Mary Watkins.
THE COMPOSER
Mary Watkins burst into the women's music scene with her 1978 Olivia Records release of Prayer for Peace. Since then this composer, arranger, performer, and teacher has worked in many genres to the delight of widely varied ccaudiences. From blues to classical, from being a respected teacher of composition to writing movie sound tracks, to her release of gospel interpretations, Ms. Watkins has done it all. Much of her music reflects a love for many styles of music whether jazz, gospel, country, rock, clasical or pop. She has composed for solo piano, wind ensembles, string quartet, Chamber and Full Symphony Orchestra. She has also composed for theater, dance and film; songs for solo vocalist, vocal ensemble and large chorus.Her latest big project was composing the music for Queen Clara, an opera/oratorio about the Civil War experiences of Clara Barton, who later founded the American Red Cross,. Queen Clara was first performed at the Oakland Opera Theater in 2002, and will be performed again in October of 2007 in Sacramento, CA.
An accomplished pianist, Watkins plays solo, and often plays in trio, quartet and larger ensembles. In solo performances, she is a great improvisationalist and has spontaneously improvised entire concerts before transfixed audiences, captivated by sparkling yet gentle flowing melodies with rich, harmonic textures as well as elegant, pulsating, rhythmic jazz. Her entire work, in performance and in compositions, is infused with a signature knack for blending classical and jazz styles
She has led ensembles and toured in solo piano performance performing in venues nationwide, including the Monterey and Russian River Jazz festivals, sharing the bill with many artists such as Santana, Carmen McRae, and Herbie Hancock. Her work has won critical acclaim in Keyboard Magazine, Billboard, Boston Globe, Washington Post. She has been awarded grantng foundations such as Meet The Composer, National Endowment for the Arts, Gerbode Foundation, Zellerbach Family Fund and Calfornia Council for the Arts.
Presently, while continuing her work as a composer, Mary Watkins conducts improvisation workshops, teaches piano and music theory privately in Oakland, CA.
THE MATCHING GRANT
The East Bay Community Foundation has awarded the Oakland Opera a $10,000 matching grant for the production of Mary’s new opera. So now’s your chance to help create this important new work, by sending in a contribution of any amount to the Oakland Opera new works fund. The EBCF will match individual donors one to one up to $10,000. All donations are tax- deductible to the full extent of the law. Checks should be written to the Oakland Opera and sent to:
Oakland Opera
1734 Campbell St.
Oakland CA. 94607
Questions and inquiries can be sent to Tom@oaklandopera.org , or call 510-763-1146
PRESENTS
A NEW OPERA BY MARY WATKINS
Mississippi Civil Rights Leader - Fannie Lou Hamer
Mary Watkins' new opera tenatively entitled "Dark River " tells the history of the SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) and the biography of Fannie Lou Hamer, a central figure of the early to mid sixties Civil Rights Movement. Ms. Hamer was a prominant organizer in Mississippi and the South, and an important symbol of the grass roots civil rights struggle/movement which became an important turning point for African Americans in US history. She is perhaps best known for the quote: "I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired." Ms Hamer’s character portrays both the ugliness of the period and the resiliency of the human spirit. She is a sharecropper, illiterate, with little formal education; in many ways the product of a system engineered to exploit her. Her story is important for various reasons on both a local and national level. The opera will present a revealing portrait, not only of the titular character, but the regional South, SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) and other activist movements, and the shaping effect that the summer of 1964 had on the history of our country.
In 1962, when Hamer was 44 years old, SNCC volunteers came to town and held a voter registration meeting. She was surprised to learn that African-Americans actually had a constitutional right to vote. When the SNCC members asked for volunteers to go to the courthouse to register to vote, Hamer was the first to raise her hand. This was a dangerous decision. She later reflected, "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."
When Hamer and others went to the courthouse, they were jailed and beaten by the police. Hamer's courageous act got her thrown off the plantation where she was a sharecropper. She also began to receive constant death threats and was even shot at. Still, Hamer would not be discouraged. She became a SNCC Field Secretary and traveled around the country speaking and registering people to vote. Hamer co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).concert production of Queeara. Scored by Oakland composer, Mary Watkins with a libretto by
