Fifty years later, we wanted to honor that opening gesture by creating new work that, like Bernstein’s Mass, shows the power of the arts to celebrate, question, and illuminate the ongoing American conversation. I like to think of Bernstein’s work as a challenge to tell the stories that matter, and to celebrate the diverse voices making music in America today.

We approached four different composers and librettists, each with a special connection to WNO, and asked each team to choose an American monument that spoke to them. I am thrilled that Jason Moran, my colleague who runs the jazz program, along with his wife, Alicia, have written and are performing the prologue for this evening with Chantal. Each of the other teams have been part of our AOI Program and all have already gone on to significant careers. I am honored to welcome them back to share the stories they have created.

I am looking forward to hearing from you as to your responses and thoughts about these operas.

Three years ago, WNO’s inimitable Artistic Director, Francesca Zambello, envisioned Written in Stone as a way to pay tribute to our performance home while enhancing our commitment to nurturing new work which has been heightened through Francesca’s American Opera Initiative. Her idea was to commission composer/librettist creative teams “to think about how Washington, D.C.’s monuments speak to them today. What stories can they tell about our past, our present, our future-in-progress?” I am privileged to share with you the result and thank Francesca for her imagination and devotion to exploring these ideas.

We are particularly thrilled that Written in Stone brings together a trio of Kennedy Center Artistic Directors. Joining Francesca in realizing this project are Jason Moran, Artistic Director for Jazz, and Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Vice President and Artistic Director of Social Impact. I hope you will be as moved as I am with this beautiful offering and join me in applauding these tremendous talents and the rest of the project’s authors—Alicia Hall Moran, Huang Ruo, David Henry Hwang, Kamala Sankaram, A.M. Holmes, and Kennedy Center Composer-in-Residence Carlos Simon.

The circumstances of the past 24 months inspired invention and creativity, and the enthusiastic support we received during this time from our many friends was uplifting. Finding ways to present a largely virtual season last year and return to live performances with many new considerations this year was monumental in and of itself. I cannot express enough our appreciation for the loyal support of the entire WNO family — the artists, audiences, donors, crew members, staff, volunteers, and Board.

In Rise, one of the four pieces in Written in Stone, librettist A.M. Holmes has her characters sing, “We hold our history in our bodies…We embody what has come before…We each have stories to tell.” WNO has many stories to tell, and we look forward to sharing them with you throughout this season and for many years to come.

A surveyor stands before a monument. “You’re leaning. That’s the situation.” As she assesses the monument’s condition and its meaning, she recalls others who have surveyed the American landscape: Harriet Tubman (~1822–1913), who guided enslaved individuals to freedom via the Underground Railroad; Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), a free African-American who assisted with a survey that established the original borders of the District of Columbia; Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (d. 1818), a man of African descent who is recognized as “the Founder of Chicago”; Esteban de Dorantes (~1500–1539), an enslaved man who was the first African to explore North America; and Gladys Mae West (b. 1930), an African-American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the earth.

Further Reading

Chantal has a lot to teach us about the intricacies of a surveyor’s job. In her work, Chantal would be familiar with a theodolite, a surveying instrument used for precise angular measurement in both horizontal and vertical planes. Theodolites are commonly used for land surveying, route surveying, construction surveying, and in the engineering industry. Learn more about theodolites in Surveying Instruments and Technology (https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315153346-3).

Alicia Hernández, a girl scout, stops a Powerful Woman hurrying through the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and asks directions to the ladies’ bathroom. The Woman gives her an earful about life in the Capitol. When Alicia emerges from the bathroom, her troop has disappeared. She looks around at the statues of old men and wonders, “Is there anyone here like me?” Officer Victoria Wilson points out the Portrait Monument, depicting Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. A moment later, the ghost of Adelaide Johnson, sculptor of the monument, emerges. As they consider the monument together, Adelaide, Victoria, and Alicia trade stories of will and determination. Alicia’s mother enters the gallery, searching worriedly for her daughter. “I was never alone,” Alicia reassures her. “I was here the whole time...finding my place in the history.”

2015: Mtchll is a preacher in the Pentecostal tradition, a contemporary contradiction: radically Black and socially conservative. His son, Bklyn, is a preacher in waiting, gifted and closeted. During a sermon, Mtchll announces that his son will deliver his first sermon the following Sunday. The following week, Bklyn uses his sermon to come out to the church, to his father’s surprise and anger. Bklyn tells the church he will fight, as Jesus did, for the right of all bodies to love, and invites them to join him on the steps of the Supreme Court, in the name of those whose time to love was stolen.

