THE TOWN HALL CELEBRATES JAMES BALDWIN AND THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BALDWIN/BUCKLEY DEBATE WITH

THE TONGUE & THE LASH AND A RETURN TO CIVIC DISCOURSE

A CHAMBER OPERA, CREATED AND CONCEIVED BY COMPOSER, DAMIEN SNEED AND LIBRETTIST, KAREN CHILTON. DIRECTED BY DENYCE GRAVES.

The Town Hall celebrates James Baldwin and the 60th anniversary of the Baldwin/Buckley Cambridge debate with the New York premiere of the chamber opera, THE TONGUE & THE LASH by Damien Sneed, composer/conductor and Karen Chilton, librettist. Making her Town Hall and New York directorial debut, the opera will be directed by world-renowned mezzo-soprano, Denyce Graves-Montgomery. 

A Return to Civic Discourse revisiting the “American Dream”: 60 Years Later will include insights from moderator, distinguished novelist/poet and MacArthur Fellow, Edwidge Danticat along with Nicholas Buccola, PhD award-winning author of The  Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate Over Race in America; Dr. Brenda M. Greene, author and literary activist, founder and executive director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York; Matt Brim, PhD, Professor of Queer Studies at the College of Staten Island, author of James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination (2014); and Dr. Frank Leon Roberts, Founding Executive Director of The Baldwin/Hansberry Project, English and Black Studies Professor at Amherst College at The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY on February 18, 2025 at 8:00 p.m.