AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS
PRESENTS
FIRST GLIMPSE:
SONGS FROM THE GREAT ROOM
WORLD PREMIERE SONGS FROM THE
2023-25 COMPOSERS & THE VOICE program
C&V Artistic Director - Steven Osgood
Head of Music - Mila Henry
head of drama - matt gray
2023-25 Composers & the Voice Composers and Librettist Fellows:
Joshua Brown - Andi Lee Carter - Kervy Delcy - Aiden K. Feltkamp - Anita Gonzalez - JL Marlor - Joy Redmond - Kavita Shah - Melisa Tien - LJ White
2023-25 Composers & the Voice Resident Singers:
Phillip Bullock, Baritone
Brian Jeffers, Tenor
MaKayla McDonald, Lyric Soprano
Ilene Pabon, Mezzo-Soprano
Hans Tashjian, Bass-Baritone
Natalie Trumm, Coloratura Soprano
2023-25 Composers & the Voice Resident Ensemble:
Mila Henry, Music Director
Kelly Horsted, Music Director
Emma Luyendijk, Associate Music Director
Kyle P. Walker, Associate Music Director
Resident Stage Manager - W. Wilson Jones
May 17 & 18, 2024 | 7:30 pm
South Oxford Space Great Room
138 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY 11217
COMPOSERS & THE VOICE
FIRST GLIMPSE: SONGS FROM THE GREAT ROOM
PROGRAM ORDER
Watching Rehearsal Footage
Music by Joy Redmond / Text by Aiden K. Feltkamp — MaKayla McDonald / Kelly Horsted
I No Longer Know
Music by Joy Redmond / Text by Melisa Tien — Ilene Pabon / Kelly Horsted
Sous le ciel de Nanterre
Music and Text by Kervy Delcy — Hans Tashjian / Emma Luyendijk
Rubble Tower
Music by Kervy Delcy / Text by Anita Gonzalez — Natalie Trumm / Kyle P. Walker
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
Music by Joy Redmond / Text adapted from William Shakespeare — Phillip Bullock / Mila Henry
We Are All on the Edge of Something
Music by LJ White / Text by David Ebenbach — Hans Tashjian / Emma Luyendijk
The Friend Zone
Music by LJ White / Text by Aiden K. Feltkamp — Natalie Trumm / Mila Henry
Music Library Love Song
Music by LJ White / Text by Andi Lee Carter — MaKayla McDonald / Kelly Horsted
Star Wars Collection
Music by Kervy Delcy / Text by Andi Lee Carter — Ilene Pabon / Kelly Horsted
INTERMISSION
Rover and the Sun
Music by Kavita Shah / Text by Andi Lee Carter — Brian Jeffers / Kyle P. Walker
QBOT Feels Something
Music by Joshua Brown / Text by Andi Lee Carter — Phillip Bullock / Mila Henry
Let Me Tell You Something About New York
Music by JL Marlor / Text by Melisa Tien — Natalie Trumm / Mila Henry
The Freedom Clock
Music by Kavita Shah / Text by Anita Gonzalez — Phillip Bullock / Kyle P. Walker
Buon Appetito
Music by Joshua Brown / Text by Melisa Tien — Brian Jeffers / Kelly Horsted
Daybroken
Music by Joshua Brown / Text by Lauren D’Errico — Natalie Trumm / Mila Henry
Slice of Heaven
Music and Text by JL Marlor — Hans Tashjian / Mila Henry
Delusional Bitch Juice
Music by JL Marlor / Text by JL Marlor & MaKayla McDonald — MaKayla McDonald / Emma Luyendijk
Yes, I have sung
Music by Kavita Shah / Text by Ifeanyi Menkiti — MaKayla McDonald / Kelly Horsted
2023-25 COMPOSERS & THE VOICE FELLOWS
JOSHUA BROWN — COMPOSER
Joshua Brown (he/they) is a queer experience designer and opera composer whose work poeticizes the everyday. As both a sound designer and dramaturg in a past life, they approach the relationship of sound, language, body, and context from a variety of angles. They can routinely be found making inanimate objects cry, mining innate musics from found/verbatim text, and double-fisting books of poetry and gossip rags in equal measure. Their work has been lovingly developed with Thompson Street Opera, Boston Opera Collaborative, the International Computer Music Conference, Fresh Inc, La Jolla Playhouse + Blindspot Collective, Charlotte New Music, New Opera West, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Strange Trace, and the Pittsburgh Opera. Joshua holds a BHA in Technical Writing & Music Technology and a Graduate Certificate in Music Composition from Carnegie Mellon and an MS in Experience Design from Northeastern.
