During the last 20 years, Solange has constructed an expansive profession that is aware of no bounds.
Underneath the auspices of Saint Heron — the multidisciplinary establishment she began in 2013 — the Grammy-winning artist and curator has fearlessly dove into the worlds of music, choreography, design, structure, visible artwork and extra. Most just lately, Saint Heron launched a free library in hopes of preserving uncommon Black and brown literature and making it accessible to others.
Now, Solange Knowles is bringing her experience to the USC Thornton Faculty of Music, the place she has been named the college’s first all-school scholar in residence. Working throughout all areas of the college — whose instruction choices embody pop music, arts management and the music trade — Solange can even be a part of the Dean’s Inventive Vanguard Program. (She’s the second member to be invited to the distinguished program, following her frequent collaborator, Raphael Saadiq, who joined in December.)
For Solange, whose work is deeply rooted in analysis, taking over this function seems like “a end result of the various practices” she has embodied all through her profession, she stated.
“I’m a GED graduate,” Solange advised The Instances. “I used to be a teenage mother. I used to be pregnant with my son at 17, so I didn’t get to additional my training within the classical sense. However I used to be actually blessed and honored to have enriched these different elements of training by my artwork, by journey [and] by the globalization of my life.”
She added: “So to have the ability to have entry and broader instruments as a scholar in residence, to complement that and deepen that, is de facto so thrilling for me.”
Solange introduced her residency on Monday throughout a sold-out speak at USC that includes Thornton Faculty of Music Dean Jason King and Saint Heron collaborators Shantel Aurora, Diane “Shabazz” Varnie and Sablā Stays.
Solange’s custom-designed, three-year residency, which kicks off this week, will concentrate on working with Thornton management to develop the college’s first curricular and programmatic choices within the subject of music curation — a fast-growing space of the music trade that features inventive administrators, documentary filmmakers, DJs and individuals who work in experimental design, King stated.
Solange is slated to show a category on the faculty in collaboration with Saint Heron, King and college that may “discover the method of establishing curatorial frameworks alongside the context, craft and creation of musical landscapes,” in accordance with USC. The category is tentatively titled “Information of Discovery: Methodologies for Music and Cultural Curatorial Practices” and can launch in fall 2027. (The course will formally be introduced nearer to its launch, in accordance with USC.)
In her new function, Solange can even curate student-focused conversations and workshops with members of her Saint Heron workforce together with one surrounding “The Making of Eldorado Ballroom,” the acclaimed collection she delivered to Walt Disney Live performance Corridor in October 2024. Moreover, she’s going to take part in USC’s forthcoming symposium, the place she’s going to focus on girls in classical work and the work of Julia Perry.
Though Solange has labored with different universities up to now, she says that now was the perfect timing for her to do the residency.
“For many years now, I’ve watched the evolution of music and music curation, and I really feel like I’ve one thing sufficient so as to add to the dialog,” says Solange who launched her first album “Solo” at 15. “I really feel actually impressed by the concept of my 15-year-old self having the ability to have somebody form of stroll me by the footsteps of what I used to be about to embark on. So if I can, in any function, be a vessel of steerage, it actually simply form of warms my coronary heart that I’m given the chance to be in that area.”
She provides, “With the ability to assist college students navigate what that’s for them is sort of a dream job.”
King, a longtime fan of Solange’s work, says he thinks she is the perfect particular person to show music curation on the faculty due to her capacity to create worlds as she’s carried out by way of Saint Heron and thru albums like “After I Get House” (2019) and “A Seat on the Desk” (2016).
“I believe the work that she does as a music curator could be very singular and really distinctive, so I’m hoping that she’s going to carry that uniqueness into the classroom and [her] programming,” says King who served on the board of the Lena Horne City Corridor Prize that gave its inaugural award to Knowles in February 2020. “I believe she herself might be a mannequin for the way to do this type of work and to do it in another way.”
