All material found in the Press Releases section is provided by parties entirely independent of Musical America, which is not responsible for content.
Press Releases
Long Beach Opera Announces Debut Recording of 'The Central Park Five'
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LONG BEACH OPERA ANNOUNCES DEBUT RECORDING
OF ANTHONY DAVIS & RICHARD WESLEY’S PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING OPERA THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE
OUT AUGUST 28 ON PLATOON
Complete Musical Tracks HERE
Pre-Order/Pre-Save Album HERE
Stream Singles HERE and HERE
Read Composer Note HERE
Read Description of Scenes HERE
Read The Central Park Five Opera Timeline HERE
Photos HERE
.jpg?content-type=image/jpeg)
The Central Park Five Album Art | Download
LONG BEACH, CA — Today, Long Beach Opera (LBO), Los Angeles County’s oldest and most historically provocative opera company, announces the debut commercial recording of Anthony Davis and Richard Wesley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Central Park Five, to be released August 28, 2026 on Platoon.
Sung in English, The Central Park Five dramatizes the true story of the "Exonerated Five" – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise – five Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted in the 1989 rape and assault of a woman jogger in Central Park. After years in prison, the young men were exonerated through DNA evidence and the confession by the actual perpetrator of the crime.
The opera traces their arrests, coerced confessions and unjust trials against a backdrop of racial prejudice, weaving an intimate, nuanced and deeply human portrait of justice and perseverance. Musically, Davis draws on jazz, contemporary classical, R&B, and hip-hop to underscore the drama and create a portrait of Black American music that stretches across time and genre.
"Opera is a powerful platform for the defining stories of our time. The Central Park Five tells a consequential American story with extraordinary artistry and urgent contemporary resonance," says Michelle Magaldi, CEO of LBO. "With this recording, Anthony Davis and Richard Wesley’s landmark work, realized by our creative collaborators and performers, will continue to educate, provoke and confront new audiences."
"Music can capture the tensions and fissures in our cultural and political life and the hope of something better. As a composer, I have always been drawn to stories that intersect the political and cultural worlds. The Exonerated Five were falsely accused and convicted of the crime with no physical evidence and were victims in a culture war waged against Black and Hispanic communities," says Davis. "The Central Park Five is a story of a community rising up against injustice, of the Five finally finding exoneration and vindication. But we know the cost and we understand this is a continuing story. The forces that implicated the Five are still with us," he adds.
.jpg?content-type=image/jpeg)
Credit: JJ Geiger | High-Res Photos
Praise for The Central Park Five:
“Forthright and impassioned.” –The New York Times
“Dark, propulsive, and, at times, wrenchingly lyrical.” –The New Yorker
“Both exhilarating and crushingly tragic.” –The Los Angeles Times
The recording features performances by Cedric Berry (Yusef Salaam), William Powell III (Antron McCray), Bernard Holcomb (Kevin Richardson), Orson Van Gay II (Raymond Santana), Ashley Faatoalia (Korey Wise), Justin Ryan (The Masque), Lacey Jo Benter (District Attorney), Todd Strange (Donald Trump), Joelle Lamarre (Ensemble / “Antron's Mother” / “Kevin's Mother” / Others), Lindsay Patterson Abdou (Sharonne Salaam / Others), Corey Estelle (Ensemble), José Luis Maldonado (Ensemble / Raymond's Father / Matias Reyes), conducted by Anthony Parnther.
The Central Park Five was originally commissioned and premiered by LBO at Warner Grand Theatre in June of 2019. The full orchestration was commissioned by Detroit Opera, and LBO brought the opera to audiences again in a new production in 2022 at Jordan Auditorium, on the campus of Long Beach’s Jordan High School. Following this second production, Long Beach Opera brought the cast and conductor Anthony Parnther to Silent Zoo Studios in Los Angeles to create the first studio recording of the piece, engineered by Greg Curtis.
The opera has received critically acclaimed productions across the U.S., including those by Portland Opera and Detroit Opera, and is published by Schott Music. The release highlights LBO’s rich legacy of taking risks on bold, urgent new works and investing deeply in their commissions to create meaningful, lasting cultural impact.
