Wisteria is a multimedia performance resulting from a collaboration between poet, Kwame Dawes, and composer Kevin Simmonds. The work is based on poems by Kwame Dawes published in his 2005 book, Wisteria (Red Hen Press). Composer, Kevin Simmonds set these poems to music to create an eighty minute long performance that explores the life of women who lived through the Jim Crow period in Sumter, South Carolina. Dawes' poems grew out of interviews he conducted with African American elderly women in Sumter, South Carolina in 1995.
The performance showcases the poems as read by Dawes and the company, but also showcases remarkable vocal performances of some exceptional compositions by Simmonds. The piece is set for a bass, two tenor, a mezzo soprano and two sopranos, along with a flute, two violas, a cello and a violin.
Featured performers are sopranos Valetta Brinson, an opera singer from Memphis, Tennessee, and Valerie Johnson, a professor of music at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina. “Wisteria” also features photographs from the Richard Samuel Roberts Collection of the Columbia Museum.