To say that the world is Charlotte Blake Alston’s stage is a literal truth.
From the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. to the Women of the World Festival in Cape Town, South Africa to refugee camps in northern Senegal, the narrator, storyteller and librettist — one who writes the text of an opera or long work — is a great globetrotter for African culture.
The performer has brought her international savvy to a free, streaming First Fridays For Families performance “Stories and Songs From the Old Tradition” available through May 21 on the Columbus Area Arts Council website at artsincolumbus.org.
“My travels and interactions with storytellers and story-loving audiences both at home and abroad have been wonderfully fulfilling both personally and artistically,” Alston said on her website at charlotteblakealston.com. “My work with orchestras, ensembles and choirs around the country has been especially rewarding.”
For instance, she is the host of Sound All Around, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Preschool concert series and has appeared as host or narrator on the orchestra’s school and family concerts since 1991.
But Alston also is a veteran storyteller.
For hundreds of years throughout the African continent, people gathered and told stories. The tradition may be the strongest in the West African countries of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Mali. Stories were the way the beliefs, mythology, cultural identity, history, and shared community values of a people were taught and preserved. The tradition continued when Africans were brought to America.
She aims to breathe life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and cultural traditions.
For six seasons, Alston hosted “Carnegie Kids,” Carnegie Hall’s preschool concert series, and has been a featured artist on the Carnegie Hall Family Concert Series in New York since 1996.
She has been a featured teller at The National Storytelling Festival, The National Festival of Black Storytelling, and at regional festivals throughout North America and abroad. She has been a featured artist at both the Presidential Inaugural Festivities in Washington, D.C. and the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Children’s Inaugural Celebrations in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
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Who: Narrator and storyteller Charlotte Blake Alston in a virtual performance as part of the Columbus Area Arts Council’s First Friday For Families series.
When: Through May 21.
Where: By video at artsincolumbus.org.
Information: charlotteblakealston.org
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