ANITA GONZALEZ — LIBRETTIST
Anita Gonzalez (she/her) advocates for beautiful art crafted for social activism and consciousness raising. Musicals: Kumanana (Gala Hispanic Theater), Ybor City (Latiné Musical Theater Lab), Zora on My Mind (The Woodshed), Ayanna Kelly. Plays & Librettos: Framing Faces (Atlanta Opera) Courthouse Bells (Boston Opera Collaborative), Finding the Light (Louise Toppin and Marquita Lister), Sunset Dreams (The Vagrancy), Home of My Ancestors (HGOCo). Books: Performance, Dance and Political Economy, Black Performance Theory, Afro-Mexico. Gonzalez is a Professor at Georgetown University and Co-Founding Lead of the Racial Justice Institute. She is a member of the National Theatre Conference, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and sits on the Board of Directors of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Gonzalez believes the art of storytelling connects people to their cultures. Over 40,000 students have taken her massive open online courses Storytelling for Social Change and Black Performance as Social Protest. www.anitagonzalez.com
MELISA TIEN — LIBRETTIST
Melisa Tien (she/her) is a playwright, lyricist, and librettist invested in making formally unconventional, socially relevant, and emotionally evocative work. A resident of New the Dramatists, she is co-author of operas The Big Swim (Asia Society Texas Center/Houston Grand Opera, 2024), Forever (Washington National Opera, 2024), Family Heirloom (Experiments in Opera, 2024), Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera/Arts Brookfield, 2023), and The Beehive (University of Northern Iowa, 2023); co-author of music-theater works Swell (HERE, 2021) and Daylight Saving; and author of plays Best Life (JACK, 2022), Yellow Card Red Card (Ice Factory, 2017), The Boyd Show, and Familium Vulgare. She is a member of Washington National Opera’s 2023-2024 American Opera Initiative, and was a member of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s 2022 Ground Floor Residency Lab, Experiments in Opera’s 2022 Writers’ Room, The Assembly Theater Project’s 2021 Deceleration Lab, and a recipient of a 2020-2021 grant from the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music, and Theatre.
ANDI LEE CARTER — LIBRETTIST
Andi Lee Carter (he/they) is a writer, librettist, director, and filmmaker. He is a graduate of NYU’s Musical Theater Writing Program in 2019. His first original full-length musical, Rent A White Guy was dubbed “often very funny” by The New York Times. Their work has been seen at many of New York's finest cabaret venues including Under St. Marks, the Duplex, Joe's Pub, and Feinstein's 54 Below. Recent works include: OPPY: A Mars Rover Story, Pompeii Rising, S.T.E.M. GRLZ!, 14 DAYS, Rejected!, CryOvaries, and Disconnected: The Musical! Follow them on all the social: @andileecarter website: www.andilee-carter.com
JL MARLOR — COMPOSER
JL Marlor (she/they) is a composer, electric guitarist, performer, and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. JL is known for her narrative-driven multi-genre works drawing from the worlds of riot grrrl punk and DIY punk, Slavic choral music, plainchant, and American protest music. Last year, JL was named a Toulmin Creator in collaboration with National Sawdust. She is a frequent performer in her own works, as an electric guitarist and an indie rock vocalist. In 2017, JL collaborated on a riot-grrl musical written by SeonJae Kim and inspired by Sophocles tragedy Riot Antigone, which received its premiere at La Mama and has subsequently been performed at Ars Nova as part of ANT Festival. Beyond her work as a composer, JL fronts her indie rock band Tenderheart Bitches, which was hailed as “arriving on the indie rock scene with something serious to say” by The Wild Honeypie and was listed in Them’s list of best new songs written by queer artists. In addition to her work as a composer and songwriter, JL is a passionate educator teaching composition with the New York Philharmonic’s Very Young Composers and is a founding member of American Composer’s Orchestra’s genre-defying educational initiative Sonic Spark Lab.
