We’re in the first month of a fresh year — resolutions and commitments to positive change are practically palpating in the air. In that spirit, I’d like to hold up one exemplary and somewhat unusual show to the art world as a torch to carry, footsteps to follow: Eldorado Ballroom at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, curated by Solange Knowles. This triptych of evening performances was a beacon of clarity and artistic intent across nearly five hours of collective expression. But even putting the remarkable artistic prowess of the contributing performers aside, Eldorado Ballroom’s impact lies in its truly considered — and considerate — curation.
A good curator, Knowles shows us, leverages her platform to expand our experience of contemporary artists and our understanding of the historical frameworks in which their art exists. She offers multiple perspectives across a single program by setting up points and counterpoints that ricochet off each other while retaining their individual energies. And she collaborates with the space, integrating pre-existing structures and histories, allowing not just artists but contexts to flex in uncommon ways. Above all, she knows that curation is about giving rather than arranging: In opening up new possibilities through her particular perspective, she allows the lights of others to shine through.
Across the evenings of October 10, 12, and 13 of last year, Knowles and her creative agency, Saint Heron, offered an education in Black musical lineage and institutional possibility. The first evening’s events, entitled “On Dissonance,” considered classical, symphonic, and opera; the second, “Contrapuntal Counterpoints,” explored funk, soul, blues, and jazz; and the last, “Glory, Glory,” embodied spiritual and devotional music.
The first night’s events, “On Dissonance,” featured a selection of classical music in the European tradition — what some might argue the concert hall was built for. Every piece, however, was composed by a Black woman: Patrice Rushen, Knowles, and the late Julia Perry. Perry was the first woman of color, and third woman in general, to compose a piece played by the New York Philharmonic orchestra; her inclusion here intentionally draws attention to and reinforces the place of Black women in classical music. The accompanying 50-person orchestra was also conducted by a Black woman, Jeri Lynne Johnson, and complemented by Black opera singer Zoie Reams. Taken together, Solange’s selection of artists expands our perception of the genre, setting the tone for the shows to come.
Continuing from that established baseline, the second night, “Contrapuntal Counterpoints,” was charged with sonic disobedience. It began with a purely electronic set by emerging artist Liv.e, which morphed into a raucous, funky reunion of J*Davey with Thundercat on bass. Their set was brashly celebratory of the feelings, emotion, and daring at the foundation of funk and rock and roll, and a rebellion against a societal wish for Black pain and joy to remain quiet and out of sight. Finally, the stately and improvisational quartet of Bilal, Cooper-Moore, William Parker, and Michael Wimberly ended the night with a musical collection that was primordial and provocative, weaving together sounds of magnificent sorrow and pride. Lyrics from the slavery-era standard “Motherless Child” blended with Bilal’s off-the-cuff, belted laments of being “born under a bad sign” and pleas for proof of a merciful god. The vigor of their improvisation helped drive the point of the effort needed to find one’s place. The quartet’s set included no electronics save for amplifiers, highlighting the analog technologies of the body in transforming hurt into beauty.
The final night extended the theme of the body as technology with an opening organ medley by Dominique Johnson that was later buoyed by Moses Sumney’s subversively tender vocals. Closing out the evening was another performance by Johnson on the hall’s magnificent 6,134-pipe organ; a collection of choral compositions by the late Mary Lou Williams conducted by Malcolm J Merriweather with piano accompaniment by Artina McCain; and finally, an hour-long musical celebration by the Birmingham chapter of the Gospel Music Workshop of America Women of Worship Choir that had that entire sold-out hall — without hyperbole — on their feet and clapping. A wave of deep care, like a hug from a favorite relative, permeated the entire evening.
