Julian Wachner News

Bang on a Can's 2016-2017 season continues the "relentlessly inventive" (New York Magazine) new music collective's mission to create an international community dedicated to innovative music, wherever it is found, with performances throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

On Monday, September 12, 2016, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents discussion with the creators and excerpts of Opera Philadelphia's upcoming world premiere of Breaking the Waves by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek.

21C MEDIA GROUP just released its season preview of opera, vocal and choral music for 2016-17. Scroll down for details!

Bringing artists from around the world, and from most every genre, the Harris Center for the Arts at Folsom Lake College will offer upwards of four hundred performances in its 2016/2017 Season.

21C Media Group is delighted to announce that it now represents creator and librettist Cerise Jacobs, a project developer of irrepressible enthusiasm and vision who stands at the very center of each development process, initiating the concept, writing the text, and choosing the composer solely according to the stylistic demands of her libretto.

OPERA America, the national service organization for opera and the nation's leading champion for American opera, announces the details for the New Opera Showcase, taking place on Monday, January 18 at 8:00 p.m. at historic Trinity Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. The Showcase offers artists, producers and audiences a unique opportunity to hear some of the most exciting operas being composed today.

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE present the fourth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running today, January 6, through January 17, 2016, in New York City.

Better Gods, a new opera by composer Luna Pearl Woolf, will have its world premiere at the Kennedy Center on January 8 and 9 presented by Washington National Opera, Francesca Zambello, Artistic Director. The story of the last queen of Hawaii and the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy, with a libretto by Caitlin Vincent, the one-hour opera is part of WSO's ambitious American Opera Initiative.  The music of Luna Pearl Woolf, praised for its “psychological nuances and emotional depth,” by The New York Times, is also featured on several new recordings and is the focus of major composer portraits in Washington, DC and in Montreal in 2016.

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE are pleased to announce full casting for the fourth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running January 6-17, 2016, in New York City. Deemed "suddenly indispensable" (New Yorker), this 'bracingly innovative' Festival, founded, directed, and curated by Kristin Marting (of HERE), Beth Morrison (of BMP), and Kim Whitener (of HERE), has quickly become 'a point of reference" in the field (The New York Times) over three astoundingly successful seasons.

Baltimore, MD (September 18, 2015) -- The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) today announced a residency during the 2015-16 season with composer Anna Clyne. The residency will be comprised of three visits with the Orchestra, collaborative education activities with Baltimore City students, participation in a V-log on BSOMusic.org, a visit to an OrchKids school site, a collaboration with the Baltimore Museum of Art, and two performances of her orchestral music, culminating in the world premiere of a new work, commissioned by Bonnie McElveen-Hunter for the BSO and Music Director Marin Alsop in honor of Baltimore philanthropists Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. Clyne, 35, known for her collaborations with cutting edge visual artists, dancers, and artists of multiple genres, will compose a piece for full orchestra that will be inspired by the contemporary art collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The work will have its world premiere at The Music Center at Strathmore on May 7, 2016 and will be performed at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on May 8, 2016.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) today announced a residency during the 2015-16 season with composer Anna Clyne. The residency will be comprised of three visits with the Orchestra, collaborative education activities with Baltimore City students, participation in a V-log on BSOMusic.org, a visit to an OrchKids school site, a collaboration with the Baltimore Museum of Art, and two performances of her orchestral music, culminating in the world premiere of a new work, commissioned by Bonnie McElveen-Hunter for the BSO and Music Director Marin Alsop in honor of Baltimore philanthropists Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker. Clyne, 35, known for her collaborations with cutting edge visual artists, dancers, and artists of multiple genres, will compose a piece for full orchestra that will be inspired by the contemporary art collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The work will have its world premiere at The Music Center at Strathmore on May 7, 2016 and will be performed at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on May 8, 2016.

WASHINGTON)—Washington National Opera (WNO) today announced details for the fourth season of the American Opera Initiative, its comprehensive commissioning program that brings contemporary American stories to the stage while fostering the talents of rising American composers and librettists. Three pairings of new opera composers and librettists—Christopher Weiss and John de los Santos, David Clay Mettens and Joshua McGuire, and Sarah Hutchings and Mark Sonnenblick—will premiere new one-act operas, each based on a contemporary American story, in a semi-staged concert performance on December 2, 2015 in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. Composer Luna Pearl Woolf and librettist Caitlin Vincent, an alumnus of the program's second season, will present their new hour-long work Better Gods—based on the life of Queen Lili'uokalani, the last monarch of Hawaii—on January 8 and 9, 2016 in the Terrace Theater.

Composer Paola Prestini, the Creative and Executive Director of National Sawdust (NS), today announced programming for the non-profit's inaugural fall season in its new home-a $16 million, 13,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art chamber hall in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The performance and recording venue, designed by Brooklyn-based architecture firm Bureau V in the shell of century-old former sawdust factory, will provide composers and musicians a setting in which they can flourish, and a place where they are given commissioning support, mentoring and other critical resources essential to create, and then share, their work. For audiences-serious fans and casual listeners alike-the venue will be a place to discover genre-spanning music at accessible ticket prices.

There's always something going on in the city that never sleeps, but this summer the classical music offerings are plentiful and wonderful!

Over the past three seasons, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has seen some of the most intriguing and unexpected performance offerings around— often inviting audiences to engage with their surroundings as well as the performances. Leading with curiosity and innovation, the 2015-2016 season of Met Museum Presents continues this line of inquiry featuring a roster of powerful performances, new commissions, and fearless artists, all taking the Metropolitan Museum as a starting point.

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts presents the 2014-15 Composer Portraits series finale: ANNA CLYNE featuring Ensemble Signal, Lauren Radnofsky, cello, Adrian Sandi, clarinet, and Brad Lubman, conductor.

Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts presents the 2014-15 Composer Portraits series finale: ANNA CLYNE featuring Ensemble Signal, Lauren Radnofsky, cello, Adrian Sandi, clarinet, and Brad Lubman, conductor.

Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and HERE have announced programming for the third annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, running today, January 7-17, 2015, in New York City.

Music for the holidays by composer Robert Sirota will be featured in a special holiday concert, Songs of the Season, presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue) in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium tonight, December 19, 2014 at 7pm. The Met Museum Presents concert will include performances by The Choristers of The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine led by conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather, soprano Mellissa Hughes, violist Nadia Sirota, and harpist Victoria Drake.