Solange Knowles is adding another groundbreaking chapter to her ever-expanding artistic legacy. The Grammy award-winning artist and visionary has been appointed as the first all-school scholar in residence at the USC Thornton School of Music, marking a historic collaboration between academia and one of music’s most creative minds, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Through a custom-designed three-year residency, Solange will teach a course on music curation, host student-focused workshops, and work with faculty to build long-term programming frameworks for the school. Her appointment also includes joining the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program, where she follows in the footsteps of her longtime collaborator, Raphael Saadiq, who joined last December.
For Solange, the position represents the culmination of her life’s work.
“I am a GED graduate,” she told The Times. “I was a teenage mom. I was pregnant with my son at 17, so I didn’t get to further my education in the classical sense. But I was really blessed and honored to have enriched these other parts of education through my art, through travel [and] through the globalization of my life.”
“So to be able to have access and broader tools as a scholar in residence, to enrich that and deepen that, is really so exciting for me,” she added.
Solange announced the news during a sold-out talk at USC alongside Thornton School of Music Dean Jason King and Saint Heron collaborators Shantel Aurora, Diane “Shabazz” Varnie, and Sablā Stays. Her residency will focus on music curation, a growing field that includes creative directors, DJs, documentary filmmakers, and designers shaping the sonic experience across industries.
In collaboration with her Saint Heron collective, King, and USC faculty, Solange will launch a course tentatively titled “Records of Discovery: Methodologies for Music and Cultural Curatorial Practices.” The class, set to debut in fall 2027, will explore “the process of constructing curatorial frameworks alongside the context, craft and creation of musical landscapes,” according to the university.
Beyond the classroom, Solange will lead workshops and conversations for students, including one focused on “The Making of Eldorado Ballroom,” the acclaimed series she presented at Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2024. She’s also slated to participate in USC’s upcoming symposium, where she’ll discuss women in classical music and the work of composer Julia Perry.
Although she’s collaborated with universities before, Solange said the timing of this residency feels right.
“For decades now, I’ve watched the evolution of music and music curation, and I feel like I have something adequate to add to the conversation,” she said. “I feel really inspired by the idea of my 15-year-old self being able to have someone sort of walk me through the footsteps of what I was about to embark on. So if I can, in any role, be a vessel of guidance, it really just sort of warms my heart that I am given the opportunity to be in that space.”
She continued, “Being able to help students navigate what that is for them is like a dream job.”
King, a longtime admirer of Solange’s work, said her presence on campus will redefine how students view music curation. “I think the work that she does as a music curator is very singular and very unique, so I’m hoping that she’s going to bring that uniqueness into the classroom and [her] programming,” said King. “I think she herself will be a model for how to do this kind of work and to do it differently.”
From creating Saint Heron’s free library preserving rare Black and brown literature, to curating immersive artistic worlds through albums like A Seat at the Table and When I Get Home, Solange continues to merge art, culture, and community on her own terms. And now, she’s turning that brilliance into a curriculum, teaching the next generation of curators how to see, build, and imagine without limits.
Cover photo: Solange Knowles Becomes USC’s First Scholar in Residence, Set to Teach Course on Music Curation/Photo credit: Thistle Brown/ LA Times