Composers & the Voice checks into the Gershwin Hotel

Jennifer Peterson accompanies Caroline Worra at SummerStreets Festival

C&V co-music director Jennifer Peterson has been given a room at The Gershwin Hotel and she’s asked a number of Composers & the Voice alumni to join her! Peterson’s newly formed organization operamission and producer Neke Carson will be entertaining Gershwin guests with an ongoing music series that will next feature tenor Keith Jameson (Composers & the Voice 02-03, The Golden Gate, and some tiny roadhouse called The Metropolitan Opera) on Friday January 29 at 8pm performing cabaret songs by Stephen Sondheim, Irving Berlin, Sheldon Harnick, Kander & Ebb, Maltby & Shire and more. Tickets are $20 at the door.

Future works in the series will feature C&V singers Amy van Roekel, Caroline Worra, and Matthew Garrett performing works by C&V composers Clint Borzoni, Edward Ficklin, and Stephen Andrew Taylor. For full details visit http://operamission.org.

PRESS REVIEWS: “Clear, appealing score” of Golden Gate “not only eminently singable but effective.”

“The Golden Gate”: David Adam Moore and Katrina Thurman in the Rose Studio at Lincoln Center. Photo: Rachel Papo for The New York Times

January’s sold-out workshop of Conrad Cummings‘ The Golden Gate at the Rose Studio in Lincoln Center garnered positive reviews from The New York Times and Musical America. Steven Osgood conducted a cast directed by John Henry Davis that included David Adam Moore, Hai-Ting Chinn, Katrina Thurman, Kevin Burdette, and Keith Jameson.

Steve Smith at The New York Times remarked, “In creating an opera based on [Vikram] Seth’s novel, the composer Conrad Cummings has fashioned an equally improbable fusion: lithe melodic lines that flow and entwine in the manner of Monteverdi, peppered with musical references to Henry Mancini and the punk band Black Flag.” “The singers…offered rich, engaged performances. Constantly shifting between firsthand declamation and third-person observation, they achieved a gabby intensity more often encountered in Stephen Sondheim’s musicals than in the opera house.” Read full review

At Musical America, Patrick Smith praised the composer, stating that “Cummings has always had a gift for opera, and his vocal line is not only eminently singable but effective in giving the accompaniment a feeling of being complimentary rather than at odds with the voices. And, like all good opera composers, his music-making keeps the dramatic impetus moving.” Read full review

Paul’s Case selected as “Best in Classical Music for 2009″

David Patrick Stearns at the Philadelphia Inquirer selected the first full workshop of the opera Paul’s Case for his classical music ten best list for 2009.  Stearns praised its “solid dramatic timing, compassionate characterizations, and huge potential.” The opera by Gregory Spears based on a story by Willa Cather was presented in September as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival by Center City Opera. The work is currently in development at American Opera Projects, having originated during the 2007-08 season of Composers & the Voice.

Read the full article…

American Opera Projects “…. a perfect first exposure to opera” – TimeOut/New York

Guildenstern (L) and Rosencrantz (R), Photo Credit: Stephanie Berger

Time Out/NY’s review of the recent public workshop of Herschel Garfein’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead directed by Mark Morris and held at the Mark Morris Dance Center Nov 20-21, 2009.

As Charles Jarden, general director of American Opera Projects, was introducing Saturday afternoon’s reading of Herschel Garfein’s opera-in-progress Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, pointing out the emergency exits in the Mark Morris Dance Center, a mike came undone from its ceiling post and swung ominously like a noose.

Such irony would not be lost on Tom Stoppard—nor, thankfully, was it lost on Garfein. His wry adaptation of Stoppard’s 1967 retelling of Hamlet through two of the play’s minor personages lacks some of the play’s absurd existentialism, but keeps at its heart many of the play’s trademarks—from Stoppard’s dialogue to the endless flipping of a coin to the famous game of questions.

Read more: http://www3.timeoutny.com/newyork/thevolume/2009/11/rosencrantz-and-guildenstern-live-again-thanks-to-american-opera-projects/#ixzz0ZnNO6XdU

Staniland goes “Blue” for Continuum

Andrew Staniland

C&V alumnus Andrew Staniland will have his song  “Blue” (2008) presented as part of Continuum’s  first concert of  its 44th New York season – NORTHERN EXPOSURES: Canadian Music – The New Individualists.  The concert is Tuesday, December 8, 7 PM, at Americas Society, 680 Park Avenue at 68th Street.

“Blue,” based on a moving poem of Walt Whitman, will be sung by mezzo-soprano, Abigail Fischer. The piece was developed during Andrew’s residency during the 2007-08 Composers & the Voice program at AOP with Fischer premiering the song.

Tickets and info…