Description
Join internationally-renowned mezzo soprano Andrea Baker for a Gospel Workshop. Andrea will lead the group in vocal warmups and the performance of a Negro Spiritual that we you’ll learn together in the workshop. The workshop will explore the roots of the artform, the Gospel vocal tradition and its connections to Scotland. Andrea Baker is one of the artists featured in OMOS – an exhibition at Dunoon Burgh Hall of a new moving image work that pays homage to untold Scottish Black History, and celebrates Black excellence and performance in Scotland.
Music will be provided prior to the workshop, all vocal levels are invited and the ability to read music is not required.
About the workshop series
This workshop is part of OMOS, an exhibition at Dunoon Burgh Hall (25 March to 25 April 2022) that pays homage to Scotland’s untold Black history, and celebrates Black performance and excellence in Scotland. It also explores Shakespeare and the magic of Puck’s Glen. Created collaboratively by a group of award-winning performers, OMOS shines a light on Black and Black LGBTQ excellence in Scottish performance. Cabaret performer Rhys Hollis (also known as Rhys’s Pieces) leads an outstanding group of collaborators including opera singer Andrea Baker, dancer Divine Tasinda and pole artist Kheanna Walker to create this powerful film, filmed in Puck’s Glen and Stirling Castle.
The series of workshops are an opportunity to meet the artists, and discover how histories and stories can be told, interpreted and reimagined through creative skills.
Andrea Baker
Hailed as a “stupendous and heartrending” talent (Bild Zeitung), American-Scottish mezzo soprano Andrea Baker is internationally renowned for her “enchantingly powerful” performances (Das Orchester). An operatic trailblazer, she was the first African American to take the role of Carmen in Australia, at Sydney Opera House, and the first to perform the roles of Fricke, Erda, and Waltraute in Wagner’s Ring in China. In addition to her celebrated work on the opera stage, she has taken on an extraordinary breadth of voices across various media. Her one-woman show Sing Sistah Sing! is a joyous, soulful celebration of the African American female voice, encompassing jazz, gospel, blues, lieder, and storytelling. Self-written and self-produced, this groundbreaking show has toured to sold out audiences around the world, most recently at the 2020 Edinburgh International Festival. As a radio presenter and documentary maker she can be heard across the BBC, including on Radio Scotland, Radio 4, and Radio 3’s Sounds Connected, and has produced her own series of podcasts. Andrea is “honoured and excited” to take on the role of ambassador for ‘Scotland’s Street Orchestra,’ The Nevis Ensemble.
Funders: People’s Postcode Trust and The National Lottery through Creative Scotland and National Lottery Heritage Fund.
