In Harmony

In March, Singing City continues a long and meaningful relationship with the words and legacy of Langston Hughes through a special collaboration with Lyric Fest, Dream Keeper: The Life, Letters, and Lyrics of Langston Hughes. Singing City’s Artistic and Music Director Rollo Dilworth curated the program in collaboration with Lyric Fest’s Founder and Artistic Directors Suzanne DuPlantis and Laura Ward, shaping a concert that explores Hughes’s life, letters, and poetry through music, narration, and song.

The program draws on Singing City’s longstanding commitment to socially engaged repertoire and to amplifying American voices whose work speaks powerfully to issues of identity, justice, and community. Lyric Fest brings its distinctive expertise in biographical storytelling, creating programs that place words and music in close conversation and invite audiences to experience writers as living, complex individuals rather than historical abstractions.

This collaboration also resonates deeply with Singing City’s own history. The choir first celebrated the work of Langston Hughes in May 1960, when it participated in a Philadelphia concert titled “An Evening with Langston Hughes and the Singing City Choir.” Presented under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Leon H. Sullivan of Zion Baptist Church, the program featured Hughes reading his own poetry alongside choral works performed by Singing City under the direction of Elaine Brown. Materials from this historic concert are preserved in Singing City’s archives at Temple University, reflecting the ensemble’s early and sustained engagement with American poets and composers. The program, preserved in our archives, can be seen below.

During that 1960 visit, Hughes stayed at the historic Bellevue-Stratford Hotel on Broad Street, then a hub for artists, civic leaders, and visiting dignitaries. Archival records detail his travel and lodging expenses—small, human details that bring this moment in Singing City’s history vividly to life.

The Dream Keeper collaboration builds on that legacy while offering contemporary audiences a renewed opportunity to engage directly with Hughes’s voice. Listeners can still hear Hughes read and reflect on his own work in recordings he made for the Library of Congress in 1959, where his warmth, humor, and insight underscore the enduring relevance of his poetry.

By revisiting Langston Hughes’s words in the present day, Singing City affirms a throughline that spans generations—connecting its past to its present artistic vision, and reaffirming the power of choral music to carry poetry, history, and collective experience forward.

We welcome you to attend Dream Keeper: The Life, Letters, and Lyrics of Langston Hughes. Click here for more information or visit Humanitix  to purchase tickets.