"Homage is a long-awaited collaboration that marks a historic moment in chamber music in many important ways. It is an illuminating and rare curation of composers from Africa and the Diaspora, performed with a great deal of care and passion by Dr Samantha Ege and Boston’s Castle of our Skins. Over the past few years, Samantha and Castle of our Skins’ founders Ashleigh Gordon and composer Anthony R. Green have been notable champions of diversity and inclusion in classical music, exploring Black repertoire long neglected or forgotten by the musical establishment.

Growing up in apartheid South Africa where Black voices were silenced (often violently), one of the

many gems in this album for me is Undine Smith Moore’s Soweto, a very moving testament to transatlantic solidarity within the global Black community. There are other composers in this album who were civil rights activists in their own ways as the oppression and marginalization of Black people is a reality of our histories on both sides of the Atlantic. Homage narrates many facets of the Black experience: the resilience in our music, history articulated by Black creativity, and the extraordinary power of art in affirming our shared humanity." Bongani Ndodana-Breen