By Andrew Gans
30 Aug 2009
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| De'Adre Aziza in Passing Strange. |
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| photo by Joan Marcus |
Ask Your Mama!, Laura Karpman's multimedia concert production based on Langston Hughes' 1961 poem cycle about African-American life, music and culture, will be presented Aug. 30 at the Hollywood Bowl.
The evening boasts the talents of famed soprano Jessye Norman, the hip-hop group The Roots, jazz great Nnenna Freelon and singer-actress de'Adre Aziza (Passing Strange).
George Manahan conducts the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Show time is 7:30 PM.
Karpman's Ask Your Mama!, according to press notes, is a "90-minute tapestry of music, film, and spoken word that bursts the boundaries of time, place, and verbal expression to trace the currents and tributaries of cultural diasporas. The Hughes/Karpman work travels from Africa to the Americas, from the South to the North, from cities to suburbs, from opera to jazz, from gospel to be-bop — and in Hughes's own words, 'from shadows to fire.'"