Two months later, Bklyn and Mtchll are on the steps of the Supreme Court, each standing with a small flock of congregants who have joined their respective positions. Father stands in front of the male statue, the Guardian of Law, while Son stands in front of the female figure, the contemplation of Justice, waiting for the verdict that will stun them both: same-sex couples may exercise the right to marry.

1980: President Carter signs a bill authorizing the construction of a Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Maya Lin, a student at Yale, wins a competition to design the monument, setting off a ferocious debate, and forcing her to re-evaluate her understanding of her own identity. Robert McNamara, denounced as a “war criminal” by an angry reporter, reflects on his own feelings about the war. Grady Mitchell, a veteran, doesn’t think much of the project; he feels used by his country, and he is haunted by the memory of a friend who lost his life while saving Grady’s. Phuong Tran, a Vietnamese refugee, reacts to the idea of the monument with bitterness and anger; her husband fought and died alongside Americans, but once Americans grew tired of the war, they left their old allies behind.

November 1982: The four main characters converge on the mall for the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial. Grady touches the name of the friend who sacrificed himself. McNamara experiences the losses emotionally for the first time and dedicates himself to making amends. Phuong brings a bowl of water, which she uses to write the name of her dead husband alongside the Americans on the wall. Maya watches her vision come to life: a rift in the earth which will begin to heal.

The premiere of Written in Stone coincides with two important anniversaries. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, itself a national monument, turns 50 this year. And Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative (AOI) celebrates its first decade, during which it has commissioned more than 30 operas. Written in Stone brings together alumni from AOI, leaders from the Kennedy Center community, and established artists making their WNO debuts.

“I think of a monument as something that can provoke or uphold an idea,” says James Robinson, who directs Written in Stone. The very idea of a monument—of monumentalism—is the subject of Chantal, which opens the evening. Even as the protagonist considers the monument before her, she thinks about the many men and women whose work has defined the American landscape.

The Rift considers the controversy surrounding the creation of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Austere, elegant, and covered with the names of thousands of Americans who lost their lives in an unpopular war, the monument offers a stark reminder that the story of every war—no matter how it is judged by history—is the story of individual service and sacrifice. “We hope our opera, like the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial itself, can inspire a path towards reconciliation and understanding today, when our nation once again suffers from seemingly-irreconcilable conflict and division,” writes librettist David Henry Huang.

Kamala Sankaram, the composer of Rise, describes the work as “an examination of legacy: who is represented and who is remembered.” The original story by A.M. Homes imagines a young girl lost in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. With a little guidance, she discovers Adelaide Johnson’s sculpture of three leaders in the movement for women’s suffrage. Unveiled six months after the 19th amendment was ratified, the Portrait Monument was moved the next day to the crypt, where it languished unseen until 1963. In 1997, it was finally returned to the Rotunda. “A lot of people still don’t know it exists,” says Robinson. “That monument is desperate to be heard. The piece is really about making sure women’s voices are heard.”

It was not until 1935 that the Supreme Court got a home of its own. The steps of the Supreme Court, flanked by figures representing the Contemplation of Justice and the Guardian or Authority of Law, is the site of it all falls down, which offers a snapshot of a father and a son whose deeply held religious convictions put them on opposing sides of the fight for marriage equality. Librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph calls it “an American story, a Black Love Matters sermon, a coming out narrative in defense of a future norm, an opera living between the Guardian of Law and the Contemplation of Justice where, in the end, love over/rules.”

Steven Gathman (Chorus Master)

Andrew Harper (Sound Designer)
Kennedy Center/Washington National Opera debut. Andrew Harper is an independent sound designer for theatre, opera, and ballet.  For the 2021 Glimmerglass Festival, Harper served as sound designer for all productions on the lawn stage, including The Magic Flute, Songbird, Il Trovatore, and The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson. For Houston Grand Opera: My Favorite Things, El Milagro del Recuerdo (World Premiere), The Phoenix (World Premiere), The Flying Dutchman, Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, West Side Story, The House without a Christmas Tree (World Premiere), It’s a Wonderful Life (World Premiere), Carousel, Sweeney Todd, A Coffin in Egypt (World Premiere), A Little Night Music.  For New York City Opera: Cruzar la Cara de la Luna.  For Lyric Opera Kansas City and Atlanta Opera: West Side Story. Harper is the Resident Sound Designer for Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars, having designed dozens of productions since 2013. Recently:  South Pacific, The Little Mermaid, Sister Act, Rock of Ages, Elf, Spring Awakening, A Chorus Line, Seussical, Ragtime, Mama Mia!, Beauty and the Beast, Oklahoma, Memphis, How to Succeed, In the Heights.