About Long Beach Opera:
Long Beach Opera (LBO) is Southern California’s oldest and boldest opera company, with over 47 years of challenging norms, taking risks and sparking meaningful conversation. Under the leadership of CEO Michelle Magaldi, Artistic Director & Chief Creative Officer James Darrah Black, and Music Director Christopher Rountree, LBO creates uniquely immersive work that blends film, dance, new music and more.
LBO is committed to centering underrepresented voices—striving to redefine the art form to make it more accessible to our entire community. Notable highlights include our 2019 world premiere of Anthony Davis' The Central Park Five, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, and the 2023 premiere of Pulitzer-finalist Kate Soper's The Romance of the Rose.
.jpg?content-type=image/jpeg)
Anthony Davis
Credit: Michele Zousmer | Download
About Anthony Davis:
One of the “great living American composers” (New York Times), Anthony Davis is distinguished for his important contributions to opera, and for his symphonic, choral and chamber works. He is the first to write in a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject.
Davis received the Pulitzer Prize in Music for The Central Park Five, which premiered at Long Beach Opera in 2019. The libretto by Richard Wesley is based on the true story of Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., and Korey Wise, five teens wrongfully convicted for the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park. The Central Park Five has since been produced by opera companies across the United States.
Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, featuring a libretto by Thulani Davis and a story by Christopher Davis, has taken on an almost mythic stature since its 1986 New York City Opera sold-out world premiere. A new production — directed by Robert O’Hara and co-produced by five opera companies — originated at Detroit Opera in 2022 and opened at the Metropolitan Opera in 2024. The 1992 and 2022 “X” albums were both nominated for GRAMMY Awards®.
A graduate of Yale, he holds the Cecil Lytle Chancellor Chair in African and African American Music at UC San Diego. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and has been inducted into Opera America’s Hall of Fame.
.jpg?content-type=image/jpeg)
Richard Wesley | Download
About Richard Wesley:
Richard Wesley received a Drama Desk Award for his 1971 stage play, THE BLACK TERROR. His 1978 play, THE MIGHTY GENTS, ran briefly on Broadway. His 1989 play, THE TALENTED TENTH, brought him his fourth AUDELCO Award for outstanding play. In 2013, he was commissioned by the Trilogy Opera Company of Newark, NJ to write the libretto for the opera, PAPA DOC, with music composed by Dorothy Rudd Moore, and adapted from an essay by Edwidge Danticat. Other librettos for Trilogy include: KENYATTA, with composer Trent Johnson, SCOTT, GARNER and GRAY SAYS JIMMY BALDWIN, composed by DWANE FULTON and BOOKER T and W.E.B., composed by Julius Wilson. Mr. Wesley’s most recent play, AUTUMN, received the 2016 AUDELCO Award for Dramatic Production of the Year.
Mr. Wesley has shared two NAACP Image “Best Picture” Awards for scripting the motion pictures, UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT and LET’S DO IT AGAIN, both of which starred Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. Among his other motion pictures: NATIVE SON (1984), with Victor Love, Elizabeth McGovern, Matt Dillon and Akosua Busia, and the musical drama, FAST FORWARD (1985). The National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress has included “Uptown Saturday Night”, for which Mr. Wesley wrote the screenplay, to be among 25 films selected for inclusion in the 2024 National Film Registry, for archival in the Library of Congress.
In television, Mr. Wesley’s has scripted, THE HOUSE OF DIES DREAR, (PBS, 1984); MURDER WITHOUT MOTIVE (NBC, 1992), with Curtis McClarin, Anna Maria Horsford, Georg Stanford Brown, and Cuba Gooding, Jr.; MANDELA and DE KLERK (Showtime, 1997), with Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine, and co-wrote the scripts for BOJANGLES, starring Gregory Hines (Showtime, 2002) and DEACONS FOR DEFENSE (Showtime, 2003), with Forest Whitaker, Jonathan Silverman and Ossie Davis. DEACONS FOR DEFENSE was the recipient of a “Black Reels Best Picture” Award from the Foundation of African American Films. He has also written episodes for the series FALLEN ANGELS (Showtime, 1996) and ONE HUNDRED CENTER STREET (A&E Cable Networks, 2000 and 2001).
