Sasha Cooke has championed many works by BHM composers, including Jake Heggie, David Bruce, and Kevin Puts, and of course the opera As One by Laura Kaminsky, Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. In the article here, she reflects on David Bruce’s unique vocal writing for the New York Festival of Song.
Nashville Opera gave the world premiere of Three Way by composer Robert Paterson, with a libretto by David Cote in January of 2017. Jointly produced with American Opera Projects, the New York premiere will be given in June of 2017 at BAM.
The piano/vocal score and aria excerpts are now available for purchase:
You can order the CD here.
From The Tennessean:
“An intriguing treatise on power, passion and human connection.”
“Highly accessible! Cote has an obvious gift for humor, yet there also are moments of genuine tenderness. Paterson’s music is mesmerizing, beautifully supporting the story.”
“Paterson’s music is rich and vibrant—and beautifully played by the Nashville Opera Orchestra, conducted by Dean Williamson. Cote’s libretto offers an unexpected blend of whimsy and wistfulness.”
From Schmopera:
“Rarely do we find a postmodern opera that builds in time for audiences to belly laugh, a postmodern opera that encapsulates the complexity and depth of evolving identity and sexuality, and a postmodern opera that is both elegant and accessible. In Nashville Opera’s production of Three Way, with music by Robert Paterson and libretto by David Cote, we find a postmodern opera with all of those things, simultaneously. This production levels the audience’s playing field in a sophisticated way: pairing common, yet updated, operatic tropes with relevant, topical humor and relatable music.”
BroadwayWorld.com has a feature about the composer, here.
Robert Paterson talks about research and the quest to create a new, original opera.
For additional information about the work, please click here.
In this highly charged election season, Austin Opera performs Kevin Puts’ and Mark Campbell’s The Manchurian Candidate. Originally premiered by the Minnesota Opera, the opera is part thriller, part satire, and is based on Richard Condon’s novel. Don’t miss the chance to see this second opera by the team that created the Pulitzer-winning opera, Silent Night.
Peter Boyer’s Silver Fanfare will open the Hollywood Bowl’s 2016 season, for the second year in a row, as the piece chosen to begin Opening Night at the Bowl with Steely Dan on June 18. The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Wilkins, will perform Boyer’s work while a video montage from past Bowl Opening Nights is projected. Silver Fanfare also opened the 2015 Bowl season in the same fashion, at a sold-out gala concert headlined by iconic rock band Journey.
Hollywood Bowl – Opening Night 2015 – Show
Photo by: Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging
Commissioned and premiered by the Pacific Symphony to celebrate its 25th anniversary season, Silver Fanfare has been performed by orchestras including the Boston Pops, Cincinnati Pops, and Nashville Symphony, and Boyer’s recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra on Naxos has been broadcast extensively on American classical radio stations.
Martha Walvoord, violin and Jack Unzicker, double bass at the dress rehearsal of Michael Daugherty’s “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” (2016) inspired by the novella by Mark Twain. This dynamic duo, who commissioned the 30 minute work, will perform the world premiere this Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening at 7:30 PM at the university of Texas-Arlington School of Music.
The Arkansas Symphony will give the premiere performances of D.J. Sparr’s new Concerto for Jazz Guitar on April 9 and 10, with Ted Ludwig as soloist. Writing for guitar often stymies composers, but Sparr is unique in that he himself is an excellent guitarist who has premiered many new works, including Michael Daugherty’s Gee’s Bend.
The Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra will perform Sparr’s The WOW! Signal in May, rounding out this celebration of Sparr’s music in Arkansas.
D. J. Sparr: Playing Well with Others from NewMusicBox on Vimeo.
LPR Live has posted the premiere performance of Vivian Fung’s Harp Concerto online. Featuring the virtuoso soloist Bridget Kibbey, the premiere was given at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on April 6, 2014, with conductor Andrew Cyr leading the Metropolis Ensemble.
The Whole Truth, a new one-act opera by composer Robert Paterson and librettist Mark Campbell, was premiered in January as part of the exciting wave of new operas that overwhelmed New York City. A sold-out success that garnered uniform praise, it was paired with Stewart Copeland’s one-act opera, The Cask of Amontillado.
The Whole Truth is a short comic opera for three singers—soprano, mezzo-soprano and baritone—that uses very limited production elements in its storytelling and has been written to be performed in intimate to medium-sized venues. In the opera, a young married woman named Megan (a role shared by the soprano and mezzo-soprano) carries on an affair with a fellow dentist and a dalliance with young carpenter that lead her to momentarily confront the web of lies she has created to other…and to herself. Using a single bed positioned vertically onstage and a couple of chairs, the settings include a psychiatrist’s office, Megan’s dental office, the bed of her lover, the dining table and the bed she shares with her husband, and another psychiatrist’s office. The Man (played by the baritone) employs six cardboard cutouts to help represent the roles he plays: Psychiatrist 1, The Lover, The Husband, The Carpenter and Psychiatrist 2.
Duration: 27′
Instrumentation: piano/vocal version—three singers (soprano, mezzo-soprano, baritone) and piano. Chamber version (10 instrumentalists): flute, oboe, bassoon, percussion, piano, 2 violins, viola, cello, bass.
Libretto by Mark Campbell • Based on the short story of the same name by Stephen McCauley
Commissioned by UrbanArias, Robert Wood, Executive and Artistic Director
Premiere of Chamber Version: American Modern Ensemble, Tyson Deaton, conductor, Walker Lewis, director, Dixon Place, New York, NY, January 16, 17, 18 and 19, 2016.
Premiere of Piano/Vocal Version: UrbanArias, Robert Wood, conductor, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Washington, DC, February 21, 27 and 28, 2015.
Watch the video here:
If someone you knew declared that life had no meaning, how would you convince them it does?
That’s the question a group of teenagers ask themselves in Nothing, a compelling new youth opera that premieres at Glyndebourne this February.
They decide that each of the group must give up an object that means something to them. This starts with toys and clothes, but things quickly escalate as the classmates go to ever more extreme lengths to try to persuade their friend there are things worth caring about.
In Nothing members of Glyndebourne Youth Opera aged 14-19 perform alongside professional singers. It is the latest in a line of pioneering youth operas that have premiered on the main stage at Glyndebourne.
The opera has been adapted from Danish author Janne Teller’s award-winning novel by composer David Bruce and librettist Glyn Maxwell. Their popular adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Firework Maker’s Daughter wowed audiences in the UK and New York.
Read the Independent review here.
Classical Music previews the piece.
The Fiction Issue, a collaboration with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, is Gabriel Kahane’s first album of chamber music, comprising three pieces written between 2011 and 2015. The title work, featuring Shara Worden, was commissioned by Carnegie Hall, and premiered in 2012. It was revised in 2014. Bradbury Studies (2014-2015), for quartet alone, is a deconstruction of the song “Bradbury (304 Broadway)” from The Ambassador, and is dedicated to Brooklyn Rider. Finally, Come On All You Ghosts (2011), on poems by Matthew Zapruder, closes the set.
Read Nate Chinen’s review in the New York Times here.
Sheet music for The Fiction Issue is available here.
Sheet music for Come On All You Ghosts is available here.
