The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts, often referred to as simply The Wallis, is set to present “At War With Ourselves – 400 Years of You” on Feb. 15, 2025.

The showcase, which kicks off at 7:30 p.m. local time, will feature the Kronos Quartet and choral ensemble Tonality. The work features music by Michael Abels with text and narration by Nikky Finney. Alexander Lloyd Blake will conduct the showcase, which is produced by Janet Cowperthwaite.

“It is important to The Wallis to begin our new partnership with Tonality and Kronos Quartet, one of the most important and pivotal musical ensembles of our time, with a work of this magnitude and power that Kronos commissioned from Michael Abels to text by Nikki Finney,” said Robert van Leer, Artistic Director and CEO of The Wallis, per an official press release.

“At War with Ourselves” is inspired by Finney’s poem “The Battle of an for the Black Face Boy,” and is described as “radical libretto made of Civil War history, Black history, and modern American headlines. ‘Black Face Boy’ examines how the question of who gets to move like a free person and who gets to move in chains remains ensconced in our everyday American lives one hundred and fifty years later.”

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