CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Ask Your Mama!
Music by Laura Karpman, on a text by Langston Hughes

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Hot jazz, German lieder, cha-cha, and Afro-Cuban drumming come together in this collaboration between four-time Emmy-winning composer Laura Karpman and five-time Grammy-winning soprano Jessye Norman, based on Langston Hughes’s epic poem, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz. A heady mixture of intersecting cultures, Ask Your Mama! brings together the collective memories of America and the hope for its future in a compelling tapestry of orchestral music integrated with technology and sound samples drawn from a dozen traditions.

Jessye Norman, Soprano
The Roots
de'Adre Aziza, Vocalist
Tracie Luck, Vocalist
Orchestra of St. Luke's
George Manahan, Conductor
Annie Dorsen, Director
Rico Gatson, Artist
Kate Howard, Video Artist
David Korins, Scenic Consultant
Michael Chybowski, Lighting Designer
Leslie Ann Jones, Sound Designer

LAURA KARPMAN Ask Your Mama! (World Premiere, commissioned by Carnegie Hall)

Ask Your Mama!, a collaboration between four-time Emmy Award–winning composer Laura Karpman and five-time Grammy winner Jessye Norman, is a multimedia presentation on a text by Langston Hughes, Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz.

The Ask Your Mama! concert presentation is made possible, in part, by generous gifts from Frederick I. Iseman and Henry T. Segerstrom.

Major funding for Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy has been provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Alice Tully Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation's New York City Cultural Innovation Fund, Howard University, and the A. L. and Jennie L. Luria Foundation.

The opening performance of Honor! is sponsored by Bank of America.

Honor! is made possible, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.