Solange to build programming and teach course at USC Thornton School of Music

Over the past 2 decades, Solange has built an expansive vocation that knows nary bounds.

Under the auspices of Saint Heron — the multidisciplinary instauration she started successful 2013 — the Grammy-winning creator and curator has fearlessly dived into the worlds of music, choreography, design, architecture, ocular creation and more. Most recently, Saint Heron launched a escaped room successful hopes of preserving uncommon Black and brownish lit and making it accessible to others.

Now, Solange Knowles is bringing her expertise to the USC Thornton School of Music, wherever she has been named the school’s archetypal all-school student successful residence. Working crossed each areas of the schoolhouse — whose acquisition offerings see popular music, arts enactment and the euphony manufacture — Solange volition besides articulation the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program. (She’s the 2nd subordinate to beryllium invited to the distinguished program, pursuing her predominant collaborator, Raphael Saadiq, who joined successful December.)

For Solange, whose enactment is profoundly rooted successful research, taking connected this relation feels similar “a culmination of the galore practices” she has embodied passim her career, she said.

“I americium a GED graduate,” Solange told The Times. “I was a teenage mom. I was large with my lad astatine 17, truthful I didn’t get to further my acquisition successful the classical sense. But I was truly blessed and honored to person enriched these different parts of acquisition done my art, done question [and] done the globalization of my life.”

She added: “So to beryllium capable to person entree and broader tools arsenic a student successful residence, to enrich that and deepen that, is truly truthful breathtaking for me.”

Solange announced her residency connected Monday during a sold-out speech astatine USC featuring Thornton School of Music Dean Jason King and Saint Heron collaborators Shantel Aurora, Diane “Shabazz” Varnie and Sablā Stays.

Solange’s custom-designed, three-year residency, which kicks disconnected this week, volition absorption connected moving with Thornton enactment to make the school’s archetypal curricular and programmatic offerings successful the tract of euphony curation — a fast-growing country of the euphony manufacture that includes originative directors, documentary filmmakers, DJs and radical who enactment successful experimental design, King said.

Solange is slated to thatch a people astatine the schoolhouse successful collaboration with Saint Heron, King and different module that volition “explore the process of constructing curatorial frameworks alongside the context, trade and instauration of philharmonic landscapes,” according to USC. The people is tentatively titled “Records of Discovery: Methodologies for Music and Cultural Curatorial Practices” and volition motorboat successful autumn 2027. (The people volition formally beryllium announced person to its launch, according to USC.)

In her caller role, Solange volition besides curate student-focused conversations and workshops with members of her Saint Heron team. That volition see 1 surrounding “The Making of Eldorado Ballroom,” the acclaimed bid she brought to Walt Disney Concert Hall successful October 2024. Additionally, she volition enactment successful USC’s forthcoming symposium, wherever she volition sermon women successful classical enactment and the enactment of composer Julia Perry.

Although Solange has worked with different universities successful the past, she said present was the champion clip to bash the residency.

“For decades now, I’ve watched the improvement of euphony and euphony curation, and I consciousness similar I person thing capable to adhd to the conversation,” said Solange, who released her archetypal album, “Solo,” astatine 15. “I consciousness truly inspired by the thought of my 15-year-old aforesaid being capable to person idiosyncratic benignant of locomotion maine done the footsteps of what I was astir to embark on. So if I can, successful immoderate role, beryllium a vas of guidance, it truly conscionable benignant of warms my bosom that I americium fixed the accidental to beryllium successful that space.”

She added: “Being capable to assistance students navigate what that is for them is similar a imagination job.”

King, a longtime instrumentality of Solange’s work, said helium thinks she is the champion idiosyncratic to thatch euphony curation astatine the schoolhouse due to the fact that of her quality to make worlds, arsenic she has done via Saint Heron and done albums specified arsenic “When I Get Home” (2019) and “A Seat astatine the Table” (2016).

“I deliberation the enactment that she does arsenic a euphony curator is precise singular and precise unique, truthful I’m hoping that she’s going to bring that uniqueness into the schoolroom and [her] programming,” said King, who served connected the committee of the Lena Horne Town Hall Prize that gave its inaugural grant to Solange successful February 2020. “I deliberation she herself volition beryllium a exemplary for however to bash this benignant of enactment and to bash it differently.”