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OPERA LAB 2022 CALL FOR SCORES WINNERS
Ramin Akhavijou - Composer
Iranian composer, Ramin Akhavijou, graduated from the Art University of Tehran with a Master’s degree in Music Composition and later moved to the United States in 2017 to continue his studies at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) where he received his second Master’s degree in Music Composition. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Music Composition and Theory at the University of Pittsburgh where his focus is “Music Perception” and its relation to his compositions. His principal teachers have been Reza Vali, Leonardo Balada, Eric Moe, Mathew Rosenblum, Jesse Stiles, and Amy Williams. The dialectic interrelation between sounds has always been one of his main concerns and motivators for his compositional work and research. He is scientifically investigating this interrelation through various interdisciplinary projects. His passion for science and technology have led him to take diverse compositional paths that are reflected in his wide range of compositions. His opera “languagemachine” was produced by the Pittsburgh Opera Company and performed by the CMU New Music Ensemble in April 2019.
Akhavijou’s works have been performed in many countries by different soloists, ensembles, and orchestras and, he has received numerous honors, prizes, and commissions. He is one of the directors of CFIM (Center For Iranian Music) at Carnegie Mellon University and currently writing his second opera. Find him at http://akhavijou.com
Brandy N. Carie - Librettist
Brandy N. Carie is a writer and director based in LA but originally from Minnesota, whose work explores gender, Americana, and apocalypse. Carie is a winner of the SLOAN/CMU Screenwriting Competition, the Kennedy Center ACTF Harold & Mimi Steinberg Playwriting Award, and a finalist for the Princess Grace award. She has received residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the National Winter Playwrights Retreat. Theatres that have supported Carie's work include Barter Theatre, Mildred's Umbrella Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Kennedy Center, Northlight Theatre, and Pittsburgh's City Theatre. Directing credits include the world premiere of the opera Languagemachine by Lauren D’Errico and Ramin Akhavijou, and the devised internet-adjacent house party/performance Spitshow, with Houston’s Collective 48. Carie earned her MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, and is currently developing her Bunker Cycle, a 7-play series about doomsday and American survivalism. Find her at www.brandyncarie.com.
2022 SEASON OPERA LAB FINALISTS
Weathering the Storm
A work presented in vignettes, centered around the Climate Crisis.
Lauren McCall - Composer
Lauren McCall is a composer and music educator from Atlanta, Georgia. She studied for her master’s degree in music composition at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she is a Ph.D. student studying music technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lauren has had compositions performed around North America and in Europe. This includes her piece for piano, Shake the Earth, which was performed in Morehead, Kentucky, at Morehead State University’s Contemporary Piano Festival, along with being performed in Eugene, Oregon, at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers’ Symposium. Lauren actively writes music compositions for chamber ensembles, electronics, vocalists and opera. She recently was a composer in residence for All Classical Portland’s Recording Inclusivity Initiative, and she currently is taking part in the Flute New Music Consortium Composer Mentorship Program. Lauren has actively participated in
Really Spicy Opera’s Aria Institutes including their mezzo soprano, soprano, and duet and trio institutes. She has also participated in the Atlanta Opera’s 24 hour Opera Project. Along with composing, Lauren enjoys playing classical music and jazz on the clarinet and piano, nature, spending time with family and friends, and traveling. www.laurencmccall.com
Caroline Cao - Librettist
Caroline Cao is a native of Houston, Texas and resident of New York City. She is a proud alumni of Really Spicy Opera, from the Soprano, Duet/Trio, and Libretto Editions and has penned performed arias and duets. Her most recent aria contribution is “I Will Taste Salt to See You
Again,” a collaboration with composer Qianni Lin for the 2021 Boston Composers’ Lab. She is currently penning a libretto for an opera about the first Vietnamese American woman US president. Her play “The Buddhist Darkhorse” was produced at the 2018 Future is Female Festival in Houston. She produced her play “Matriarch, Mother, and Maiden” for the 2018 New York New Work Festival. A play version of her 10-minute opera “Demon Princess” was performed at the 2019 Tribeca Writers & Performers. Her wit can be found on Polygon, SlashFilm, Den of Geek, Birth Movies Death, Bitch Magazine, and more. She is also a screenwriter, playwright, poet, and Star Wars fanfic writer. She received her Master in Fine Arts - Creative Writing Nonfiction at The New School in 2019. Her hobbies include experimenting with ramen noodles.
