Chamber Music
2021 Musings On The Words of Pauli Murray for piano trio (piano, violin & cello)
Commissioned by the March on Washington Film Festival
World Premiere: October 4, 2021
2021 Tuskegee Airmen Rhapsody for piano, trumpet & violin
Commissioned by Tuskegee Airmen MATAMA Chapter
World Premiere: March 2021
2021 Moment for string quartet
Commissioned by Apollo String Quartet
World Premiere: February 2021
“the work gives homage to the importance of arts and literature. It encapsulates the work of creatives. Institutions like the Harris County Public Library work to ensure the stories, message, and voices of those creatives are preserved moment by moment for the generations to come.”
Choral Music
2009 God Bless America
Composed for Fantasia Barrino's NBC 4th of July Television Special
Opera
2018 The Tongue & The Lash
Commissioned by Opera Theater of Saint Louis
World Premiere: June 2021
Libretto by Karen Chilton
Featuring Markel Reed, baritone and Jonathan Johnson, tenor
In 1965, the world witnessed a historic debate between cultural giants James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. at which they argued the motion: Is the American dream at the expense of the American Negro? Now, composer Damien Sneed and librettist Karen Chilton explore that enduring question in a new opera that imagines a post-debate conversation between Baldwin and Buckley.
2020 Marian's Song (a chamber opera)
Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera
World Premiere: March 4 - 5, 2020
Libretto by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
Featuring Zoie Reams, mezzo-soprano and Nicholas Newton, baritone
Marian’s Song is a chamber opera by composer Damien Sneed and librettist Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, based on the life of celebrated contralto Marian Anderson (1897–1993), who broke racial bound- aries throughout her career. Marian’s Song shares Anderson’s incred- ible life through a fusion of spoken-word poetry and opera.
Marian’s Song takes place both in the present day and in the past, during Anderson’s lifetime. When current-day Howard University student Nevaeh, who admires the singer thanks to stories shared by her grandmother, learns the church where Anderson sang as a child is slated for demolition, she travels to Philadelphia to try to save it. Nevaeh’s journey is woven together with Anderson’s life story—her disappointments, her triumphs, and along the way, the works she sang so transcendently, including spirituals and classical pieces.
2017 Empower
Commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago
World Premiere: May 31, 2018
Libretto by Ike Holter
Featuring Angela Brown, soprano and Will Liverman, baritone
In this world premiere, a group of South Side youth band together to change their neighborhood and fight against the negative media representation by a reporter obsessed with corruption. From redefining their own narrative to sharing what Chicago means to them, the stories and sounds of Chicago's youth are featured in this groundbreaking new work written by Ike Holter with music by Damien Sneed.
This opera is the culmination of EmpowerYouth!: Igniting Creativity through the Arts, a groundbreaking partnership between Lyric and the Chicago Urban League that immerses high school students in the creation and performance of an original opera. Students performed their opera alongside opera stars Angela Brown and Will Liverman and a 10-piece orchestra, bringing this dynamic new work to Lyric. audiences in a fully-staged and costumed opera performance.
Orchestral Music
2021 Tuskegee Airmen Symphony
Commissioned by the Tuskegee Airmen Major Anderson Technical Aviation Maintenance Academy (MATAMA)
World Premiere: March 2022
Solo Instrumental
2020 Sequestered Thoughts for solo piano
Commissioned by the Library of Congress
Sneed was inspired to compose this piece after spending many days alone in solitude during the COVID-19 pandemic of Spring 2020. It opens with a virtuosic fluttering in the right hand juxtaposed against a strong and determined left-hand motif speaking to the many meandering thoughts that come to one when they find themselves devoid of human interaction and fellowship. Then a motif comes out of the left hand representing the inquisitive longing for things to shift to a new normal while the right hand plays octaves mirroring the monotony of days running together and weeks running into months. Then with the feeling of inward searching of the soul, a chromatic scale cascades downward into a strong-willed determination to survive in resilient hope for the future upward into keys effervescently peering upward in expectation. The Library of Congress developed The Boccaccio Project to provide some artistic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ten composers were commissioned to write brief solo works, with the remotely recorded pieces premiered online in June 2020.
2020 Elegy for solo clarinet
Commissioned by Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic
Vocal Music
2021 The Earth Sings
(A Song Cycle based on the poetry of James Weldon Johnson)
Commissioned by ASCAP for the Kingsford Commission
World Premiere: November 2021
2020 This Little Light Of Mine (soprano, mezzo-soprano, 2 tenors, baritone & bass-baritone)
Commissioned by Lawrence Brownlee for Houston Grand Opera's 2020 Giving. Voice Recital
2018 I Dream A World for Justin Michael Austin (baritone)
Composed for Justin Michael Austin's Carnegie Hall Debut Recital as First Place Winner of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) Vocal Competition
2018 Oh, Freedom (solo voice)
2016 Oh, Freedom (3 baritones)
2013 Spiritual Sketches for Lawrence Brownlee (tenor)
Commissioned by Anthony McGill, Principal Clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic