Ask Your Mama, composed by Laura Karpman and based on the poetry collection by Langston Hughes, plays one night only, Sunday, August 30, 2009, at 7:30PM at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. in Hollywood. Tickets ($28 – $116) are available through HollywoodBowl.com, at the Hollywood Bowl Box Office (Tuesday-Saturday, 12 p.m.-6 p.m.), or by calling Ticketmaster at 800.745.3000. For more information, visit AskYourMama.com

Dark shadows become darker by a shade
Sucked in by fat jukeboxes
Where Dinah’s songs are made
From slabs of silver shadows.
- Langston Hughes, “Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz”

Throughout his career, poet Langston Hughes was celebrated for writing and reflecting the beauty in the everyday. Dubbed the “O. Henry of Harlem,” Hughes wrote about the poverty and jazz, the helplessness and hope he confronted daily. In his collection Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Hughes attempted to compliment his poetry with the addition of music. Alongside each poem in the margin of each page, Hughes penned a possible soundtrack covering, as the subtitle suggests, a variety of musical styles and genres. In the quote above, for example, Hughes added along the right hand side: “‘Hesitation blues’ softly asking over and over its old question ‘tell me how long.’” But the real question became, how long would Hughes have to wait for a collaborator, a composer equal to the task of his instruction?

Composer Laura Karpman

Decades later, Hughes has just such a collaborator. “Ask Your Mama is a masterpiece of literature,” says Laura Karpman, composer of the new accompanying score. “It’s an epic poem that has been – not undiscovered, but under-discovered.”

Karpman was inspired by Hughes’ lyrical representation of culture, politics and society. “The poem touched me deeply as an American. I felt it was very patriotic in a very realistic way. I’m a history buff and it really traces a lot of American history and alludes to a lot of figures, entertainment and political and from every walk of life.”

She used Hughes’ instructions as a jumping-off point. “What I have done is set that poem to music and very carefully followed Langston Hughes’ instructions on how to do so. In some ways, he’s not only written a poem but he’s created a script for the music. I’ve had a lot of experience as a film and television composer and I’ve written for theatre as well. It was a very natural thing for me to take directions and make them come to life because that’s what I do all the time.”

With four Emmy wins and impressive film credits, Karpman sells herself short by describing her work as “taking direction.” George Manahan, the conductor of the piece, argues Karpman’s genius is the way in which she combines different genres and authenticates them. “The music is inspired by rock and roll, gospel, blues, all of those together,” says Manahan. “What’s brilliant about the piece is the way Laura pulls them all together and yet her profile comes through the music.”

Conductor George Manahan

Ask Your Mama has had a long journey from Hughes’ Harlem to the Hollywood Bowl, and Manahan was with the project from early on. “About a year ago, (Karpman) described and brought some music for me to take and listen to. I was just amazed by the complexity of it, and yet, how it reaches the people. It’s a great piece, it touches your heart.”

As acclaimed conductor for the New York Opera, Manahan was personally drawn by the broad spectrum of styles Karpman wrote. “It was challenging and that’s what I like. I like that it is freeing in so many different musical disciplines.”

While Manahan would help carry the project through workshops and its premiere, Karpman’s earliest collaborator was world-renowned soprano Jessye Norman. “She was the first person who came on and helped me to make this thing happen and to program it at Carnegie Hall,” says Karpman. Hughes notes famous sopranos of his era in the poems, and Karpman believes that Norman has inherited the tradition of the singers he mentions.

Manahan adds that the piece offers Norman a chance to stretch and show her range of talent. “Jessye Norman is one of the biggest names in the opera world. Ever. She’s a legend,” he says. “But she doesn’t do opera in this piece, that’s what’s great. Jessye sings gospel, the blues, all sorts of different styles.”