Website: https://maximinalist.wordpress.com/
The Garden of Eve
A young girl growing up in a devoutly Christian household struggles with her sexuality, pitted against her family.
Vivek Haria - Composer
Vivek Haria is a British Indian composer currently studying at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. It was his formal studies as a singer at the Royal College of Music Junior Department that initially awakened an interest in writing music for choirs and vocal ensembles. This quickly developed into a passion throughout his time at University, where he has been able to research and imbue musical elements familiar to his cultural heritage, the Hindustani Classical tradition, within his idiom as well as expand his repertoire to include solo, chamber and orchestral works. Most recently, Vivek has created a chamber opera scene in association with Guildhall School of Music & Drama Opera Department. His works have been performed across the country as well as the United States. Vivek has received consultations from renowned composers including Mark Anthony Turnage, Robin Holloway, Michael Finnissy and Stephen McNeff. He is currently mentored by Richard Causton and Raymond Yiu.
In lieu of artist websites for each artist, you may listen to the team's prior chamber opera, Adrift (2020).
Helena McBurney - Librettist
Helena McBurney grew up in Chicago where her love of opera was cemented at the age of nine by regularly performing as a supernumerary at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. At the age of 11, she wrote the script for composer Anna Clyne’s 2011 ‘The Spangled Unicorn’. Since then, writing has been an intrinsic part of her life; she was shortlisted for the Christopher Tower Poetry Competition in 2016; highly commended in Foyle’s Young Poet of the Year Award in 2016; and wrote the script for Trevor Pinnock’s 2020 concert performance of ‘Dido and Aeneas’. Whilst at the University of Cambridge reading English literature, she founded the Newnham College Poetry Society (a creative writing discussion group for female and non-binary writers) and was published in the Newnham Anthology writing about casual sexism. Music remained an important staple of her life as a choral scholar for Peterhouse College and through her involvement with the Cambridge University Opera Society where she met Vivek Haria, with whom she wrote her first libretto ‘Adrift’ in 2019. As a lesbian and feminist, it is important for her that her work primarily reflect love and drama between women.
Mosaic of Modern Opera (2020)
Music and Words by Four Different Artistic Team Winners of our Call-For-Scores
A virtual production, staged and conceptualized while isolated during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Performed by Kaitlyn Waterson and Alize Francheska Rozsnyai, Sopranos,
David Matthew Brown, Violin, and Irene Moretto and Daniel Espie, Keyboards
(scroll down for videos of each opera)
Remembrance (2014, arr. 2020)
Music by Jean Ahn; Words by Ahn and partially from “I wanna live by the riverside” by So-Wol Kim(1902-1934), free of copyright
"Remembrance" was commissioned by Ensemble ARI in 2014 for the Korean War Memorial Concert celebrating the new monument at the Presidio in San Francisco. It was arranged in 2020 for use by AECO. Using a boy's innocent tone (though sung by an adult singer), Jean portrayed the scene of the war in a blunt way. War doesn't make sense to this boy and all he wants is to go back to his home with his mother (um-ma) and sister (nu-na). Here, the Korean folksong, "I wanna live by the riverside" is borrowed, but torn and fragmented only to expose itself in its entirety at the end of the piece. in.
When Sally Met Amanda (arr. 2020)
Music and Words by A.C. Lovett
When Sally Met Amanda is an excerpt from a full opera, The Analysing Engine, and was arranged for use by AECO in 2020. In The Analysing Engine, four students - Amanda, Sally and their respective partners have been recruited to take part in a lecture-demonstration by a neuroscientist (Professor Platt) and her assistant. Professor Platt believes that she has created a new mechanism for measuring love. Hence, the two couples have volunteered to be placed in the machine that she and her assistant have built. The experiment seems not to have worked and the machine breaks apart. In the first of these two scenes - after the accident - Sally and Amanda recover to realise that everyone else has left. Amanda - a status-conscious socialite is planning her wedding. Sally is a student-activist. To begin with they seem to have little in common, or little sympathy for each other. However, gradually, they discover a shared passion for travel and with increasing excitement decide to plan an adventure together. In the second extract, the women return to the laboratory, but now reveal - shyly at first - that their newly discovered friendship has blossomed into something altogether stronger....
