As One co-librettist and transgender filmmaker Kimberly Reed has created a video for the Op Ed page of The New York Times showing a day in her life – specifically April 7, when As One opened at Utah State University. In the video, Reed shows glimpses of the various ways she has attempted “to dispel misunderstanding and increase empathy” by introducing the quotidian stories of transgender individuals – through documentaries, news interviews, spoken word performances, and most recently through her work on As One.
With music and concept by Laura Kaminsky, libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, the opera As One was given its premiere by American Opera Projects at the BAM Fisher Theater in September of 2014. The production featured a film by Kimberly Reed, and was universally praised for its honesty and originality.
A rich addition to the repertoire … formidable on all fronts … As One is everything that we hope for in contemporary opera: topical, poignant, daring, and beautifully written.” – New York Classical Review
“Artistically distinguished, socially important … says so much with relatively modest means.” – WQXR
As One, … satisfies in an entertaining and delicately moving way.” – New York Observer
A piece that haunts and challenges its audience with questions about identity, authenticity, compassion and the human desire for self-love and peace.” – Opera News
As One forces you to think, simultaneously challenging preconceptions and inspiring empathy…[with] winning humor and a satisfying emotional arc.” – The New York Times
World Premiere: American Opera Projects; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sept. 2014
Caine College of the Arts, Utah State University, April 2015
West Edge Opera, Oakland Metro Opera House, July-August 2015
UrbanArias, Atlas Center for the Performing Arts, October 2015
International Opera Projects, Ballsaal Studio, Berlin Germany, July 2016
Seattle Opera, November 2016
Pittsburgh Opera, February 2017
Opera Colorado, March 2017
Long Beach Opera, May 2017
New Orleans Opera, June 2017
San Diego Opera, Nov. 2017
Chicago Fringe Opera, Nov. 2017
Des Moines Metro Opera, Nov. 2017
Lyric Opera of Kansas City, January 2018
Boston Opera Collaborative, January 2018
Hawaii Opera Theatre, January 2018
Anchorage Opera, February 2018
Skylark Opera Theater, March 2018
AEPEX Contemporary Performance, April 2018
Opera on the Avalon, May-June 2018
Cincinnati Opera, July 2018
Chautauqua Opera, August 2018
Peabody Opera, Nov. 2018
Alamo City Opera, Jan. 2019
Portland Opera, March 2019
Opera Idaho, May 2019
Eugene Opera, May 2019
Merkin Concert Hall/American Opera Projects/New York City Opera, May/June 2019
Opera Memphis, August 2019
Bay Chamber Concerts, August 2019
Boston University, October 2019
Alchemical Studios (NYC), November 2019
Opera Columbus, November 2019
Pensacola Opera, November 2019
EarSpace, Feb. 2020
Gertrude Opera (Australia), Feb. 2020
Shenandoah Conservatory, April 2020
University of South Carolina, April 2020
Teatro Espanol, Madrid, Sept.-Oct. 2020
Utomjordiska, October 2020
Orchestre Classique de Montreal, November 2020
Servicios Especializados en Distribucion Artistica, Madrid, March 2021
University of Kansas, April 2021
Opera Orlando, May 2021
Painted Sky Opera, May 2021
Opera Maine, July 2021
Lontano Trust, London Premiere, Sept. 2021
Sacramento State School of Music, Nov. 2021
Lowell Chamber Orchestra, Nov. 2021
Opera Santa Barbara, March 2022
Universidad de los Andes, March-April 2022
Atlanta Opera, June 2022
Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, July 2022
Satakunnan musiikkijuhlat (Finland), August 2022
Opera Steamboat (CO), September, 2022
Lyric Opera of the North (MN), October 2022
Boston Conservatory at Berklee, February 2023
Florida State Opera, May 2023
Holy City Arts & Lyric Opera, June 2023
Washburn University, October 2023
Theater Regensburg, December 2023-March 2024
Kentucky Opera, April 2024
NUOVA Vocal Arts, June 2024
HOPERA, November 2024
Piteaa Kammaropera, October 2025
Press
Denver Post, 2/25/2017
“As One” is the hottest title in opera right now, at least among the titles written in the last 100 years. The musical tale of a transgender woman’s personal evolution is somehow right on time–an accomplished bit of art-making, with considerable entertainment value, that thrusts itself smack into the current political and social discourse.
It’s in Denver this week week. Pittsburgh last. Seattle produced it in November and folks in New Orleans and Los Angeles get to hear it this spring. The chamber piece, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in late 2014, has a rare vitality in a business where new works–including the good ones–have to fight for even a second show.