For her role in the piece’s formation and her phenomenal vocal skills, Norman is also an inspiration to her fellow performers. Says featured vocalist De’Adre Aziza, “Ms. Norman is a living, breathing master class of talent, dignity and artistry. I would just sit and watch her in rehearsals and soak up all I could.”

d'Adre Aziza

Aziza joined the Ask Your Mama team courtesy of Director Annie Dorsen. “I worked on the Broadway-show-turned-Spike-Lee-joint Passing Strange, and my amazing director from the project Annie Dorsen was directing the Carnegie Hall production and invited me to join.” Passing Strange was honored with several Tony nominations, including a nomination for Aziza as best featured actress, making it a breakaway Broadway hit. The show has received even more attention as experimental filmmaker Spike Lee created a hybrid of theatre-film experience based on the stage performance.

While her connection with Dorsen was integral to her addition to the cast, Aziza feels a deep connection with Hughes and his poetry. “Langston was at the forefront of writing about the black experience in America – my experience – and so I feel a great personal connection to him,” she says.

Aziza knew she had to join the project when Dorsen told her Norman would be a co-performer. “She told me that Jessye Norman was involved, and I told her that Jessye Norman grew up down the street from my mom!” She adds with a laugh, “So Ask Your Mama bout that!”

Since its original New York performance, the show has picked up new performers, including The Roots, the Grammy award-winning rap and hip-hop group, and jazz singer Nnenna Freelon. According to Karpman, all the performers are integral to the piece; with each artist comes a new addition to the piece. Aziza agrees, “It’s really a blessing to work with such great people – it doesn’t happen that often.”

Although the show premiered at Carnegie, all three agree that the Hollywood Bowl performance will be equally spectacular, if not surpassing its east coast predecessor.

Ask Your Mama premiere at Carnegie Hall

For Karpman, the improvement is based primarily on the cast additions and the altered visual element. “I’ve reworked the film element that informs what’s going on in the poem and adds a lot visually to the experience,” she says. “Because the Bowl has such fantastic screens and uses the live feed to project the performers on the screen, I’ve constructed a film that interweaves live feed with preexisting visuals.”

Manahan sees the venue as having an enormous positive impact. “The theatre itself is so amazing,” says Manahan. “It’s a much bigger stage, we’re able to do much more interesting things.”

Aziza agrees that the Hollywood Bowl will be “a little more relaxed than Carnegie.” The Carnegie experience offered a great opening night, but, she feels, she’ll continue to improve with every performance. “Don’t get me wrong, Carnegie was amazing because, well, it’s Carnegie Hall! But this time around, having performed it already, the material will be in my body more and I’ll be able to live in it more and really take it off of the page.”

Karpman also believes that putting the show up a second time will only improve it: “I think every time we do it it’ll grow.” And the change in audience energy will undoubtedly affect the performance. “I think there are certain things that a Los Angeles audience will respond to differently than a New York audience and vise versa,” Karpman says. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens.” She adds with a laugh, “It’ll certainly wake people up from their picnics! I can tell you that!”

After conquering two of the most formidable venues in the United States, what’s the next mountain for the show to climb? “We don’t have anything definite right now,” says Karpman, “but we have some very strong possibilities. I’m hoping to turn it in to a film. The film is a pipedream at this point but so was Ask Your Mama two years ago and here we are.”

And speaking of mountains, Karpman is confident the show will manage the near impossible feat of making everyone happy. “I think (Ask Your Mama) is everything from an important work, a moving work, and an entertaining work,” she says. “No matter what you come to the theatre for, that you’ll leave with having had that experience. If you come for opera, you’ll leave having had that experience. If you come for hip hop, you’ll leave having had that. If you come for literature, you’ll leave with that. If you come for theatre, with D’Andre, who is such a star, you’ll leave having had that experience. It is so many things that it goes beyond expectations but I think that whatever you go into it for, you’ll leave satisfied in that realm.”

Feature image of Norman, Karpman and Manahan courtesy of Ask Your Mama and the Hollywood Bowl