Garth MacAleavey News

The Fisher Center at Bard will present Illinois, a world premiere music-theater work based on Sufjan Stevens’ acclaimed album of the same name, June 23–July 2.

A powerful double bill by Irish composer Emma O’Halloran, to libretti by her playwright uncle, Mark O’Halloran, deals with disappointment, connection and heartbreak--and what makes people tick. You know, 'the usual.'

PEAK Performances at Montclair State University will present the world premiere of The Night Falls, choreographed and directed by Troy Schumacher (New York City Ballet and BalletCollective), with story and lyrics by Karen Russell (Swamplandia!, Vampires in the Lemon Grove), and music and lyrics by Ellis Ludwig-Leone (San Fermin), February 9–12.

Both before and throughout the pandemic, National Sawdust’s mission has been to provide artists with financial and creative opportunities, audiences with access to groundbreaking work presented in remarkably high fidelity, and to support young creators by means of a rigorous mentorship network. These three goals serve as the inspirations for The Future Is… Festival, which takes place June 7 through June 16, features work by 6 composers and choreographers developing new work through residencies co-produced with the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation.

The Fisher Center at Bard will present a project that exemplifies its place on the cultural landscape: a new dance setting of the biblical Song of Songs created by the Fisher Center’s internationally celebrated choreographer-in-residence, Pam Tanowitz, with new music from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang.

Bard SummerScape 2021 opens with the live world premiere of I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a major new commission from Pam Tanowitz, the Fisher Center's inaugural Choreographer-in-Residence, with Jessie Montgomery, next Composer-in-Residence of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival takes a contemporary look at Hollywood's Golden Age in Acquanetta, a visual and musical tour-de-force inspired by the eponymous B-movie star with a mysterious past. Combining theater, opera, and film in a haunting meditation on identity, transformation, stereotypes, and typecasting from composer and Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon and his longtime collaborator, librettist Deborah Artman, Acquanetta originally premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival, where it was a New York Times and New York magazine "Critics' Pick" and one of the New York Classical Review's "Top Ten Performances of 2018."by Daniel Fish, whose previous SummerScape staging (a revelatory new take on Oklahoma!), scoring the visionary director a 2019 Tony nomination.

LA Opera Off Grand presents the world premiere of a new work by composer Ellen Reid and librettist Roxie Perkins: 'p r i s m.' 

The GRAMMY Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus presents Silent Voices: If You Listen, the second installment of its multimedia, multi-composer, and multi-year Silent Voices series of concert works with spoken word, conceived, produced and performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus (April 27-28, at National Sawdust). Silent Voices: If You Listen builds on the success of Silent Voices' 2017 premiere at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House. Here, eight composers, all women, collaborate with the choristers in amplifying the voices of the marginalized and confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, social and economic disparity, immigration, our environment, and threats to our understanding of truth. Commissioned composers for Silent Voices: If You Listen include Julia Adolphe, Olga Bell, Anna Clyne, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shelley Washington, Bora Yoon, and Pulitzer winner Du Yun; the concert will also feature a work with guest artist Shaina Taub. Unifying this work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers - a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12-18 - joined by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). These are young voices set on resisting the socio-politically retrograde elements of the present in a move towards a more inclusive and compassionate vision of the future.

The GRAMMY Award-winning Brooklyn Youth Chorus presents Silent Voices: If You Listen, the second installment of its multimedia, multi-composer, and multi-year Silent Voices series of concert works with spoken word, conceived, produced and performed by Brooklyn Youth Chorus (April 27-28, at National Sawdust). Silent Voices: If You Listen builds on the success of Silent Voices' 2017 premiere at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House. Here, eight composers, all women, collaborate with the choristers in amplifying the voices of the marginalized and confronting the challenges of division and categorization, racism, sexism, social and economic disparity, immigration, our environment, and threats to our understanding of truth. Commissioned composers for Silent Voices: If You Listen include Julia Adolphe, Olga Bell, Anna Clyne, Paola Prestini, Toshi Reagon, Shelley Washington, Bora Yoon, and Pulitzer winner Du Yun; the concert will also feature a work with guest artist Shaina Taub. Unifying this work is the distinctively versatile and beautiful sound of the rigorously-trained singers - a chorus of culturally and socioeconomically diverse New York City young people, ages 12-18 - joined by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). These are young voices set on resisting the socio-politically retrograde elements of the present in a move towards a more inclusive and compassionate vision of the future.

'Memories of Things Past'--'A la recherche du temps perdu' in Proust-speak--and very much in the past it was, for me at least, going in to ACQUANETTA, the piece that opened this year's iteration of the PROTOTYPE. Its name and purported subject--horror films--conjured up childhood memories for me. Musically and dramatically, however, ACQUANETTA--by Michael Gordon, composer (of 'Bang on a Can' fame), Deborah Artman, librettist (ditto)--was very much in the present and in a class of its own, seen January 10 at the Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center.

SF Opera Lab presents composer Ted Hearne's universally acclaimed digital-age oratorio The Source, drawn from the contents of Chelsea Manning's WikiLeaks release and called 'some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory-from any genre' by Pitchfork. Previously performed in New York City and Los Angeles, the six performances of The Source this weekend, February 24-26, and March 1-3, 2017 at the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater open Season Two of San Francisco Opera's SF Opera Lab programming. Scroll down for a first look at the production!

The Prototype: Opera/Theater/Now festival and The French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, present Silent Voices on Today, January 14 and Sunday January 15 at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall. 

The Prototype: Opera/Theater/Now festival and The French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, present Silent Voices on Saturday, January 14 and Sunday January 15 at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall. 

The Prototype: Opera/Theater/Now festival and The French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, present Silent Voices on Saturday, January 14 and Sunday January 15 at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall. 

From January 7-14, BRIC, as part of PROTOTYPE - OPERA | THEATRE | NOW, will present the New York premiere of anatomy theater.

Beth Morrison Projects and HERE's fifth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival begins this week, running January 5-15!

From January 7-14, BRIC, as part of PROTOTYPE - OPERA | THEATRE | NOW, will present the New York premiere of anatomy theater.

LA Opera's 30th Anniversary Season will conclude with the world premiere of Anatomy Theater, opening on June 16. Created by Pulitzer Prize-winning and Academy Award-nominated composer David Lang, who co-wrote the libretto with Mark Dion, the new work is presented at REDCAT (631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012) as part of the LA Opera Off Grand series. The presentation is part of a multi-season collaboration between LA Opera and Beth Morrison Projects to present cutting-edge contemporary works. 

LA Opera's 30th Anniversary Season will conclude with the world premiere of Anatomy Theater, opening on June 16. Created by Pulitzer Prize-winning and Academy Award-nominated composer David Lang, who co-wrote the libretto with Mark Dion, the new work is presented at REDCAT (631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012) as part of the LA Opera Off Grand series. The presentation is part of a multi-season collaboration between LA Opera and Beth Morrison Projects to present cutting-edge contemporary works.  BroadwayWorld brings you a first look below!