LJ WHITE — COMPOSER
LJ White (he/him) is a composer and singer inspired by the physical voice, popular culture, gender and queerness, and sociopolitical conditions. His recent collaborators include The Crossing, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Dal Niente, Steven Schick, Sleeping Giant, Third Angle Ensemble, Transient Canvas, the Spektral Quartet, the rapper Mvstermind, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Third Coast Percussion, Post:Ballet, and the St. Louis, San Francisco, and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. LJ also writes for his own voice, challenging standard conceptions of the vocal instrument and expectations for transmasculine singers on testosterone. He is currently creating a self-recorded album of his vocal ensemble work The Best Place for This, originally commissioned by the Quince Ensemble, supported by a MacDowell fellowship and grants from the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission and the Puffin Foundation.
LJ earned a doctorate at Northwestern University and has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and the New College of Florida.
KERVY DELCY — COMPOSER
Ms. Delcy is a New York City based Composer, Librettist, Singer-songwriter, and multiinstrumentalist. Drawing inspiration from diverse musical traditions and cultures around the world, Ms. Delcy weaves together elements of classical music, musical theater, opera, and electronic music to create a unique and distinctive sound. Her compositions evoke a wide range of emotions, from contemplative and introspective to uplifting and exhilarating. Her music has been performed internationally by PHACE Ensemble, a contemporary ensemble based in Vienna. Her violin solo Weary Heart was recorded by Irvine Arditi, a British violinist, and the leader of the Arditti Quartet. In 2018, Ms. Delcy, was the recipient of the ASCAP: Louis Dreyfus warner-Chappell City College Honoring scholarship honoring George and Ira Gershwin. For Ms. Delcy, music is her true love, an integral part of her life, and a new composition is always in development.
JOY REDMOND — COMPOSER
Composer and pianist Joy Redmond (she/her) was born in California in 1999 and grew up in Yonkers, New York. She earned both her master’s and bachelor’s degrees at The Juilliard School, where she studied with Matthias Pintscher. Currently, Joy’s musical pursuits include composing and producing for concert, stage, film, and multimedia works, collaborating with other artists as an arranger, and performing on keyboards in a variety of genres.
Currently, Joy is working on a chamber opera for the American Opera Initiative with librettist Sam Norman. Recent projects include a chamber opera commissioned by Concordia Conservatory, an orchestra piece premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra, a choral work for The New York Virtuoso Singers, a wind nonet for Imani Winds and the Kenari Saxophone Quartet commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, and several chamber and solo works for friends and colleagues. In the media music scene, Joy has scored short films produced by students and young professionals worldwide and created an installation for Juilliard’s Future Stages production with acoustic instruments, live electronics, and visuals projections.
