Writer, Composer, Director, Performer

     Sylvester is a writer, composer, director, performer,  and activist based in the Triad, North Carolina.

 

     Over his performance career, Sylvester has played or sang for public figures such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and has had the honor of sharing the stage with top-named performers such as Andrea Bocelli, Rhianna Giddens, Sherrill Milnes, George Shirley, and Hoodastank and Sevendust(joint concert for US Troops in South Korea).

 

     As a writer, his original play "Spirit of Wyatt Outlaw: Final Peace", in which he also directed and composed music, premiered to both a live and live-stream audience with great reception on February 26th, 2021. Sylvester has written screen plays for Grammy-nominated artists, and  currently co-authoring a non-fiction book that document the work of local activists in their fight for a just system.

 

     Immediately following undergrad, Sylvester served in South Korea and across the Southeastern US as an Army musician; a profession rooted in ambassadorship and troop morale. His decoration  includes the  Army Commendation, Army Achievement, Korean Defense, and National Defense medals, as well as the Commander’s Coin from former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, General Peter Chiarelli, among others. 

 

     His most recent collaborations include a playwriting commission with Culture Mill and Carolina Performing Arts at UNC-Chapel-Hill; a movement and vocal project with Okwui Okpokwasili, a New York-based choreographer from Yale University;  Raleigh News and Observer and ProPublica for a documentary on the Alamance County 2020 protests, which won an EMMY-AWARD.

​

     Sylvester received his training from the music and theatre programs at the Greensboro College School of the Arts in North Carolina, as well as the Armed Forces School of Music on the Navy’s Joint Expeditionary Base in Little Creek, Virginia.

     

     "My days at  college were filled with many hours of learning about the greatest artists of their generations . So much of my studies during that time was of jazz and classical music-everyone from Miles Davis to Lee Morgan as well as classical and spiritual musicians like Wagner, Mahalia Jackson and William Grant Still. I continue my studies in acting through the Uta Hagen Method.

 

     My stepfather, a South Carolinian born on the edge of the great depression,  would often say during hard times, "can't win for losin’". Growing up, we moved from house to apartment to trailer and back again, 11 times by the time I was 12 years old. His stories always kept us entertained during the "storms".  We looked to storytelling for comfort. It was here that I realized  everyone has a story, and those stories so often lie in the smallest, most seemingly mundane moments in our lives. I work to capture those stories through the powerful and influential mediums of music and theatre."