Opera companies love it. One reason is that it’s relatively inexpensive to present: no chorus, orchestra or big sets. Composer Laura Kaminsky’s creation has just two singers, a string quartet and a couple of temporary screens that show films in the background.
But that’s why audiences seem to like it, too. It’s intimate. All the complaints so frequently lodged against the art form–that it can be distant, formal and out-of-touch, aren’t a factor for “As One.” Nor is length; it clocks in at just 75 minutes.
December 19, 2014 – Excellence in Opera (“Freddie”) Award Operavore
December 18, 2014 – Slate The Uses of “Trans” in Art
October 2, 2014 – GAY CITY NEWS Opera review: “New Starts”
September 11, 2014 – OUT MAGAZINE Opera review: “A Transgender Woman’s Operatic Path to Self-Acceptance”
September 10, 2014 – NY OBSERVER Opera review: “An Emotional Before-and-After Opera of Gender Transformation Premieres at BAM”
September 9, 2014 – Q ON STAGE Opera review: “Magnificent ‘As One'”
September 9, 2014 – THE FILM EXPERIENCE Opera review: “Stage Door: ‘As One’ by Kimberly Reed”
September 2014 – OPERA NEWS Opera review: “As One BROOKLYN American Opera Projects”
September 5, 2014 – THE NEW YORK TIMES Opera review: “The Arc of a Transgender Life”
September 5, 2014 – NEW YORK CLASSICAL REVIEW Opera review: “Kaminsky’s transgender opera “As One” makes a poignant and remarkable premiere”
September 5, 2014 – WQXR: OPERAVORE Opera review: “Opera As One Explores Gender Change, Identity Struggles”
September 5, 2014 – PARTERRE.COM Opera review: “outskirts”
September 4, 2014 – WWFM: CADENZA Opera profile: “As One”
September 4, 2014 – HUFFINGTON POST Opera profile: “‘As One’ Opera Brings Husband And Wife Stars Together For Heartfelt Transgender Role”
September 3, 2014 – GAY CITY NEWS Opera profile: “The Voyage to Oneness”
September 2, 2014 – BK LIVE Opera profile: Video Interview: “As One”
September 2, 2014 – BROOKLYN DAILY Opera profile: “Husband and wife share role of transgender woman in new opera”
September 2014 – OPERA NEWS Composer/Opera profile: “Hearing Both Sides”
Ensemble Pi’s Ninth Peace Project Concert
“Word Interpretations”
World Premieres by Laura Kaminsky and Susan Botti
Works by Jason Eckardt, Bryant Kong, Penderecki, and Shostakovich
Language gets appropriated, translated, and sometimes “reformed” by culture and politics. For their annual Peace Project’s ninth installment, music collective Ensemble Pi performs new commissions and other works which examine the relationship of language, truth and politics – and how words change meaning when used in contexts different than the ones intended.
Clarinetist Moran Katz then joined the trio for another world premiere, Laura Kaminsky‘s strikingly intense diptych, Deception. Katz’s moody, richly burnished low register in tandem with the cello built an air of mystery and foreboding, occasionally punctured by the piano. The second movement worked clever variations via individual voices in a very Debussy-esque arrangement that also offered a nod to Shostakovich and possibly Penderecki as well.
Laura Kaminsky’s Deception, for b-flat clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2014) – a work exploring the manipulation of language in situations such as reconsidered statements, solo pronouncements, intertwined dialogue, and that which is unspoken. Musical gestures and interruptions are used to symbolize two ways of creating language, then using it in a different context to create new meaning.
Performers include Idith Meshulam, piano; Airi Yoshioka, violin; Katie Schlaikjer Schlaikjer, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Kristin Norderval, voice; with guest artist Rachel Rosales, voice.
Ensemble Pi, a socially conscious new music group founded in 2002, features composers whose work seeks to open a dialogue between ideas and music on some of the world’s current and critical issues. For the last ten years, Ensemble Pi has presented an annual Peace Project concert, praised by The New York Times as “gracefully played…a fiery and emotive performance.” The Ensemble has commissioned new works and collaborated with visual artists, writers, actors, and journalists, among them South African artist William Kentridge and American journalist/writer Naomi Wolf, Frederic Rzewski, and Philip Miller. The ensemble was in residence for four American music festivals presented by the American Composers Alliance and now collaborates with the APNM. Ensemble Pi has also created artistic and educational programs in response to major exhibitions at Chelsea Art Museum, The Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. Gramophone wrote of the Ensemble’s first CD, Keep Going, “a touching tribute to Ellias Tanenbaum, played with conviction and verve”. A second CD featuring Laura Kaminsky’s music was released by Albany Record this year and was described as “played with warmth and variety… in effective fashion” (American Record Guide). www.ensemble-pi.org