Corinne M. Hayes (Surtitles)

David Henry Hwang (Librettist)
David Henry Hwang’s stage works includes the plays M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, Chinglish, Kung Fu, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, and FOB, as well as the Broadway musicals Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival) and Disney’s Tarzan. Hwang is a Tony Award^® winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, a Grammy Award^® winner who has been twice nominated, and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Called America’s most-produced living opera librettist by Opera News, he has written 12 operas to date, including five works with Philip Glass; their most recent collaboration, Circus Days and Nights, premiered at Sweden’s Malmö Opera in 2021. Hwang has also worked with composers Bright Sheng, Unsuk Chin, and Howard Shore, among others and he is a Grammy Award^® winner for Ainadamar with music by Osvaldo Golijov. With composer Huang Ruo, Hwang has also written An American Soldier, which premiered as a one-hour opera in 2014 at WNO; the full-length version opened in 2018 at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Their opera adaptation of M. Butterfly will premiere in July 2022 at Santa Fe Opera.

Hwang co-wrote the Gold Record “Solo” with the late pop icon Prince and was a writer/consulting producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair from 2015–2019. He is currently creating a TV series for Netflix and will serve as executive producer of Billion Dollar Whale for Beau Willimon’s Westward Productions. As a screenwriter, he is penning the live-action musical feature film adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Disney Studios as well as a screenplay to star actress Gemma Chan.

Hwang’s most recent musical, Soft Power, written with composer Jeanine Tesori, opened in 2019 at New York’s Public Theatre, where it received four 2020 Outer Critics Honors, a 2020 Grammy^® nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

A.M. Homes (Librettist)
A.M. Homes is the author of 13 books including most recently, DAYS OF AWE, a collection of short stories and MAY WE BE FORGIVEN, a novel which won the Orange/Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages and appears frequently in magazines such as Art Forum, Harper’s, Granta, McSweeney’s, and The New Yorker.  She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Bomb, and Blind Spot. Homes has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Cullman Center grants.  She lives in New York City and teaches at Princeton University. Her novel THE UNFOLDING is forthcoming in September 2022.  

Joshua Horowitz (Assistant Director)
Joshua R. Horowitz is an opera and theatre director originally from Old Bethpage, New York.  Upcoming credits include, Tosca (Assistant Director, The Lyric Opera of Kansas City), and Die Fledermaus (Assistant Director, Central City Opera).  Past directing credits include The Barber of Seville (Cincinnati Opera), Arias and Barcarolles (The Glimmerglass Festival), The Emerging Artist and Look-In Performances of La Traviata (Washington National Opera), and Anna Karenina (Baylor University). As an associate director Horowitz has worked on productions such as The Barber of Seville (Minnesota Opera) and La Traviata (The Atlanta Opera).  Assistant director credits include Aida (Houston Grand Opera), The Queen of Spades (The Glimmerglass Festival), La Traviata (The Glimmerglass Festival), Florencia en el Amazonas (Houston Grand Opera), The Barber of Seville (The Glimmerglass Festival), The Odyssey (The Glimmerglass Festival), Porgy and Bess (The Glimmerglass Festival), The Elixir of Love (The Finger Lakes Opera), and Carmen for the inaugural season of The Finger Lakes Opera.  He is thrilled to be returning to the Washington National Opera for the premier production of Written in Stone.  

S. Katy Tucker (Production Designer)
S Katy Tucker designs video and projections for live performance internationally, working frequently in opera and collaborating with composers and musicians, including Paul McCartney, Helga Davis, Pamela Z, and Amanda Gookin. Her work has been seen around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway, and at New York City Ballet, Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, BAM, San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dutch National Opera, Sydney Opera House, Houston Grand Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, and the Canadian Opera Company, among others.

She began her career as a painter and installation artist, exhibiting her work at a variety of galleries, such as the Corcoran Museum, Dupont Underground, the Dillon Gallery, and Artist’s Space in New York City. Recent productions include: Eurydice and Verdi’s Requiem at the Met, Florencia en el Amazonas at Lyric Opera of Chicago with Francesca Zambello, Orpheus and Eurydice at Seattle Opera and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs at Austin Opera. Upcoming: Medea at The Metropolitan Opera with David McVicar,  and the world premiere of Castor and Patience with Kevin Newbury.

J. Jared Janas (Hair, Wig, and Makeup Designer) 
Opera: Porgy and Bess and The Flying Dutchman at The Atlanta Opera, two seasons as Wigmaster at Glimmerglass Festival, and four seasons as Wigmaster at Bard Summerscape.

Broadway: Jagged Little Pill, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, Gettin' the Band Back Together, Bandstand, Indecent, Sunset Boulevard, The Visit, The Real Thing, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Motown, Peter and the Starcatcher, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, All about Me, Next to Normal. 