The Total Spiritual (2020)
Music by Beth Ratay, Words by Rich Orloff
An applicant to the afterlife arrives above and beyond and begins to take it all in.
She's Fabulous (2016, arr. 2020)
Music by Tony Solitro, based on a play by Jack Neary
She’s Fabulous was co-commissioned by the Longy School of Music of Bard College and Boston Opera Collaborative. During intermission, two divas exchange critiques of the performance. Both had auditioned for the opera, but their dear friend (and greatest rival) landed the lead role. After a moment of polite hesitation, they unleash their uncensored opinions.
Percs (2020)
Music and words by Ben Stevenson, adapted from "Cocaine" by Pendleton King
“Percs.” is based on a one act play from the 1920’s called “Cocaine” by Pendleton King. King was an associate of the Provincetown Players group in New York, the same group that nurtured great American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Susan Glaspell. King apparently only ever wrote one play, and biographical details are otherwise scarce.
“Cocaine” is far from the best play ever written, but it does contain doomed lovers, drug addiction, prostitution, and attempted murder – in other words, all the elements of an opera. I moved the action to the present day in a non-descript midwestern American city from 1920’s New York City. I also made the characters two women, and updated the drug of choice; from King's titular drug to "percs" or prescription painkillers. Opioid addiction is a major crisis in the United States as of 2017 when this piece was composed, and is sadly--in many instances--under the radar of many people. Abuse of drugs such as Vicodin, fentanyl, oxycodone, and even heroin (not to mention amphetamine use) continues to rise in America, especially in more rural and economically stagnant parts of the country. This opera does not, however, seek to be an after-school special on addiction. Merely a slice of life. One aspect of making both characters the same gender is that the opera leaves the question open as to whether this is two women having this experience, or one person having a complete breakdown.
Jean Ahn
A native of Korea, composer Jean Ahn began her music studies in piano and composition at an early age. Her creative output includes works ranging from solo instruments and chamber music to full orchestra, as well as choral, dance, and electroacoustic music. She received First Prize at the Renée Fisher Competition and the Sejong Korean Music Competition. She has also received awards from the the Korean National Music Composers Association, the De Lorenzo Prize in Music Composition, and the Isadora Duncan Award for Saltdoll. She was a Finalist for the Toulmin Prize (League of Orchestra Commissioning Competition) in 2019 and 2020, and was a Finalist for the American Prize.
Her works have been performed by the Berkeley Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Earplay, Khasma Duo, Chai Collective, Dinosaur Annex, Enhake, Untwelve, Ensemble Sur Plus, Contemporaneous Ensemble, Invoke String Quartet, haegeum master Sooyeon Lyuh, pianist Jihye Chang and pianist Lisa Moore of Bang on a Can. She was a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, June in Buffalo, and the Oregon Bach Festival, and in 2018, she was the featured speaker at the New American Music Festival in Sacramento, CA. Her compositions have been performed at New Music Miami, the Beijing Congress of the International Alliance for Women in Music, SEAMUS, the Spark Festival, the Women Composers Conference in Australia, the Women Composers Festival in Hartford, and the New York City Electronic Music Festival. Commissions include works for the SF Bach Choir, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Volti Chamber Choir, Duo Camaraderie, SF Choral Artists, Gayaguem Soloist JUL, the Locrian Chamber Players, and flutist Regina Yost. Her research into Korean folk songs, “Folksong Revisited”, has been presented at the College Music Society Symposium, the National Association of Singers Convention, and the Symposium for New Music in São Paulo, Brazil. With her folk song collection, she introduces Korean songs and techniques to professional performers in the US. The recording, with a pronunciation guide, will be published in 2023 by Hildegard Publishing Company. She completed her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Music at Seoul National University, and her Ph.D at UC Berkeley, where her teachers included Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox, David Wessel, Jorge Liederman, and Richard Felciano. She has also studied electronic music at the Center for New Music And Technology, composing pieces for koto and electronics that exaggerate gestures from Asian traditional music. Her focus is on extending the limits of the performer while preserving the authenticity of the acoustic instrument.