AIDEN K. FELTKAMP — LIBRETTIST
Aiden K. Feltkamp (they/he) began their artistic life at the age of 5 in Hicksville, NY playing a quarter-size cello and now they’re "upending preconceptions about voice and gender" (New York Times) as a disabled and trans nonbinary creator. As a creative writer, librettist, poet, opera performer, and producer, their work centers stories from marginalized communities and spans the serious and the ridiculous, the real and the surreal. Most recently, they wrote the libretto for an opera about Emily Dickinson’s queerness that premiered at her historical home (Emily & Sue) and curated New Music Shelf’s award-winning New Music Anthology for Trans & Nonbinary Voices, Vol. 1. They’ve been published in PBS’s American Masters series and OPERA America Magazine, and presented at the national conferences for the League of American Orchestras and Chamber Music America. They live in Jersey City with their partner, Aumna, and their pets, both organic and robotic. AidenFeltkamp.com
KAVITA SHAH — COMPOSER
Kavita Shah (she/her) is an award-winning vocal composer, singer, ethnomusicology researcher, educator, and lifelong New Yorker hailed by NPR for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages.” Her original projects blending modern jazz, new music, and world traditions include Visions (2014), Folk Songs of Naboréa (2017), Interplay (2018, nominated for France’s Victoires de la Musique for Jazz Album of the Year), and Cape Verdean Blues (2023). Kavita performs her music at major concert halls, festivals, and clubs on six continents, and her work has been supported by New Music America, Chamber Music America, Jerome Foundation, Camargo Foundation, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and Park Avenue Armory. Her collaborators include NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, Martial Solal, MacArthur Genius Miguel Zenón, Lionel Loueke, François Moutin, and Miho Hazama. A 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Fellow, she is currently working on an album of original music for her jazz quintet about the journey to her ancestral villages in rural India, as well as her first full-length opera on the subject of child migration.
Kavita holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Harvard, an M.M. in Jazz Voice from Manhattan School of Music, and speaks nine languages. A fierce advocate for gender and racial equity in the arts, she was also a founding member of the We Have Voice Collective and the Ori-Gen Collective.
C&V Resident Singers
PHILLIP BULLOCK — BARITONE
Praised by Opera News for his “appealingly suave baritone”, Phillip K. Bullock, a native of Washington DC, has been featured in operas, recitals and concerts throughout the United States and Europe. Phillip had the pleasure of performing the role of Jake, in Porgy & Bess, at the Sächsische Staatsoper in Dresden, Germany and he has covered the same role in The Royal Danish Opera’s new production in Copenhagen, Denmark. Recently, Phillip made his debut with the Atlanta Opera and Cincinnati Opera in their productions of Gounod’s Romeo & Juilet and Puccini’s Tosca respectively. In addition to standard opera, Phillip has extensive experience performing other genres of music and the had pleasure of premièring many new works of opera and masterworks that celebrate the fusion of styles; most recently including Deep Blue Sea, a new production from the famed Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and the critically acclaimed Castor & Patience, the latest opera from composer Gregory Spears and poet Tracy K. Smith. This coming summer Phillip will appear in Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha with Opera Theatre St. Lous, a production that has be reimagined by Damian Sneed and Karen Chilton with Opera Theatre of St. Louis.
ILENE PABON — MEZZO-SOPRANO
Ilene Pabon, is an “extremely talented” (Papercut Magazine) Puerto-Rican mezzo-soprano.
A champion of new music, Ilene has had the pleasure of performing works by many living composers. The 2023-2024 season began with the role of Nadia in the world premiere of The Night Falls, a dance driven Opera with a book and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize finalist, Karen Russell, and music and lyrics by Ellis Ludwig-Leone with direction and choreography by Troy Schumacher (NYC Ballet, Ballet Collective) presented at Peak Performances.
In the 2021-2022 season Ilene was an emerging artist at Charlottesville Opera and followed this fellowship with another premiere of the new opera, The Trojan Women, in which she played Andromache, written by Sarah Taylor Ellis and presented at the Lenfest Center for the Arts in NYC. Her favorite opera roles include Nicklausse/Muse in The Tales of Hoffmann with St. Petersburg Opera, Laura in Iolanta, and Mercedes in Carmen.
BRIAN JEFFERS — TENOR
Brian Jeffers is a NYC-based performer praised for his “flexible and heroic tenor” (Opera News) and “mix of comic boldness and fine voice.”(Arts Knoxville). Recent engagements include his recital debut, Songs of a Lark with Vesper Concerts Omaha, Cendrillon (Count Barigoule) with Knoxville Opera, and Sweeney Todd (Beadle Bamford) with Chautauqua Opera Company. His 2024-2025 engagements include The Rake’s Progress (Sellem) and Fantastic Mr. Fox (Mole) with Opera Omaha.
