This May, The Esoterics is excited to present a concert of new works by the African-American composer, Tara Mack. An avid choral singer for much of her life, Tara is currently a soprano in the London Oriana Choir. In 2019, inspired by her choir’s five-year project to promote women composers, Tara began to write choral music of her own. Since then, she has written, studied, and encouraged other choral musicians to compose. Her works have been commissioned and performed in the US and Europe, including pieces by the Choral Arts Initiative, the New York City Master Chorale, the New Amsterdam Singers, the Wellspring Ensemble, C4, the Brown University Chorus, Inversion Ensemble, Vox Urbane, Austin Cantorum, Singing City, Junger Kammerchor Köln, and the Covent Garden Chorus, among many others.

After growing up in the Chicago area, Tara earned her Bachelor’s degree in English from Brown University and her Master’s in Journalism from UC Berkeley. She has worked as a professional print and radio journalist, writing and producing for several media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and the BBC. In 2000, she left journalism to work for non-profit organizations that focus on arts youth development and social justice. As the first director of the Education for Liberation Network, Tara was able to connect hundreds of teachers, activists, young people, and parents who reimagined education as a tool for liberating marginalized communities. She is currently Director of Programmes at Pembroke House, a community center in London, where she lives with her partner and two children.

Tara enjoys setting texts that reflect her political values, her African-American culture, and her experiences as a mother – and this program that she curated for The Esoterics to perform represents each of these influences in equal measure. To start the concert, the ensemble will sing Good morning and Nighttime ninja – two short pieces by Mack that depict a child’s curiosity and creativity – one wondering where the sun might go during the night, while the other attempts a secret nocturnal adventure. These pieces are followed by two settings of Georgia Douglas Johnson: Benediction and A bygone sky – a song of love to her own son that is replete with optimism about his ambitious future, followed by a shuffling through unrealized dreams, likening them to “dead leaves.”