Shawn Okpebholo’s music sings of Chicago. Its waterways (“Fractured Water,” recently orchestrated for the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra). Its architecture (“City Beautiful,” for the Lincoln Trio). Its ugly history (“Redlin[ing],” for Picosa Ensemble).
I’m hard-pressed to think of another local composer who has become so ubiquitous, so quickly. The Chicago Symphony, Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Ravinia Festival, Eighth Blackbird, ~Nois saxophone quartet and Fulcrum Point have all featured Okpebholo’s music on their programs, along with others I’m surely forgetting. He’s been championed by Cedille Records: Debut recordings of “City Beautiful” and “Two Black Churches,” a shattering diptych that was also recently orchestrated, were both put out by the label. His song cycle “Songs in Flight” follows them on Feb. 14, 2025.
I’m even harder pressed to think of anyone, anywhere, who composes with Okpebholo’s finesse across so many genres. His art songs ache, from the shattering diptych of “Two Black Churches” to “Songs in Flight,” whose settings of runaway slave ads were the most haunting thing I heard this year. His instrumental music surges with Ivesian detail and color. His “Black Music,” for saxophone quartet and trumpet, premiered on what was ostensibly a Scott Johnson tribute concert in February. That heady work made off with the whole thing.
“The imagery that his music immediately conjures is just so palpable,” says Jim Ginsburg, Cedille Records founder and president. “He’s a great musical storyteller.”
Okpebholo has a staggering story of his own. One of three children, he grew up in government housing in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother worked three jobs to support the family, one of which was washing linens at a homeless shelter affiliated with the Salvation Army. (She eventually rose through the ranks to become the shelter’s director.) Even when money was tight, young Okpebholo received free musical education from the organization.
Later, a congregant at his family’s church noticed his musical talent. And not just any congregant: it was James Curnow, the esteemed concert band composer. Curnow, himself the beneficiary of Salvation Army musical programs, took Okpebholo under his wing.
Thirty years after his first lessons with Curnow, Okpebholo became the composer-in-residence of the Lexington Philharmonic, the same orchestra that first exposed him to classical music in grade school. That achievement, to many, would seem to be the American dream incarnate.
Okpebholo’s assessment is more measured.
“I wasn’t unique,” he insists. “In the projects, there’s lots of kids that are talented and smart. … With my narrative, it’s so easy to say, ‘Well, you’ve worked hard.’ Yes. But no matter how hard you work, no matter what advantages you have, no matter what things come your way, it’s still hard to get to the next level.
“Changing how the system works — that’s something I care more about.”
He’s a man of his word. Okpebholo teaches the next generation of musical movers and shakers at Wheaton College, the Evangelical liberal arts school in the western suburbs. Baritone Will Liverman, one of Okpebholo’s frequent collaborators, is an alum; the swiftly rising conductor Kedrick Armstrong was once Okpebholo’s student there. (In another “you can’t make this stuff up” moment, Armstrong conducted the orchestrated version of “Two Black Churches” last month, at his new post at the Oakland Symphony.)
No matter how hard he tries, Okpebholo says he can’t write “absolute music,” or music for music’s sake. All his pieces are about something. Even “The Cook-Off” — his fizzy comic opera workshopped by Chicago Opera Theater in 2023, since picked up by companies across the country — packages a parable about racial politics in America.
“I’m a feeler, you know,” Okpebholo says. “That’s the best way I can express my feelings in a way that can relate to other people.”
Hannah Edgar is a freelance critic.
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