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FULL LONGING TO TELL (Tyshawn Sorey) A Blues Opera Hamburg 2025 Akua Naru
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Longing to Tell – A Blues Opera
- Composer: Sorey Tyshawn
- Libretto: Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Kampnagel. Hamburg, Germany
- Recorded: August 15, 2025
- Type: Staged Opera Live
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Philosopher Cornel West called her “the Toni Morrison of hip-hop”: Akua Naru—a US musician, scholar, and activist—has established herself as an influential artist through her work as a professor of hip-hop at UC Santa Cruz and a musician with six albums to her name. For her latest album, *all about love: new visions*—inspired by the groundbreaking thinker bell hooks—Akua Naru collaborated with the Hamburg-based Ensemble Resonanz; she is now developing a large-scale stage production with the group.
This evening’s performance is being created in collaboration with composer, multi-instrumentalist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Tyshawn Sorey and the highly acclaimed director Anita Helena Recke. The project takes as its starting point the 2003 book *Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy* by American sociologist and hip-hop studies pioneer Tricia Rose. The book gathers the stories of 21 Black women of diverse ages and social backgrounds—stories of love and loss, tenderness and violence, intimacy and community. These narratives are now being brought to the stage in a world-premiere concert production featuring Akua Naru, Tyshawn Sorey, and Ensemble Resonanz, which will subsequently tour across Europe.