Active in choral and popular repertoire, he is a member of the New York Philharmonic Chorus (Done Made My Vow, Mozart’s Mass in C, Maestro, Mahler 2) and has performed as a backing vocalist for Kristin Chenoweth and the Phoenix Symphony. In 2023 he performed with Sharon Stone and the Gloria choir with Sam Smith on Saturday Night Live. He holds his BM in Voice from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and MM in Music Theatre-Opera from Arizona State. He is a young artist alum of Chautauqua Opera, Opera Saratoga, Aspen Opera Theatre, and the Broadway Dreams Foundation. He is represented by Insignia Artists Management.
HANS TASHJIAN — BASS-BARITONE
Hans Tashjian, a bass-baritone whose voice has been described as “rumbling and sumptuously lush,” and “hauntingly striking,” recently made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera singing Count Ceprano in Rigoletto. He also recently appeared with Salt Marsh Opera as Le Fateuil and L’arbre in L’enfant et les sortilège, Opera Baltimore as Méphistophélès in Faust, Teatro Nuovo as Callistene in Poliuto and the title role in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as Bartolo in The Barber of Seville, Houston Grand Opera as Billy in the world premiere of The Snowy Day, and Opera Essentia as the title role in Imeneo and Zoroastro in Orlando. Equally at home on the concert/artsong stage, Hans recently sang with the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival where he was praised for his “luminous,” and “otherworldly,” performance, appeared with Connecticut Choral Society as a bass soloist in Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, presented the world premier of the formidable song cycle Paradoxides for composer John Sichel, and will present Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death next fall with pianist Anna Keiserman. Other upcoming performances include Hercules in Handel’s Admeto with Opera Essentia. Mr. Tashjian is an alumnus of the Yale School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and Carnegie Mellon University.
MAKAYLA MCDONALD — LYRIC SOPRANO
Soprano MaKayla McDonald is an active performer of opera, art song, and new work. This summer MaKayla will join Fresh Squeezed Opera for the American premiere of the sci-fi opera When He Was Good. Additional summer and fall engagements to be announced soon!
Originally from Waterloo, Iowa, MaKayla grew up surrounded by various genres of music and found her voice through show choir and musical theatre. MaKayla holds both a Master of Music and Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from the University of Northern Iowa.
MaKayla currently resides in Brooklyn, NY and is an Adjunct Lecturer of Voice for the Borough of Manhattan Community College Music and Art Department (BMCC-CUNY). Offstage, you can usually find MaKayla in the kitchen trying a new recipe, cozied up reading a book, or enjoying the sights and foods of the city!
NATALIE TRUMM — COLORATURA SOPRANO
Acclaimed for her “nice dark lyric instrument”, shimmering coloratura, and winning stage presence, soprano Natalie Trumm’s versatility ranges from musical theater to opera. This summer, Ms. Trumm will return to The American Gothic Performing Arts Festival to perform the role of Nella in Gianni Schicchi and Irene Molloy in Hello, Dolly! As a two-year returning Studio Artist with the Chautauqua Opera Company, Ms. Trumm performed the roles of Florestine in The Ghosts of Versailles and Barbara in ¡Figaro! (90210). Most recent performances include Papagena in The Magic Flute with The Norwalk Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Yates. Other past appearances include Cunegonde in Candide, a show-stopping performance conducted by James Bagwell with The Orchestra Now. Ms. Trumm holds a Master of Music in Vocal Arts from the Bard College Graduate Vocal Arts Program and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.
C&V music directors
MILA HENRY — MUSIC DIRECTOR / C&V HEAD OF MUSIC
Mila Henry is a conductor, pianist and music director who maintains a versatile career, spanning folk operas to rock musicals to reimagined classics. Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), she has collaborated with AOP (Artistic Director, 2019-2023), Beth Morrison Projects, Experiments in Opera, HERE, OPERA America, Opera Philadelphia, Opera on Tap, PROTOTYPE and VisionIntoArt. She has performed at venues such as The Apollo, BAM, Circle in the Square, Dutch National Opera, LA Opera, Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, McCarter Theatre Center and Pittsburgh CLO, with recital work taking her to Brooklyn Art Song Society (New Music Advisory Board, 2021-present), Kaufman Music Center, Library of Congress, New York Festival of Song, Feinstein’s/54 Below and Café Sabarsky. Mila holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Elizabethtown College, and was nicknamed a “Jill of all trades” (Sullivan County Democrat) for her multi-instrumentalist work with The Opera Cowgirls. milahenry.com
KELLY HORSTED — MUSIC DIRECTOR
Kelly Horsted enjoys an active career in NYC as an accompanist and vocal coach. Kelly’s long relationship with AOP most recently included participating as a music director for The Stonewall Operas, a joint collaboration with the Tisch GMTWP’s advanced Opera Lab. Other favorite AOP projects include Herschel Garfein’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Mark Morris, Tarik O’Regan’s Heart of Darkness, and Paula Kimper’s Patience & Sarah for the Lincoln Center Festival. He has also collaborated with Chelsea Opera, Center for Contemporary Opera, Madison Lyric Stage, Wintergreen Festival, New Jersey Opera Theater, Friends and Enemies of New Music, and Five Words in a Line. He has taught at Mannes College of Music, The Hartt School, Hunter College, Intermezzo, Five Towns College, OperaWorks, and the Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts. His Bachelor and Master of Music degrees are from the Eastman School of Music where he was a fellowship recipient and a 1st place Kneisel Competition winner. Kelly has been a music director for Composers & the Voice since 2006.
EMMA LUYENDIJK — ASSOCIATE MUSIC DIRECTOR
Emma Luyendijk is at-home in a multitude of collaborative settings – from traditional art song, to interdisciplinary projects, to contemporary opera – and has collaborated with numerous cultural institutions both in New York City and abroad, including The Boston Art Song Society, The Berlin Umculo Opera Incubator, City Lyric Opera, Opera on Tap, and more.
Emma has been privilege worked with some of the world’s greatest musicians in the field: from Elly Ameling and Helmet Deutsch, to Kobie van Rensburg and Yo-Yo Ma. In 2017 she served as Community Engagement Coordinator of The Boston Art Song Society, and has participated in the prestigious Franz-Schubert Institut in Vienna. Her collaborative piano work extends into other artistic fields, such as dance, where she’s worked with the New York City Ballet, and dance-first workshops with Grammy award-winning conductor/soprano, Barbara Hannigan.
Emma's commitment to community engagement through music has led her to work alongside the international music organization El Sistema in Japan, and in 2016 she was certified by Musicians Without Borders through the School for International Training’s Graduate Institute’s Peacebuilding Program.
KYLE P. WALKER — ASSOCIATE MUSIC DIRECTOR
Kyle P. Walker, a renowned pianist known for his passionate dedication to using music as a tool for addressing societal concerns, stands at the forefront of a musical movement. His career has garnered critical acclaim, with notable performances featured on prestigious media outlets like NPR, WQXR, and PBS. He has graced renowned venues such as Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Apollo Theater, and international stages from Australia's Tantaloona Cave to the Adelaide Town Hall.
In a pivotal moment, Walker's 2023 solo performance marked the debut of classical piano music at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, TX, making waves in the industry. He is also the pianist of Dara + Kyle, a groundbreaking piano/cello duo recognized with the 2021 Chamber Music America "Ensemble Forward" career grant, devoted to championing underrepresented composers. Kyle is an integral part of The Harlem Chamber Players, bringing classical music to diverse communities, and a founding member of The Dream Unfinished, an activist orchestra supporting NYC-based civil rights organizations.
instructors
STEVEN OSGOOD — C&V ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Steven Osgood has conducted the world premieres of over two dozen operas, most recently Intimate Apparel by Ricky Ian Gordon and Lynn Nottage, which received 100 performances at Lincoln Center Theater and was broadcast in September 2022 on PBS Great Performances. Other notable premieres include Breaking the Waves (Mazzoli/Vavrek), Song From the Uproar (Mazzoli/Vavrek), Thumbprint (Sankaram/Yankowitz), As One (Kaminsky/Campbell/Reed), The Long Walk (Beck/Fleischmann), and JFK (Little/Vavrek). He has been the Conductor Mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative on two occasions, leading the premieres of six of their commissioned works. He made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2023 with Dead Man Walking, after having been a member of the music staff since 2006. As Artistic Director of American Opera Projects from 2001 to 2008 he created the Composers & the Voice fellowship program, which is now in its 12th cycle. Osgood has been General and Artistic Director of the Chautauqua Opera Company since 2016, during which time the work of living composers has flourished through the creation of an annual Composer-in-Residence and regular mainstage productions of contemporary American works. Upcoming productions include the world premieres of A.E. Reverie (Sankaram/Dye) and Love, Loss and the Century Upon Us (Orth/Dye) along with Pepito and Hansel and Gretel for Chautauqua’s 2024 season.
ELENA ARAOZ — ACTING INSTRUCTOR
Elena Araoz is a stage director of theater, opera, multi-media performance, and theatrical large-scale immersive events, working internationally, Off-Broadway, and across the country. Elena is attracted to epic stories, and her productions are known for huge dance-like theatrics and acutely naturalistic acting. The New York Times has praised Araoz's productions as “form-busting and gorgeous,” “striking,” “primal,” “wild,” “stirring,” and “refreshingly natural,” The Boston Globe as “riveting,” “dreamy,” and “vivid,” and The New Yorker as “refreshing.” Time Out New York mentions, “Elena Araoz is a director with deep wells of imagination; she seems drawn to magical realist work.” Elena also serves as the Producing Artistic Director of Princeton University’s Theater and Music Theater Season. As a founding member of The Sol Project, she is also an Obie winner.
MATT GRAY — C&V HEAD OF DRAMA
Matt Gray is a Brooklyn-based director, producer, and writer and served as AOP's General Director from 2019-2022. He began at AOP in 2003 never having seen an opera, but used his background in film and theatre as AOP’s resident dramaturg, stage director, and Producing Director to workshop AOP projects from the point of view of an audience member familiar with pop culture, but new to opera. He oversaw the development and premiere of dozens of operas including The Summer King, for which he was co-dramaturg (2017, Sonenberg /Nestor / Campbell), Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom (2014, Okoye), and As One (2014, Kaminsky / Reed / Campbell), which went on to become one of the most produced operas written in the 21st Century. Gray directed As One at Opera Columbus and New York City Opera (2019), Chautauqua Opera (2018) and its European premiere in Berlin (2016). Outside of opera, he has continued to work as a writer and director for numerous concerts, cabarets, and plays around NYC. He was the co-writer and co-director of the 12-part serialized play Penny Dreadful which ran at the Brick Theater in Brooklyn for two years, and was also one of five directors on the award-winning indie horror anthology film The Moose Head Over the Mantel, which is currently on Blu-Ray and streaming. Gray has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Directing from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
TERRY GREISS — IMPROV INSTRUCTOR
Terry Greiss is a co-founder of Irondale, where he is also an actor and the Executive Director. He has performed in more than 60 roles with the company, and he is a creator of most of Irondale’s original works and education programs. He has conducted hundreds of workshops in public schools, prisons, theaters and professional training programs.
Terry was the Founding President of the Network of Ensemble Theatres and the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance where he continues to serve on its Board of Trustees. He was a panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008 he was invited by the US Embassy to lecture and teach improvisation in Russia. He has taught at the New School, the University of Wisconsin Drama Center. In 2010 he was awarded Brooklyn Arts Exchange’s Arts Education Award. From 2015-2020 he was an improvisation instructor for the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. In 2015, he created To Protect, Serve and Understand Irondale’s improv training program for NYC police officers, designed to heal some of the tensions between officers and community members and provide real tools to improve communication and understanding.
MILA HENRY — MUSIC DIRECTOR / C&V HEAD OF MUSIC
Mila Henry is a conductor, pianist and music director who maintains a versatile career, spanning folk operas to rock musicals to reimagined classics. Hailed “a stalwart contributor to the contemporary opera scene” (Opera Ithaca), she has collaborated with AOP (Artistic Director, 2019-2023), Beth Morrison Projects, Experiments in Opera, HERE, OPERA America, Opera Philadelphia, Opera on Tap, PROTOTYPE and VisionIntoArt. She has performed at venues such as The Apollo, BAM, Circle in the Square, Dutch National Opera, LA Opera, Library of Congress, Lincoln Center, McCarter Theatre Center and Pittsburgh CLO, with recital work taking her to Brooklyn Art Song Society (New Music Advisory Board, 2021-present), Kaufman Music Center, Library of Congress, New York Festival of Song, Feinstein’s/54 Below and Café Sabarsky. Mila holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and Elizabethtown College, and was nicknamed a “Jill of all trades” (Sullivan County Democrat) for her multi-instrumentalist work with The Opera Cowgirls. milahenry.com
MARK CAMPBELL — LIBRETTO WRITING INSTRUCTOR
The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning operas of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary canon. A prolific writer, Mark has created 41 opera librettos, lyrics for 7 musicals, and the text for 9 song cycles and 5 oratorios. He received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association.
Mark’s best-known opera is Silent Night, which received a Pulitzer Prize in Music and, along with his opera As One, is one of the most frequently produced operas in recent history. The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, an audience favorite, received a 2018 GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording.
Mark is also an advocate for contemporary American opera and serves as a mentor for future generations of writers through such organizations as American Opera Projects, American Lyric Theatre, and Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative. In 2020, he created and is funding the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, the first and only award for opera librettists. The award is given annually and administered by OPERA America. In 2022, he helped create and is funding the True Voice Award, administered by Washington National Opera, to help with the training of transgender opera singers.
Future premieres include The Cook-Off for Nashville Opera, Again and Again. And Again. for Las Vegas Opera and All Shall Rise for the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall.
ABOUT composers & the voice
AOP's Composers & the Voice is a two-year, tuition-free fellowship for composers and librettists that provides experience writing for the voice and opera stage. Led by Composers & the Voice Artistic Director Steven Osgood, Head of Music Mila Henry, and Head of Drama Matt Gray, the two-year fellowship includes a year of working with the company’s Resident Ensemble of Singers and professional instructors followed by a year of continued promotion and career development through AOP and its strategic partnerships. Since launching in 2002, and this year in Cycle 12, C&V has fostered the development of over 84 composers & librettists.
Composers & the Voice is made possible in part by a generous multi-year award from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts. AOP’s programs are made possible in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., the Amphion Foundation, BMI, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor, and the New York State Legislature and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
For more information, visit: https://www.aopopera.org/composers-voice
ABOUT american opera projects
Founded in 1988, American Opera Projects (AOP) has been at the forefront of contemporary opera for over 30 years. The Brooklyn-based producing organization commissions, develops and produces lyric theater projects, trains emerging composers and librettists, and creates personal connections within its community. Its works have received critical acclaim at opera companies and venues around the world, establishing a new musical canon that recognizes the operatic story in every life. AOP further expands the operatic field through its training programs The NYU Opera Lab, in partnership with NYU and for students and alumni in The NYU/Tisch Opera Lab; and Composers & the Voice, AOP’s in-house, two-year fellowship program for emerging composers and librettists.
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Composers & the Voice is made possible in part by a generous multi-year award from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and a Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Past AOP Composers & the Voice fellows have received grants and honors from the following organizations: Aaron Copland Fund for Music, ASCAP, BMI, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, OPERA America, the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, the Fulbright Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Douglas Moore Fellowship, Tapestry New Opera Works, the Frederick Loewe Foundation, New Dramatists, and the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation.
AOP’s programs are made possible in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Amphion Foundation, BMI, and the contributions of many individuals.
