About: Post Pardon

Premieres May 2025 at the Gordon Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Waterville, Maine

The music for Post Pardon is, first and foremost, a reflection of the rhythm, tone and emotional content of the libretto. Jones amplifies the inherent musicality of the words, which wash over the listener in an asymmetrical familiarity that is almost preverbal. In finding the musical parallel for this oblique approach to speech, Post Pardon is influenced by avant-garde improv, Buddhist and Hebrew chants , field hollers and musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Abdullah Ibrahim, Roberta Flack, Sweet Honey in the Rock, the sweeping arpeggios and impressionistic impact of Debussy, as well as Romantic era composers and the spectrum of jazz in the last century.

Selected Press

July 20, 2014 | The Daily Californian

Mythology and poetry unmask death in “Post Pardon: The Opera”

THEMES

BLACK WOMEN’S MENTAL HEALTH: SUICIDE AND POST PARTUM HOMICIDE AND SUICIDE.

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS

GENTRIFICATION & URBAN RENEWAL

ECOLOGICAL VIOLENCE

AFRO-INDIGENOUS HERBALISM AS SOCIAL JUSTICE WORK

Financial Supporters

Colby College: The Arts Office, the President’s & Provost offices, The Lunder Institute for American Art

Space Gallery, American Rescue Plan