Terence Blanchard's Fire Shut Up In My Bones: Excerpts in Concert, Byham Theater

Featuring Terence Blanchard, The E-Collective, Turtle Island Quartet & Special Guest visuals by Andrew F. Scott

In September 2021, after The Metropolitan Opera had been shuttered for over a year, the world renowned institution opened its season with the first work in its 138 years written by an African American composer— TERENCE BLANCHARD’s masterpiece Fire Shut Up In My Bones.

The production, which was a remount of the premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2019, was performed eight (8) times for almost 30,000 people, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that watched The MET: LIVE in HD in theaters all over the world.

In an effort to continue that message, Blanchard and The E-Collective have teamed up with David Balakrishnan and his double GRAMMY-winning Turtle Island Quartet and visual artist Andrew F. Scott to create a concert production that features excerpts from the opera performed by the composer, this incredible ensemble, and guest vocalists Will Liverman and Adrienne Danrich. The music and Scott’s video projections give the audience a look inside the mind of Blanchard, and the gravitational pull of the moment that he has created.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones, based on the memoir of celebrated writer and The New York Times columnist Charles Blow. The libretto was written by Kasi Lemmons and commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis where it premiered in June 2019.