She is the director of Ensemble ARI and is a lecturer at UC Berkeley. She is also the music director for CHIM studio, teaching music to special needs students. Contact: ahnjean AT berkeley.edu
Beth Ratay
Beth Ratay has been composing and performing for almost 30 years. As a composer, she has had works performed around the world, by ensembles such as Earplay, West Edge Opera, Tird Millennium Ensemble, Te Boston New Music Initiative, Boston Opera Collaborative, Coalescence Percussion Duo, the Cambridge Chamber Singers, the Phoenix Symphony Chorus, the Willamette University Wind Ensemble, the Arizona State University Concert Band and the University of Colorado Wind Ensemble, and conductors such as Mary Chun, Tian Hui Ng, Gregory Gentry, Allan McMurray, Grant Linsell, Nathaniel Berman and Camille Chitwood. Her works have been featured at the Oregon Bach Festival Composer’s Forum, the April in Santa Cruz
Contemporary Music Festival, the Women Composer’s Festival of Hartford and the Society of Composers, Inc National Conference. Dr. Ratay received her Doctor of Musical Arts in World Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz, her Master of Music in Music Composition from Arizona State University, and her Bachelor of Music in Music Composition from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her musical research has focused on the music of Harrison Birtwistle as well as text setting, poetic interpretation and the relationship of language to music, especially in Czech, German and English. She has studied with composers David Evan Jones, Paul Nauert, James
DeMars, and Michael Teodore. Beth is also active as a performer. She was the principal futist for the University of California, Santa Cruz Orchestra and also performed for the April in Santa Cruz New Music Festival for three consecutive years. In the past, she has been a member of the Cambridge Chamber Singers, the Back Bay Chorale, the Phoenix Symphony Chorus and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. Beth is currently the Artistic Director for the Boston New Music Initiative. Dr. Ratay also enjoys teaching, and has taught courses at Bunker Hill Community College, Roxbury Community College, Hartnell College, Gavilan College, and the University of California, Cruz. Beth currently lives with her amazing family including one husband, two sons, and one cat in Albuquerque, NM. Find out more about Beth Ratay’s music at rataymusic.com
A.C. Lovett
A.C. Lovett was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1962, and grew up in London, England. Lovett studied at Cambridge University, The Guildhall School of Music and Drama and City University, London. Currently residing in the USA, Lovett became a citizen in July 2017. Lovett worked as a freelance composer, based in Cambridge, UK, specializing in chamber-music, electroacoustic music, opera, music-theatre and music for theatre and film. Lovett forged an especially strong collaboration with London-based ensemble, The Electric Voice Theatre, composing three operas for them between 2005 and 2009. Lovett joined the Department of Music at Princeton University as a Professional Specialist in 2009. Compositions include: Voyage (1997) for chamber orchestra and electronics; Unknown Terrors (2000) for cello, keyboard and electronics; The Colour of Sadness (2003) for saxophone and electronics; Abraham on Trial (2005) - opera in two acts for five singers and electronics; Three Poems by Miroslav Holub (2008) for mezzo-soprano and piano; Lonely Sits the City (2009) - opera in one act for soprano and electronics; Beauty and Secrets (2010) for chamber ensemble; On the Curves of the Winds (2013) for solo cello and electronics; Aelia Capitolina (2013) for multichannel surround-sound electronics; O Absalom (2015) for countertenor and electronics; Valediction (2016) surround-sound electronics; The Analysing Engine (2017) - opera in one act for six singers and seven instruments; Let’s Talk (2018) for multichannel surround-sound electronics.
A.C. Lovett also has a strong interest in music for silent films and performs regularly as an improvising pianist for screenings.
Tony Solitro
Tony Solitro is an active composer of concert and stage music. Commissions include works for Boston Opera Collaborative (She’s Fabulous, Triangle, A Case of Anxiety), MIFA Victory Players (Canción Exaltada), Network for New Music (Automata), and Utah Opera (Burial, Golden Spike Commission).
