My favorite Logan Center moment occurred June 2, 2022 when composer Renee Baker invited me to open her brilliant “Baldwin Chronicles IV: The Art of Being Black” opera with a poem she wrote to author James Baldwin. The Chicago Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Maestra Baker, played beautifully as I “spit” terse verse. The crowd roared as I sat next to talented lyric soprano Kim Jones. She smiled as I “turned up!” Two weeks later, I lectured on literature, love & liberation at Baldwin’s former home in Nice, France. As a young reporter, I interviewed Baldwin a year before the famous Black gay self-exiled author died; & I later wrote about him in my “James Baldwin’s Black Lives Blues Are Mine” (Kendall Hunt).
