Oakland Youth Orchestra: The Rhyme is Reason

I was also recently commissioned for a new work for the Oakland Youth Orchestra, for their 2013 season and tour. Under the guidance of my good friend, Artistic Director Michael Morgan, the Oakland Youth Orchestra is recognized as an outstanding musical organization in Oakland and the San Francisco Bay area. Today OYO consists of seventyfive talented music students aged 12 to 22 from throughout the region. OYO maintains a commitment to cultural exchange, and has toured extensively in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean Islands, Costa Rica, Mexico and Cuba, Italy, and in June 2004, Australia and New Zealand, and in 2007, Greece. The premier will be led by Principal Conductor John Kendall Bailey, an outstanding orchestral conductor, choral director and composer.

Two New Songbooks

I was honored to be asked to contribute to two important songbook collections in 2012. The Opera America Songbook was a commissioning project in conjunction with Schott Music, as part of the activities celebrating the opening of the new National Opera Center. I set James Fenton’s delightful poem “Down to the Twigs and Seeds”, sung at the opening concert by soprano Sarah Jakubiak.

The Opera America Songbook

I also was honored earlier this year when pianist Thomas Bagwell called to ask if I’d contribute a setting of poet Steven Cordova’s “Across a Table”, for the 20th Anniversary edition of the Aids Quilt Memorial Songbook. The presentation will include songs from the 1992 premiere, written by William Parker, as well as songs written for various regional performances of the piece over the last two decades and brand new songs written especially for this performance by me and composers Robert Aldridge, Stephen Dembeski, Herschel Garfein, Gilda Lyons and Wolfram Wagner. Among the performers will be Stephanie Blythe, Amy Burton, Adrienne Danrich, Anthony Dean Griffey, Suzanne Mentzer, Kurt Ollmann, Sidney Outlaw, Randall Scarlata, William Sharp, Michael Slattery, Sanford Sylvan, Monica Yunus, and Camille Zamora.

The performance will be at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, on December 1st, 2012.

20th Anniversary AIDS quilt Songbook

San Francisco Opera Center and ODC Theater Announce Love/Hate World Premiere Performances

by Jack Perla & librettist Rob Bailis…

We’re delighted to announce that The San Francisco Opera Center has joined forces with ODC Theatre and Music Without Walls to present the world premiere performances of Love/Hate in April 2012 at the newly renovated ODC Theatre in San Francisco. This is huge news for everyone involved with this project – to start with, our San Francisco cast will be provided by The San Francisco Opera Center, from its world-renowned Adler Fellowship Program!!

Continue reading “San Francisco Opera Center and ODC Theater Announce Love/Hate World Premiere Performances”

A Double Distinction from The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition

Thrilled and incredibly honored by some wonderful news I have to share with you!  I have been awarded a rare double distinction from The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition.   In addition to receiving a $6,000 commission award under their General commissioning program, I have been named the only composer in the Endowment’s history to receive an Honorable Mention for The Barlow Prize in the same year!  170 composers applied and I am very grateful and humbled to be given such special notice from the judges.

Continue reading “A Double Distinction from The Barlow Endowment for Music Composition”

A New Work for TwoSense

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be composing a new piece in 2012 for TwoSense – the magnificent duo of  Bang on a Can and Cantaloupe Music recording artists, cellist Ashley Bathgate and pianist, Lisa Moore.  Their concerts feature new & experimental music paired with mainstream repertoire for cello and piano. Although TwoSense is less than a year old, they’ve already earned rave reviews from major press in New York and around the country.

Continue reading “A New Work for TwoSense”

Update: Two New Releases

My two new recordings for Innova Records are moving ahead as planned!

Poet’s Cabaret is set to go into Fantasy Studios this November 2011, to record a collection of new works focusing on a mix of short vocal songs balanced with short instrumental numbers.  I’m approaching it as a collection of scenes and short stories told through music and lyrics. The performers are Amie Penwell, Jordan Carp, David Arend, Jason Slota and myself.

Continue reading “Update: Two New Releases”

Seattle Opera – Belonging(s)

Seattle Opera today announced Belonging(s), a new community engagement project that will use personal stories of Puget Sound area residents to create a new kind of homegrown opera.  The first phase of this multi-year project involves collecting hundreds of stories, each centering on a cherished belonging that embodies struggle, success, and identity.  Story collection is underway, and continues, in the coming weeks, at a Belonging(s) video booth in the lobby of McCaw Hall before each performance of Porgy and Bess.

“Opera is often described in terms of its component parts, or its 400-year old Western European history,” says Speight Jenkins, General Director of Seattle Opera. “I’m interested in finding ways that we can think more broadly about opera, as a celebration of the stories we share and the details that make us unique.”

Belonging(s) begins with a digital quilt—an online repository of videos created by you, your friends, and the people you pass on the street—that tell stories of our most precious possessions: those objects or memories that help us understand our lives, our relationships, and our legacies.  From the quilt will come a newly commissioned opera, to be produced in venues throughout the Puget Sound region.  A composer and librettist—to be identified in an upcoming announcement—will select a small number of stories from the quilt to create an opera that explores the time and place in which we live.

“Seattle Opera performs Wagner’s Ring cycle every four years,” says Seattle Opera Education Director Sue Elliott. “The magic ring is an object upon which an entire world projects its conflicts and history.  Drawing inspiration from the Ring, we’re using stories of our most precious possessions to create new work as part of a local, communal arts practice, using ideas and images from you, your friends, and your neighbors.”

 

10th Annual Blaine Jazz Festival

Martin Kuuskmann

 

Next week I’m off to Northern Washington State, close to the Canadian border, to work with my friend Martin Kuuskmann and the Pacific Arts Association, at the Blaine Jazz Festival.  I’ll spend a week there teaching kids to improvise and write music, and playing concerts. Born in Estonia, Martin is one of the world’s leading improvising bassoon virtuosos, a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music, and founding member of New York based Absolute Ensemble.