Mr. Wesley is currently an Associate Professor in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in the Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing and is married to the novelist, Valerie Wilson Wesley.
.jpg?content-type=image/jpeg)
Anthony Parnther
Credit: Dario Acosta | Download
About Anthony Parnther:
Anthony Parnther has forged a conducting career that spans the world’s leading orchestras, Pulitzer Prize-winning composers, and the Hollywood recording stage. Described as “a conductor for the future” (The New York Times), “the quintessential L.A. musician of our day” (Los Angeles Times), and “Hollywood’s go-to conductor for epic projects” (Billboard), he serves as Music Director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Parnther has led many of the world’s foremost orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with artists including Jon Batiste, Joshua Bell, Cynthia Erivo, Wynton Marsalis, Jessye Norman, Leslie Odom Jr., Cécile McLorin Salvant, and Frederica von Stade and premiered and recorded works by Pulitzer Prize-winning composers Anthony Davis, Michael Abels, Julia Wolfe, George Walker, and Lewis Spratlan.
Parnther has earned the trust of the world’s leading media composers and has conducted recording sessions for many of the world’s most iconic entertainment franchises, including Disney, Star Wars, Avatar, Marvel, Ghostbusters, Black Panther, Transformers, Creed, Minions, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ice Age, PAW Patrol, League of Legends, American Dad!, Looney Tunes, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. His recording credits also include the Academy Award-winning films Oppenheimer and Sinners, the Grammy Award-winning animated musical Encanto, and the Emmy Award-winning series The Mandalorian.
About Platoon:
Platoon Classical is home to a new generation of classical artists, recordings and creative partnerships. Part of Platoon, Apple’s boutique artist services company, the multi-award and GRAMMY® winning label works with exceptional artists and institutions, releasing music that speaks to both devoted classical listeners and new audiences. Rooted in Platoon’s artist-first approach, and with a commitment to artistic excellence, premium sound, and bold storytelling, Platoon Classical brings outstanding classical music to listeners around the world. Its growing roster brings together world-class musicians, composers, orchestras, and ensembles, and includes conductors Gustavo Dudamel and Dalia Stasevska, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, violinists Anne Akiko Meyers and Pekka Kuusisto, pianist Kirill Gerstein, and composers Oliver Leith and Gabriela Ortiz. Platoon/Apple acquired Swedish label BIS Records in September 2023. Together, they are redefining what classical music can look and sound like in the streaming era.
Duration: 2 hours
| 01 | The Central Park Five, Prologue and Act 1, Scene 1 | (8:08) |
| 02 | The Central Park Five, Act I, Scene 2 | (15:39) |
| 03 | The Central Park Five, Act I, Scene 3 | (7:02) |
| 04 | The Central Park Five, Act I, Scene 4 | (9:20) |
| 05 | The Central Park Five, Act I, Scene 5 | (5:25) |
| 06 | The Central Park Five, Act II, Scene 1 | (4:25) |
| 07 | The Central Park Five, Act II, Scene 2 | (20:21) |
| 08 | The Central Park Five, Act II, Scene 3 (Prelude) | (2:53) |
| 09 | The Central Park Five, Act II, Scene 3 | (5:36) |
| 10 | The Central Park Five, Act II, Scene 4 (Instrumental interlude) | (2:06) |
| 11 | The Central Park Five, Act II, Scene 5 | (17:39) |
| 12 | The Central Park Five, Act III, Scene 1 | (2:22) |
| 13 | The Central Park Five, Act III, Scene 2 | (2:05) |
| 14 | The Central Park Five, Act III, Scene 3 | (10:52) |
| 15 | The Central Park Five, Act III, Scene 4 | (6:13) |
Long Beach Opera on the web:
####
Contact:
8VA Music Consultancy
Allison Van Etten
For Long Beach Opera:
TCB Public Relations
Clarke Sondermann
Director of Publicity & Advocacy
clarke@tcbpr.com
Carrie Tolles
Founder
carrie@tcbpr.com
Alison Smith
COO
alison@tcbpr.com
FEATURED JOBS
RENT A PHOTO
