In Fire Shut Up in My Bones: Opera Suite in Concert, visual artist Andrew F. Scott collaborates with composer Terence Blanchard in reimagining the operatic narrative through the lens of multimedia performance. Adapted from Charles M. Blow’s memoir with music arrangements by David Balakrishnan, and directed musically by Blanchard with his ensemble The E-Collective and the Grammy-winning Turtle Island Quartet, this concert suite distills selections from the historic opera, originally the first by a Black composer to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera, into a powerful, immersive experience.
Scott’s role as visual director transforms the concert space into a living architecture of memory and emotion. Through large-scale animated projections, real-time video integration, and spatial image sequencing, his visual framework echoes and amplifies the opera’s central themes: childhood trauma, identity, longing, and liberation. Rather than illustrate the libretto, Scott constructs a visual counterpoint—an evolving tapestry of abstraction and symbolism that expands the emotive field of the music.
Through this project, Andrew F. Scott further investigates the poetics of technology, Afro-diasporic storytelling, and contemporary ritual. Fire Shut Up in My Bones: Opera Suite in Concert stands as both a cultural milestone and a testament to the transformative potential of interdisciplinary collaboration.
The suite’s performances at the Music Center at Strathmore, the Charleston Gaillard Center, and other venues have been praised for their fusion of live jazz, classical instrumentation, and digital scenography. Scott’s contributions heighten this hybridity by weaving light, motion, and media into the ensemble’s rhythm, synchronizing visual tempo with sonic improvisation. His collaboration with camera artist Matt Unkenholz adds a crucial layer of real-time magnification and improvisational feedback, collapsing the distance between performers and audience.
Andrew F. Scott, visual design and production, Terence Blanchard, SFJazz Residency: Flow Re-Imagined. Terence Blanchard, Visual Artistic Director, trumpet, Marcus Strickland, saxophone, E-Collective Collective (Charles Altura, guitar; Julian Pollack, piano; David Ginyard, bass; Oscar Seaton, drums); Matt Unkenholz, remote cameras and technical direction. SFJazz, Miner Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, January 23, 2025.