Can't Take My Soul: Njioma Grevious & Friends

Can’t Take My Soul: Njioma Grevious & Friends is a chamber music concert built around stories of resilience, identity, and artistic defiance. It takes place at Pine St Church in Boulder, CO (date/time not provided). The program opens with Rhiannon Giddens’ “At the Purchaser’s Option,” inspired by a 19th‑century ad selling an enslaved mother and her baby, and anchored by the refrain “You can take my blood but not my soul.” From there, it spotlights composer Germaine Tailleferre’s String Quartet—brilliant, concise music shaped by her fight to be taken seriously in a male-dominated world. The concert continues with Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-flat, written as a bold artistic “double-down” after a publisher doubted the market for his work. It closes with Schumann’s landmark Piano Quintet, a near-symphonic piece that helped define the genre. Together, the works connect four lives marked by hardship, and show how music can preserve agency when circumstances try to erase it. Best for classical music listeners and anyone drawn to performances with strong historical and social context.