These nights reenacted decades of Black-American code. It presented the various ways Black stories, emotions, revolutions, innovations, acceptances, joys, and sorrows have been musically packaged — with all the prettily tied bows, dried blood, fountainous love, and shards of glass that give it its weight. While each night stood mightily on its own, the programs commented on one another, deepening the story of Black American expression that felt true to the cultural progression of popular music itself with cumulative performances. The second night, for instance, presented as a musical and temporal rebellion to the first’s neatness: Its storytelling in jazz, blues, funk, and lyricism were distant in time and propriety from the first’s program of Western classical music, and closer in character and positioning to spiritual music. Sunday picked up on Saturday’s sensibility, channeling raw emotion into impassioned devotion.
The performers’ bodily commitment to the program reminded me of an observation thinker Fred Moten made during a 2015 public program at Art + Practice that Black music is so powerful because Black people, specifically, will exhaust themselves into their music — pounding on keys, howling life into horns, vocalizing from one’s feet, drumming with one’s whole body. The dedication to transferring a depth of spirit — not simply a message — within their music was present in every Eldorado performance, but also in the way they were strung together. The sonic profiles pinged back and forth but never hit a wall that deadened their momentum. Throughout those Eldorado evenings, that depth of spirit was passed, admired, protected, and carried with care.
The success of that journey across genres and eras was neither coincidence nor happenstance. That was an intentional orchestration, a display of art’s ability to convey a complex humanity that written histories can only attempt to capture. Knowles’s placement, pacing, and casting for these roles is a testament to the generative resonance of effective curation. The signature of a good curator, she shows us, is their style of giving rather than their talent for arranging, their ability to offer the right opportunities to artists to increase the impact of their work. Their main task is to ensure another’s truth shines through.
For instance, Knowles stumbled upon Johnson on YouTube, and recruited her to perform on one of the most renowned organs in the world. Sumney, the child of pastors, was given space to recontextualize one of his songs, “Doomed,” as a solemnly beautiful conversation with the divine. And by placing her own classical composition for tubas in tandem with Perry and Rushen’s compositions, Knowles underlined the sense of risk-taking in each of their respective legacy across eras. By creating the framework for these invited artists, their specific musical practices and the Black musical lineage writ large were able to dance together centerstage. Eldorado Ballroom was clearly personal to Knowles — the name is a nod to a storied Black music hall in her hometown of Houston, Texas — but she was able to enact the possibility of Black folk traditions dancing in step with institutions instead of butting up against them through her hyper-specific lens.
An overlooked aspect of curation is that it should be about collaborating with space, integrating pre-existing structures and various histories. Eldorado Ballroom was as much of a partnership between Solange and architect Frank Gehry as it was between she and the artists she selected. Gehry created a renowned space and Knowles filled it with the exaltation of human expression in a melding of their ideas and intention; the walls vibrated with a sense of collective purpose. In the same way that the programming allowed the performers to showcase their talents and connect with the audience, it also allowed the Walt Disney Concert Hall to flex in ways that it is not often given the chance to. Beams that have rarely encountered such sonic frequencies; floorboards that had never before been stomped to in time with a choir. Everything and everyone present during this production, it seemed, was given the opportunity to stretch.
Possibility and perspective — the ability to create spaces and direct viewpoints — are the cornerstones of curation. I’ve said before that Black women are load-bearing pillars. With Eldorado Ballroom, Knowles packaged a summation of Black artistic contributions in conversation with not only one another, but also the space of this concert hall. She closed the conversation with Black worship music which is, at its core, about believing and accepting that one is worthy of love. Sing about yourselves loudly here, she said. It is possible. Let us all stomp our feet, clap our hands, and feel adoration for histories and our good fortune to live this life. Let artists and audience embrace in this new, temporary, and magical land we’ve built together. Gently persistent, gracefully firm, collaboratively curious, confidently singular, wholly encompassing. Please, other curators, ask yourself if you’re only trying to get your point across, or if you’re helping voices you admire resonate further. Are you honoring the space in which this art will be seen? Contemplating what came before and what might come after? Take a trip to Eldorado Ballroom; take notes.
