Charlotte Blake Alston

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · Master Storyteller, Narrator & Librettist

https://www.charlotteblakealston.com

For over thirty years, Charlotte Blake Alston has graced stages from the John F. Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution to storytelling festivals across North America, Africa, Europe, and South America. She breathes life into traditional and contemporary stories from African and African American oral and cultural traditions — and this former elementary school teacher brings that same work to day care centers, schools, museums, prisons, and youth detention centers alike.

Her storytelling was shaped in childhood, when her father introduced her to the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her performances are often enhanced by traditional instruments including the djembe, mbira, and the 21-stringed kora, which she began studying in 1999 under the late Senegalese griot Djimo Kouyate and later with Malian virtuoso Yacouba Sissoko.

In 1991 she became the first storyteller to perform with The Philadelphia Orchestra; thirty seasons later, in 2021, she was named the orchestra's Official Storyteller, Narrator and Host. She hosted Carnegie Hall's Family Concert Series for seventeen consecutive years, and has narrated for the Cleveland, Boston, Baltimore, and Saint Louis orchestras and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. As a commissioned librettist she has written original texts for Carnival of the Animals, Scheherazade, and The Children's March.

Her honors include a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Artist of the Year Award, the National Storytelling Network's Circle of Excellence, and the Zora Neale Hurston Award — the highest honor bestowed by the National Association of Black Storytellers. She holds two honorary doctorates.