Solange Knowles: First Black Woman To Compose Music For New York City Ballet

Soon, singer-songwriter Solange Knowles will be able to add ballet composer to her remarkable resume. The 36-year-old is the first Black woman to have composed a soundtrack for a show by the eminent dance company New York City Ballet.

She is creating music for the ballet's Fall Fashion Gala. The event will make its New York City premiere at Lincoln Center on September 28, marking its tenth anniversary. Actor Sarah Jessica Parker, the ballet's vice chair, will be honored on the occasion.

Solange Knowles 

Solange, a native of Houston whose untitled performance features choreography by Gianna Riesen, tweeted shared the news with her fans on Tuesday, writing, "Very excited to announce I’ve composed an original score for the New York City Ballet."

The musician, who is the younger sister of famed music icon Beyoncé, has an impressive music career to her own name and frequently writes songs that speak to the experiences of Black women. Four tracks from her 2016 album A Seat at the Table made it onto the Hot R&B Songs chart, giving it a widespread success. The same year, she received a Grammy for Cranes in the Sky, her single, in the Best R&B performance category.

For many years, Solange has designed a variety of performances for museums and galleries while working as a performance artist. She displayed The Seventy States, a "digital dossier" of performance artworks that reference Betye Saar, a painter of black spiritual ephemera, at the Tate Modern in London. Solange encouraged people to come to watch her occupy the stark white rotunda of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York in the spring of 2017.

“On one hand, I feel really, really grateful and just really lucky that my mom introduced us to black art at a very young age. But I don’t think that I ever saw this idea of existing as a performance artist or a multifaceted artist as a possibility as a black woman,” she told Billboard in 2018.

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Solange was felicitated with the "Impact Award" at Billboard Women in Music in 2017, and was also named as the 100th-most successful dance performer of all time. Her other business endeavours include a partnership with Rimmel London and a range of kid-friendly hip-hop goods.