Dr. Felicia Barber makes her Carnegie Hall debut

On March 17, Dr. Felicia Barber, associate professor (adjunct) of choral conducting at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and director of Yale Camerata, made her Carnegie Hall conducting debut in Stern Auditorium as part of the Manhattan Concert Productions Octavo Series. The festival choir was made up of singers from across the country and represented eight different ensembles from seven states including Alabama, Tennessee, Iowa, New Jersey, Wisconsin, California, and Connecticut. Dr. Barber was able to share this experience with Connecticut singers from both the Yale Camerata (Gerry Holmes, Leise Franklin-Zitzkat, and Dennis Jin) and the Bella Canto ensemble from West Haven High School (under the direction of Mr. Jason Thomas). Dr. Barber’s selected program featured African American composers including Hailstork, Price, and Boyd. 

Another highlight of the concert was the Carnegie Hall debut of Dedication, Barber’s first published poem, with music composed by Dr. Zanaida Robles. The song was originally commissioned for the 2024 Eastern Division SATB High School Chorus, for which Barber also served as the guest conductor. 

The themes of the song were intentionally chosen to celebrate black women. Barber says, “it has been my experience, as a black woman, that we can walk into a room and find ourselves often unacknowledged, undervalued, overlooked, or dismissed. The poem serves as an anthem to the many examples of strong black women who serve(d) as mentors and caretakers throughout my life. They are the pillars of our community, the foundation of their families; they are the true essence of ‘black girl magic.’ The poem celebrates our mothers, sisters, aunts, friends, counselors, and neighbors, who are the epitome of our beauty, our grace, our resilience, our faith.” Read the poem in full below. 

Barber says she felt very “grateful and blessed” to have been able to share the experience with several family members, including her sisters Elizabeth (Brian) and Nadine, from Western New York and area friends.

Dedication: To being Black and a Woman

Our beauty, our grace, our resilience, our faith
We raise our children
We raised their children
We laugh and smile, hiding the pain
We feel joy, we feel grief, but are often called upon for others relief
 
Our beauty, our grace, our resilience, our faith
Backbone for days
Clarity in haze
Often called to lead, unacknowledged …. we raise
Our voices for justice, our voices for peace,
When it is our families who bear the burden of unimaginable grief?
 
Our beauty, our grace, our resilience, our faith
To change the world…I am determined
A positive space I must create
Rejecting all words that seem to undermine my way
I remain…in beauty, in grace, in resilience, in faith….
Black is beautiful…it is me…it is she…it is we
…in beauty, in grace, in resilience, in faith….