“Delightfully executed with sidesplitting hilarity” (The Theater Times), Tony’s mythology-infused comedy Triangle was featured on Fort Worth Opera’s 2019 Frontiers Showcase and was presented during the National Opera Association’s 2019 Conference in Salt Lake City as one of three finalists for the Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Competition. Commissioned by Boston Opera Collaborative and premiered in partnership with Boston New Music Initiative, Triangle was praised for its “spiky, smashing, blasting” orchestrations and hailed “a standout favorite” (the Intelligencer). In his 2016 vignette She’s Fabulous—a “wonderfully humorous” satire featuring two bitter opera divas—Solitro conjured “spastically dramatic and emotionally volatile music…juxtaposing lush arias with brisk recitatives” (the Intelligencer).
Tony earned his Ph.D. as a recipient of the George Crumb Music Fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.M. from the Longy School of Music on a Nadia and Lili Boulanger Scholarship. Awarded the Grand Prize in the David Walter Composition Competition (International Society of Bassists), Tony’s string quintet Shadow Confrontations was composed for Joseph Conyers (Principal Bass, Philadelphia Orchestra) and recorded with the Daedalus Quartet. He has received fellowships and artist residencies from Yaddo, Djerassi, I-Park, The American Opera Project, Brush Creek, Kimmel Harding Nelson, Willapa Bay, VCCA, and the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Tony serves on faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, where he teaches orchestration and leads an opera creation workshop, facilitating collaboration between composers, singers, and instrumentalists.
To hear recordings, see videos, and explore his composition catalogue, visit www.tonysolitro.com.
Ben Stevenson
Kansas City based composer/librettist Ben Stevenson's music has been heard across the United States. In March 2022 New Opera West premiered his short comic opera Toxic X, after previously premiering his opera Recovered. His opera Domestic was featured at the Fort Worth Opera's 2018 Frontiers Festival. He was also a finalist for the 2020 Zepick Modern Opera Prize from Opera Kansas. His music has also been performed at festivals such as the Charlotte New Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest Festival, and the June in Buffalo and SPLICE festivals. He has been commissioned by FuseBox New Music, Charlotte New Music Festival, SPLICE, the Missouri Music Teachers Association, trumpeter Alex Caselman, oboist Wendy Grew, saxophonist Nicolas Lira, percussionist Darin Wadley, and clarinetist/conductor Luis Viquez. His orchestral work Tracer was read by the Kansas City Symphony in 2016 and he has also worked with KCVitas, Alter Ego Chamber Opera, the PRISM sax quartet, Donald Sinta Quartet, Beo String Quartet, newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Collapss, Ensemble Dal Niente and the UMKC Wind Symphony.
He earned his DMA and MM in Composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City studying with Chen Yi, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Paul Rudy, and Reynold Simpson. While at UMKC he served as assistant director of the Musica Nova Ensemble. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Music Theory and Composition from the University of Tennessee. He has had lessons or attended masterclasses with Aaron Jay Kernis, Samuel Adler, David Felder, David Dzubay, Jeffrey Mumford, Lawrence Dillon, John Allemeier, Henrik Hellstenius, Eivind Buene, Joshua Levine, Paula Matthusen and Elainie Lillios. He studied play-writing with Frank Higgins.
Phony (2019)
Music: David Matthew Brown, Libretto: Alize Francheska Rozsnyai
A budding relationship is ruined by a couple's addiction and distraction via their smartphones.
Premiere: As part of the Operatic Addictions double-bill, Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2019
David Matthew Brown - Composer
An active and ardent performer of both ‘classical’ music and traditional style Celtic music, violinist-composer David Matthew Brown merges passion with ingenuity. He has performed as a soloist with the Csik Chamber Orchestra (Romania) – with which he was also guest concertmaster, the Vidin Sinfonietta (Bulgaria), the Newark and University of Delaware Symphony Orchestras as the winner of each respective concerto competition, and the West Chester University Chamber Orchestra. His compositions have been commissioned and/or performed by such institutions and ensembles as the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra, International Opera Theater, Philadelphia’s Network for New Music, NYC’s LINK Ensemble, the 6ixwire Project, Csik Chamber Orchestra, and the Vidin Sinfonietta. David’s teachers include Charles Ponall, Sylvia Ahramjian, and Xiang Gao.
David is a conductor, tuba player, mandolinist, and has composed over fifty Celtic jigs, reels, hornpipes, and other dance forms. He is the orchestra director at Merion Mercy Academy, and the head of strength training at The Sporting Club Main Line, both on Philadelphia’s Main Line. https://soundcloud.com/david-matthew-brown