POSTPONED to a later date TBD due to inclement weather.
Free tickets. Registration required here.
Quest is pianist Chelsea Randall’s interdisciplinary commissioning project celebrating the potent and timely work of trailblazing Black Arts Movement poets and the legacy of her great uncle, the poet and editor Dudley Randall, through the lens of new piano music. Chelsea will premiere six new AMP commissions for solo piano by esteemed composers Carolyn Yarnell, Adolphus Hailstork, Joyce Solomon Moorman, Anthony R. Green, Regina Harris Baiocchi and Jeremiah Evans, inspired by the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baraka, Naomi Long Madgett and Dudley Randall, who platformed these poets via his Detroit-based Broadside Press. Melba Joyce Boyd, Michigan’s Poet Laureate and Dudley Randall’s biographer, will recite the poems which inspired the commissioned works alongside Chelsea’s performances. Quest is dedicated to the memory of Nikki Giovanni.
The premiere of “Quest” is supported in part by a 2025 Brooklyn Arts Fund grant.
About Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd: Dr. Boyd is the third Poet Laureate of the State of Michigan and the 2023 Kresge Eminent Artist. She is a Broadside poet, who served as Dudley Randall’s assistant editor, 1972-76, during the most prolific period of the press, publishing more than 500,000 books. An award-winning writer of ten books of poetry and three biographies: Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (Columbia University Press, 2004); and Politics and Poetics: The Legacy of Frances E. W. Harper (Wayne State University Press, forthcoming 2026) and Discarded Legacy: Politics and Poetics in the Life of Frances E. W. Harper (1994).Boyd is the editor of Roses and Revolutions: The Selected Writings of Dudley Randall (2009), and co-editor with M.L. Liebler of Abandon Automobile: Detroit Poetry 2001.
Boyd also has over 100 published essays, and is the producer/director of two documentary films: The Black Unicorn, about Dudley Randall; and A Poet’s Poet, about Naomi Long Madgett. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of African American Studies at Wayne State University, and Adjunct Professor in Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.
Boyd’s poem, “The Museum Was Once a Dream,” is engraved in bronze and appears on the dedication wall of the Wright Museum of African American History. Lines from her poem, “We Want Our City Back,” appear in the sculpture, “Michigan’s Tribute to Labor,” in Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, and “Maple Red” is displayed adjacent to the painting by Ed Clark in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Her poetry has been translated into German, French and Italian. Her poetry, as well as over 100 essays, have been anthologized and published in international journals and newspapers. She has lectured and read poetry at universities and cultural centers throughout the United States, Europe, and the Republic of China.
Boyd’s literary and cultural service awards include: a National Endowment for the arts Publication Award, an Independent Publishers Award, two Library of Michigan, Notable Book Awards, a NAACP Image Award Honor for Poetry, the ForeWord Award for Poetry, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor, the Spirit of Detroit Award, and others.
