Warren Black interviews Portland composer and pianist Darrell Grant, about his chamber opera in progress, Sanctuaries. It tells the story of a community experiencing gentrification in Portland’s Albina district.
Gentrification in Portland and the city’s redlining past go under the microscope in Darrell Grant’s jazz opera, Sanctuaries, a new work commissioned and produced by Third Angle New Music. This world premiere, site-specific opera is composed by critically acclaimed jazz pianist Darrell Grant (who ‘Gramophone’ has called “a composer of substance”), with libretto by two-time National Poetry Slam Individual Champion Anis Mojgani and stage direction by LA-based opera director Alexander Gedeon. Blending elements of jazz, spoken word, and devised theater, Sanctuaries speaks to the experience of displaced residents of color in Portland's historically black Albina district.
