On Site Opera:The Road We Came

Musical walking tours exploring African Americans and Black music history in NYC.

On Site Opera, NYC's pioneering site-specific opera company, once again re-defines the immersive opera experience with "The Road We Came," a new opera- and song-based project that explores the composers, musicians and places that define the rich Black history of New York City through a series of self-guided, musical walking tours. Celebrating a collection of never-recorded and seemingly lost classical compositions by Black composers, "The Road We Came" uses filmed musical performances and spoken narration to connect audiences to the musical timeline of Harlem, Midtown/Hell’s Kitchen and Lower Manhattan. From the home and texts of the prolific poet Langston Hughes, to Lincoln Center, to the African Burial Ground National Monument, and beyond, "The Road We Came" will open windows to the past and re-frame the present. "The Road We Came" is a multi-media collaboration between On Site Opera, Ryan & Tonya McKinny’s Keep the Music Going Productions, award-winning biographer and Harlem historian Eric K. Washington, and GRAMMY-winning baritone Kenneth Overton, who is the featured soloist of the tours.

Each self-guided tour is approximately a 90-minute immersive musical experience that patrons can access via this walking tour app and undertake at their own pace.