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The Grey Land is an opera by composer Joseph C Phillips Jr about a Black mother trying to survive the reality in this land that doesn’t fully see her continued hope: that the great American experiment will one day become a belonging place where anyone can dream of “stillness and stars”, free from fear and want; a place where the beautiful promise of happiness, liberty, and life may yet manifest true to finally include her family too.


The Grey Land’s libretto explores those themes of humanity and identity through the lens of the intractable triumvirate of race, class, and power in American society. The opera integrates a variety of writings (from Joseph C Phillips Jr, Sonia Sotomayor, Frederick Douglass, the Mothers of the Movement, Isaac Butler, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Carolyn Bryant Donham), as well as contemporary film and video footage, dance, and set and lighting designs, and dramatic elements. The Grey Land's score and non-traditional narrative accesses Black culture and music, embracing social and musical multitudes and the “dichotomies of high and low, inside and outside, tradition and innovation.”

The Grey Land features soprano Rebecca L Hargrove, narrator Kenneth Browning, and Joseph C Phillips Jr conducting his 28-musician chamber orchestra Numinous. The album was recorded by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Studios in Mount Vernon, NY, is edited by Grammy Award-winning engineer Mike Marciano of Systems Two Studios, mixed by Grammy Award-winning engineer Brian Montgomery, and produced by myself and Grammy Award nominated producer Oded Lev-Ari. The album was released November 20, 2020 by the critically-acclaimed, Grammy Award-winning independent classical/new music label New Amsterdam Records.

numinousmusic.com ;

Album design by Brock Lefferts
Video recorded by Julia Ross
Photos by Donald Martinez

Music in video: excerpt from "Liberty Bell," scene 11 from The Grey Land by Joseph C Phillips Jr (From Numinous album The Grey Land)

© 2020 Numen Music/BMI All Rights Reserved

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