(Photo credit: Gillian Riesen & Rachel Hadiashar)

Justin Austin, the 2024 Marian Anderson Vocal Award winner, is set to star in the New York premiere of Damien Geter’s “COTTON.”

The multimedia work presents African American stories through song, poetry, and photography. It is inspired by photographer John E. Dowell’s haunting images of South Carolina cotton fields, captured in his 2018 exhibit Cotton: “The Soft, Dangerous Beauty of the Past.”

Austin is joined by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves to perform Geter’s song cycle. Original poems by Nikki Giovanni, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Afaa Michael Weaver, Lauren Alleyne, Charlotte Blake Alston, Glenis Redmond, Alora Young, and Trapeta Mayson are presented in video readings interspersed against a backdrop of evolving images of Dowell’s cotton.

“COTTON” is presented by The 92nd Street Y, New York on April 18 at 7:30 p.m.