A Conversation with Anthony Davis and Davóne Tines

Join us for a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Anthony Davis and Grammy-nominated curator and bass-baritone, Davóne Tines, moderated by James Edward Ditson Professor of Music, Anne C. Shreffler. Anthony Davis is Harvard University's 2026 Fromm Distinguished Scholar.

Harvard College alum Davóne Tines will be joining this event virtually via Zoom.

About the Speakers:

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis is celebrated internationally for his operatic, orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Opera News calls him “a national treasure” for his pioneering music, while The New York Times recognizes him as one of the “great living American composers.” OPERA America inducted Davis into its Hall of Fame in 2023. Davis is best known for his operas including The Central Park Five and X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. He was the first composer to write in a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. He uses music to address power structures in a way that creates awareness, empathy, and understanding. Mr. Davis is currently a professor of music at the University of California, San Diego as well as the Cecil Lytle Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in African and African-American Music.

Davis’s newest opera, Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, based on the book by Duncan Tonatiuh, explores the challenges faced by families crossing the border. The production is directed by J. Ed Araiza and co-presented by Bodhi Tree Concerts and Opera de Tijuana. It premieres in January 2026 in San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico.

Davóne Tines is a Grammy-nominated creator, curator, and performer working at the intersection of opera, art song, spirituals, gospel, and protest songs. Called “a singer of immense power and fervor” by The New Yorker, his work tells deeply personal stories that connect to broader cultural histories.

He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut in John Adams’s El Niño and released his first studio album, ROBESOИ, reimagining music associated with baritone Paul Robeson. Tines has premiered operas by John Adams, Terence Blanchard, and Matthew Aucoin, and has appeared with major orchestras, performing works from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New York Philharmonic to his own devised concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Tines’ honors include the 2025 Harvard Arts Medal, 2024 Chanel Next Prize, 2022 Musical America Vocalist of the Year, and the 2020 Sphinx Medal of Excellence. He is a graduate of Harvard University and The Juilliard School.

Anne C. Shreffler is interested in how music history is written (and rewritten), with special emphasis on the political and ideological associations of music, institutions of new music, women creators, and global musicology. She has published on the musical avant-garde in Europe and America, historiography, composers in emigration, performance theory, and contemporary opera, as well as on the music of Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, Elliott Carter, John Corigliano, Bruno Maderna, and Younghi Pagh-Paan. Her book, New Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) will appear in 2026.

A graduate of the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, TX, Shreffler studied flute and music theory at New England Conservatory (BM ’79 and MM ’81) and received her Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard in 1989. She then taught at the University of Chicago and at University of Basel in Switzerland. She has taught at Harvard since the fall of 2003, where she is the James Edward Ditson Professor of Music and an Affiliate of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Harvard University Music Department