 

• WEB DuBois’ Credo proclaimed his philosophy of racial equality.  View the original publication and read W. E. B. Du Bois papers. 

Michael Cooper

John Michael Cooper, Professor of Music at Southwestern University (Georgetown, Texas), is the editor of seventy works of Florence B. Price published in sixty volumes by G. Schirmer in 2019-21, and chief contributing editor to the Margaret Bonds Signature Series of Hildegard Publishing Company (currently slated to include fifty volumes). He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music (Scarecrow Press), three other books on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and sixteen editions of music published by Bärenreiter and other German publishers. His book titled Margaret Bonds: The Montgomery Variations and Du Bois “Credo” is currently at press with Cambridge University Press.

Camilla Tassi

Camilla Tassi is a projection designer from Florence, Italy. Coming from formal backgrounds in computer science and music, she has worked as a designer, singer, producer, and translator. She has created projections for works including Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Apollo’s Fire), Pollock’s Stinney (PROTOTYPE Festival NYC), Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol (Yale Opera), Glass’ Fall of the House of Usher (MASS MoCA), Tesori’s Fun Home (Yale School of Drama), Carissimi’s Jephte (Hopkins Center for the Arts) and Mozart’s Magic Flute (Berlin Opera Academy). Tassi is particularly passionate about bringing theatrical design to traditionally unstaged compositions (choral, art song, chamber, oratorio) as a re-contextualization of the work and layer of accessibility to the music and its relation to the performance space. As a video designer, Tassi has filmed and produced for groups including the Washington Chorus, Les Délices, Yale Cabaret, Princeton Festival, Nasty Women Connecticut, and the Chicago Ear Taxi Festival.

She has directed and produced performances of period and contemporary works, including a joint theater and opera project of Tennessee Williams and Larry Delinger’s Talk to Me Like the Rain and the US Premiere of Morricone’s Se questo e` un uomo. As an Italian coach and soprano, she has created program translations for Carnegie Hall (L’Arpeggiata) and sings with the Yale Schola Cantorum. Tassi holds degrees in Computer Science and Music from the University of Notre Dame, Digital Musics from Dartmouth, and is currently an MFA Candidate at Yale in Projection Design under Wendall Harrington. http://camillatassi.com

Viera Buzgova

Viera Buzgova’s experience in the world of music is multi-faceted: she studied piano for 12 years, received her Bachelor’s degree in church music, sings in choir and plays percussion, and is experienced in many aspects of choral music production. Her lighting design and theatrical production career began in 1998 while working as a Technical Director with Concordia University at Austin theater program. During her 10-year tenure there, she directed lighting design, set design and construction, and stage crew management. Since 2012, she has been a member of Grammy-winning Conspirare’s production team, serving as stage manager and lighting designer for local and touring concerts including the national Considering Matthew Shepard tour. Outside of her production life, Viera is an owner and managing partner of an Austin-based immigration law firm.

Anton Nel

Winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition Anton Nel tours internationally as a recitalist, concerto soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. Highlights in the U.S. include performances with the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, and Seattle Symphonies, as well as recitals coast to coast. Overseas he has appeared at the Wigmore Hall in London, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, and major venues in China, Korea, and South Africa. He holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Austin and in the summers he is on the artist-faculties at the Aspen Music Festival and School and the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival. The Johannesburg-born Mr. Nel, also an avid harpsichordist and fortepianist, is a graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied with Adolph Hallis, and the University of Cincinnati where he worked with Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock.

• Meg Dudley
• Melissa Givens
• Nicole Joseph
• Julie Keim
• Tabitha Lewis
• Gitanjali Mathur
• Sarah Moyer
• Nina Revering
• Kathlene Ritch
• Miriam Sheehan

• Lara Alami
• Ana Baida
• Sarah Brauer
• Lauren McAllister
• Laura Mercado-Wright
• Angela Young Smucker
• Mitzi Westra

• Steven Brennfleck
• Douglas Easterling
• Mark Istratie
• Jos Milton
• David Kurtenbach Rivera
• Wilson Nichols
• Jason Vest

• Eric Alatorre
• Evan Blache, insight fellow
• Gregory Fletcher
• Rick Gabrillo
• Robert Harlan
• Harris Ipock
• Enrico Lagasca
• Tim O’Brien
• John Proft
• Marques Jerrell Ruff
• Ross Tamaccio
• Jason Thoms