THREE COMPOSERS & THE VOICE ALUMNI TO BE FEATURED IN FORT WORTH OPERA FRONTIERS SERIES

Conrad Cummings, Zachary Redler, and Clint Borzoni to Present Unpublished Operas

Fort Worth, TX—Three alumni of AOP’s long-running Composers & The Voice program – Conrad Cummings, Zachary Redler, and Clint Borzoni – will have their operas featured in Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers Series, May 7-8, 2015 at the Kimbell Art Museum. Approaching its third year as part of the Fort Worth Opera Festival, Frontiers will present music from Borzoni’s When Adonis Calls, Redler’s Susan Smith (with a libretto by As One’s Mark Campbell), and Cummings’ The Golden Gate, which received development in both C&V and AOP’s First Chance programs.

The purpose of Fort Worth Opera’s Frontiers program is to give voice to unpublished 21st century operatic compositions. The showcase will be chaired by Fort Worth Opera General Director Darren K. Woods and a jury of composers, directors, conductors, producers, opera administrators, and community leaders.

This follows performances in previous years of works by C&V alumni Robert Paterson, Ronnie Reshef, and Daniel Sonenberg, each with operas that they developed in the AOP training program.

CONRAD CUMMINGS has composed operas (productions include “Eros and Psyche,” libretto by the composer, Oberlin Opera Theater; “Positions 1956,” libretto by Michael Korie, P.S. 122; “Photo-Op,” libretto by James Siena, La Mama with Ridge Theater; and “Tonkin,” libretto by the composer with Thomas Bird, Opera Delaware) music for orchestra (including New Jersey, Indianapolis, and Louisville Symphonies and the Brooklyn Philharmonic) and amplified chamber ensemble (at the Knitting Factory and P.S. 122). He trained at Yale, Stony Brook, and Columbia, did post-doc work at IRCAM in Paris, taught at Oberlin Conservatory for ten years where he directed the music and media program, moved to New York to run a kids’ interactive media company, and since 2003 teaches composition in the evening division at Juilliard.

Co-produced by AOP and with a libretto adapted from Vikram Seth’s best-selling novel in verse The Golden Gate, five twenty-somethings experience love, life, and loss in the magical and innocent San Francisco of the early 1980’s. John, handsome and successful, will discover too late the price of  his emotional detachment. He has just met Liz through a personals ad placed by his former college girlfriend Jan, a sculptor and punk rock drummer. Meanwhile, John’s best friend from college Phil, reeling from a divorce which has left him the sole single parent of a six-year-old, begins a passionate relationship with the Ed, Liz’s younger brother. Ed is bright, gorgeous, in search of a lover and mentor, and a profoundly conflicted devout Catholic. Couples come apart; new couples form, families are created, friendships are severed. A tragic death leads John, always the outsider, to the promise of a deeper connection and a warmer life.

Zach Redler is an award winning composer, pianist and copyist. Zach’s music has been performed at Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, National Opera Center, Joe’s Pub and concert halls around the world and has been critically acclaimed by the New York Times, Variety and the Boston Globe. Ben Brantley of the New York Times said, Zach’s music “follows the patterns of minds grasping, often in vain, for clarity, conviction and lost time…it transcends the expected and achieves a haunting originality.” Zach spent 2011-13 in residence as a Van Lier fellow at American Opera Projects as part of their Composers and the Voice Program. For his work in music theatre with Sara Cooper, the American Theatre Wing awarded them with the 2014 Jonathan Larson Grant. In February, Zach’s Opera Memphis commission “Movin’ Up In The World” (libretto by Jerre Dye) as well as a set of his Walt Whitman Art Songs will be performed at the University of Missouri . Zach is on faculty at New York University teaching at Steinhardt and Tisch.  He is a member of ASCAP, Local 802 and a graduate of the Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. www.zachredler.com

With a libretto by Mark Campbell, Susan Smith is an opera in one act about the woman who drowned her two sons in South Carolina in 1994 and the nine days she perpetuated the lie that an African-American man had abducted them at gunpoint. Starting with the filicide and ending with the exposure of Ms. Smith’s guilt, the opera looks closely at the confluence of reasons that brought her to commit such a horrible act: the abuse she suffered as a child, the chaos in her marriage and recent rejection by a lover. By examining these reasons, Susan Smith does not endeavor to exonerate the eponymous woman who committed these crimes, but rather engender some sympathy for her.

CLINT BORZONI’s music reflects his passion for lyricism and functional harmony. He has written over sixty pieces, including two full length operas, two one act operas, a piano concerto, percussion quartet, piece for orchestra, two string quartets, several works for chamber orchestra, and over forty art songs. He also wrote the music for the musical, My Life as a Bald Soprano which premiered in the June Havoc Theater during the 2008 Midtown International Theater Festival. Among Borzoni’s honors are the Morton Feldman Award, a Boston Metro Opera Festival Award, the Maurice Liberman music scholarship, operamission’s new cabaret song competition winner, and world premieres by the New York Youth Symphony and the Mannes School of Music’s Percussion Ensemble. He received a B.A. and M.A. in Music Composition from CUNY where he studied with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Del Tredici.

When Adonis Calls is a new opera with music by Clint Borzoni. The libretto was constructed by John de los Santos from the poems of Gavin Geoffrey Dillard. It tells the story of an accomplished author, called the Poet, who is struggling with writer’s block and isolation. He is contacted by an eager young fan, known as the Muse, who is interested in both an artistic and personal correspondence. At first reluctant, the Poet joins the Muse in a sensual game of literary discovery that leads the two into unexpected realms of unbridled eroticism. Through their poems, they unleash one another’s pasts, demons, and secret longings. Their harmonized writings culminate with a final meeting in the flesh that transcends beyond what either of them ever believed was possible when they first put pen to paper. When Adonis Calls is a striking new work that blends an exciting score of romantic lyricism with dance and a fresh perspective of operatic storytelling. The music and poetry guide the characters through a surreal journey filled with wit, lust, rage, and ultimately, love. When Adonis Calls utilizes an ensemble of two baritones, string quartet, percussionist, and two dancers. whenadoniscalls.com