Video from 2007

The concert reading in April at the National Opera Center was tremendous.  Please see below for the fantastic participants and enjoy this four-minute video from the reading. Thanks hugely to all for their artistry and passion!

The News from Poems is my only opera undertaken without a commission.  I have written it, libretto and music, over the past ten years around other work and the April reading has shown that it is whole and ripe and ready for the finish work that goes on in production.

• Currently scored for a quartet of instruments, orchestrations for chamber ensembles of 7 or 13, as well as for chamber orchestra are possible as well.

• The intense use of the chorus in Brechtian ensemble style, with all chorus members performing multiple solo cameo roles, makes the opera a good fit for vocal arts departments that wish to give their advanced students experience in both contemporary music and featured dramatic characters to develop.   In this respect, a collaboration between an opera company and a conservatory might be one logical path towards a premier.

• The opera requires very little in the way of a set as it was conceived to use primarily  lighting, costume pieces and props deployed by ensemble members to instantaneously  convey different spaces and times.

• Perusal score available in pdf or hard copy.

• More audio excerpts at http://susankander.net/works/the-news-from-poems-2/

Rehearsals are under way for the semi-staged reading at the American Opera Center April 10.  The cast is extraordinary:  Keith Phares, baritone, as William Carlos Williams; Katherine Pracht, mezzo, as his wife Floss; John Taylor Ward, bass-baritone, as Ezra Pound.  A stellar ensemble of 8 singers and 4 musicians, fielded by ASCAP/CMA 2016 award winning ensemble Cantata Profana, led by artistic director Jacob Ashworth.  Louisa Proske, fresh from yet another hit, Heartbeat Opera’s Lucia, is directing.  Williams, Flossie and I are in fantastic hands!

She Never Lost a Passenger

I am tremendously excited that Lyric Opera of Kansas City is going to premier the new orchestration of my first commissioned opera.  This story of Harriet Tubman has been produced around the country continuously over the past 22 years.  The production will be the centerpiece of the Lyric’s renowned Opera Camp with soprano Roberta Gumbel and tenor Nathan Grannar reprising their roles from the original production as Harriet Tubman and Philadelphia abolitionist/historian William Grant Still.

I’m also pleased to report that Opera Kansas did a second round of performances this year of Passenger, touching a few thousand more children and teachers with her story in music.  Again, hats off Paul Brodene Smith in Wichita!

Postcards from America

It’s always nice to hear from people who are performing pieces of mine.  Ben Serna-Grey will be performing the oboe and piano work on his master’s recital at University of British Columbia on April 24.

Last February Opera Kansas, despite the miserable fiscal scene in that state, took this opera into 12 schools. Artistic director Paul Brodene Smith reported “about 300 kids sang with us on stage and we had an overall attendance number for all the performances of 3393.” This year there is strong demand that they revive their production. “In fact the program was so successful one of the principals suggested that we should offer it each year and return to participating schools on a three year rotation.” In addition, they are raising funds to produce a theatrical performance with the new ensemble orchestration. It’s so great to hear news like this from a state like that. Hats off big-time to Opera Kansas!

New Recording

MSR Classics is producing an album of my violin-centric pieces with Hermestänze as the title work. Jacob Ashworth (commissioner), violin, and Lee Dionne, piano, will be playing it, and it will be accompanied by A Garden’s Time Piece, with Jessica Petrus, soprano, and Solo Sonata, with Jacob playing both violin and viola. Release is targeted for second half of 2016.

The News from Poems

This 2-hour ensemble opera now has its own works page. Please visit this new page to hear arias and excerpts and read program notes.

Since Center for Contemporary Opera’s staged reading of the first portion of the opera in November 2013, I have finished composing and am preparing a concert reading of the whole score in an arrangement for 4 players in early April at the American Opera Center. I have terrific principal singers lined up: Keith Phares, baritone, as William Carlos Williams; Katherine Pracht, mezzo, as Flossie Williams; and Joshua Jeremiah, baritone, as Ezra Pound. The director is Louisa Proske, co-director of Heartbeat Opera, (fresh from a major hit at the Berkshire Theater Festival) and members of Cantata Profana will be playing the arrangement for clarinet, violin, double bass and piano. Jacob Ashworth, artistic director of Cantata Profana and co-music director of Heartbeat Opera, will conduct.

This 2-hour ensemble opera now has its own works page.
Please visit this new page to hear arias and excerpts and read program notes.

I’m really looking forward to my first trip to Tulsa for their production of The Giver, January 10 and 11.  While there, I’ll be doing a Composer Forum and giving a master class to composition students at bART Center for Music.  That should be a lot of fun.

She Never Lost a Passenger

This opera, my first commission twenty years ago, is having two productions coming up in the new year.  Opera Kansas, in Wichita, is bringing this story about Harriet Tubman to twelve schools in February.  Children in those schools will learn the hefty chorus part with their music teachers (I am thrilled to hear there still are music teachers in schools) and get to perform with professional singers for their schools and their parents.  In writing this opera, I was determined to use a lot of traditional music that recent generations of kids don’t seem to hear any more: Go Down Moses, Simple Gifts, Follow the Drinking Gourd are all woven into the narrative.  Thanks to Dr. Paul Brodene Smith, artistic director of Opera Kansas, for carrying this torch and bringing Harriet’s story – and the experience of singing, hearing and seeing opera – to so many people.

And I’m super excited to be commissioned to orchestrate Passenger for a chamber ensemble of eight players, something I have wanted to do for a long time.  Erie Opera Theater, in Erie, Pa., will be doing it in May with a brand new scoring for oboe/eng.horn, clarinet/b.clar, horn, percussion, 2 violins, cello and piano.  Passenger was commissioned in 1994 for piano only, and has had over a dozen productions since then.  I think having a chamber ensemble might now make it viable as a proper main stage show in tandem with another piece or simply on its own as an offering for families with children 5 and all the way up.  Thanks so much, Brent Weber, artistic director of Erie Opera Theater!

Having had such a good experience with the excerpts of Miranda’s Waltz performed by Ravel Virtual Studios, I asked them to create three short instrumental excerpts of music from The Giver. These are three of the bits that underscore projections showing the transfer of memories from the Giver to Jonas. Once again, I’m very pleased with what Ron Artinian at Ravel produced. You can hear them on the works page for The Giver: susankander.net/works/the-giver/

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to spending three days withTulsa Opera in January for their production!