PLEASE NOTE THAT PROOF OF FULL VACCINATION IS REQUIRED TO ATTEND THIS EVENT, AND EVERYONE 2 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER (EXCEPT ARTISTS WHILE PERFORMING) MUST WEAR A MASK AT ALL TIMES WHILE IN THE BUILDING. FULLY VACCINATED IS DEFINED AS BEING 2 WEEKS OR MORE AFTER RECEIPT OF THE SECOND DOSE IN A 2 DOSE SERIES, OR 2 WEEKS OR MORE AFTER RECEIPT OF ONE DOSE OF A SINGLE-DOSE VACCINE.
Be Steadwell is a queer pop composer, filmmaker, and storyteller, who composes her songs on stage using looping, and vocal layering. Her original music features earnest lyricism, and affirming queer content. Her goal as a musician is to make other black girls, queers, introverts and weirdos feel seen and loved.
Toshi and Be have been collaborating creatively for 10 years, and this evening’s performance will feature a set by Steadwell, with Reagon joining in on select songs.
Be Steadwell earned a BA in Black Studies from Oberlin College and an MFA in film from Howard University in 2014. Her thesis film Vow of Silence was screened in film festivals around the world, including Black Star, HBO's OutFest, The Schomburg Center, and Inside Out Toronto.
In 2019, Be composed the music for The Alvin Ailey Dance Company's production of The Gone, and directed the musical A Letter to My Ex, which imagines a queer black woman's experience through the year of a big breakup. In 2021 Be released her latest album Succulent. In 2022, Be joined the cast of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, an Opera by Toshi Reagon and Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon.
Toshi Reagon is a multi-talented and versatile singer, composer, musician, curator, and producer with a profound ear for sonic Americana. Her expansive career includes residencies at Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House, and multiple festivals and venues nationally and internationally. A highly collaborative artist, she has worked with many musicians, choreographers, film and theater makers, including Meshell Ndegeocello, Urban Bush Women, Dorrance Dance, Nona Hendryx, Carl Hancock Rux, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Robert Wilson, and her band BIGLovely. Toshi co-composed music for two Peabody Award-winning films. She is a 2015 Art of Change Fellow by the Ford Foundation, a 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and an Andrew W. Mellon Creative Futures Fellow at Carolina Performing Arts. In 2021, Toshi received the APAP Award for Merit in the Performing Arts and was a 2021 recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in Music. In 2011, she founded the community festival Word*Rock* & Sword. Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon created the opera Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, on tour in Spring/Summer 2023.
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