Recent Off-Broadway & Regional: The Bluest Eye (Huntington), Ah, Wilderness! (Hartford Stage), Clue (Paper Mill Playhouse), Seven Deadly Sins (Tectonic Theater Project), Sing Street (NYTW), Scotland, PA (Roundabout), Wives (Playwrights Horizons), Toni Stone (Roundabout), BLKS (MCC), Nantucket Sleigh Ride (Lincoln Center), Alice by Heart (MCC), Miss You Like Hell, The Low Road, and Father Comes Home from the Wars… (Public Theater), Jerry Springer the Opera (New Group), Yours Unfaithfully (Mint Theatre, Drama Desk nomination). 

Recent Film/TV: “And Just Like That,” “The Gilded Age,” “Madam Secretary,” “The Good Fight,” "Six by Sondheim,” "Gotham,” and "Mozart in the Jungle."  

Lynn Krynicki (Stage Manager)
Lynn Krynicki, Production Stage Manager, is a life-long opera enthusiast. She was raised attending opera, ballet, and children’s theater. This early introduction led to her desire to be a stage manager as a career, which she started in the summers through her college years. After graduating, Krynicki freelanced as a stage manager and as an assistant at several opera houses throughout the U.S. including Seattle Opera, Florentine Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Nashville Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Central City Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Milwaukee Ballet, and Pine Mountain Music Festival.  In 2000, Krynicki joined The Washington Opera (now Washington National Opera) as an assistant stage manager on the production of Il trovatore and has been returning every season since. In the Summer of 2004, she became the stage manager for Bard SummerScape’s opera and has held that summer position through to the present. In 2006, she made her Kennedy Center stage manager debut with the Bolshoi Ballet at the Opera House. Shortly thereafter, she made her Washington National Opera stage manager debut on the young artist performance of Gianni Schicchi and she has stage managed productions every season since.  In the fall of 2016, she was promoted to production stage manager, a position she still holds today. Throughout her 22 season career at WNO, she has enjoyed working on over 80 productions, concerts, recitals and galas. Most notably Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Britten’s Peter Grimes, when she made her vocal debut as “The Scream”, WNO’s tour to Japan, Don Carlo, Appomattox, The Flying Dutchman, four productions of Madame Butterfly, Show Boat, An American Soldier, and Candide. She also remembers fondly stage managing the productions when the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made appearances in Ariadne auf Naxos and Daughter of the Regiment as the Duchess of Krackenthorpe.  Other notable productions during her career are Milwaukee Ballet’s new Zach Brown designed The Nutcracker, the Kennedy Center’s Latino Inaugural celebration for President Obama’s second term and the 2019 Kennedy Center New Year’s Eve concert. During the pandemic, she branched out, stage managing film projects for PBS and the American Pops Orchestra including PBS's 2021 New Year’s Eve concerts, two episodes of PBS’s One Voice series and several others, yet to be aired.  She is looking forward to closing out WNO’s season with Carmen, Bard SummerScape’s 2022 summer opera, and future engagements with PBS and American Pops Orchestra.

Mark McCullough (Lighting Designer)
Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
WNO History:  La Traviata,2019,Candide, 2018, Porgy and Bess 2017,The Ring Cycle, 2016, Show Boat, 2013 Forza Del Destino, 2013.
Past: MacBeth,Vienna Staatsoper, Norma, Ópera Nacional de Chile,The Tales of Hoffmann. National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing,Cyrano de Bergerac. Teatroalla Scala, Le nozze di Figaro, Metropolitan Opera, West Side Story, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari
Future: Aida,Los Angeles Opera, The Sound of Music,Glimmerglass Festival,West Side Story, Chicago Lyric Oepra

Jason Moran (Composer)
Since his emergence on the music scene in the late 1990s, Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz Jason Moran has proven more than his brilliance as a performer.

With a unique vision and innovative approach to the music, Moran was appointed Artistic Advisor for Jazz for the Kennedy Center in November 2011 and given the title of Artistic Director for Jazz in May 2014. Since his initial appointment, Moran has worked closely with the Center's staff to expand the breadth of its jazz programming.

He established the Center's less conventional Crossroads Club, which hosted acts such as Roy Hargrove's RH Factor andMoran’s own Fats Waller Dance Party. A Blue Note Records recording artist, he also hosted the Kennedy Center's Blue Note at 75, a celebration in May 2014 of the iconic record label's diamond anniversary.

With an emphasis on cross-genre collaboration, Moran has worked with Kennedy Center affiliates, including the National Symphony Orchestra to present Wayne Shorter, Esperanza Spalding, and as a consultant for the NSO Pops, performances with Nas in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Illmatic. He has worked with the WNO to present Eric Owens in concert and collaborated with the WNO Cafritz Young Artists for an Election Night Jam in 2012. He also paired the art of comedy with jazz when he invited comedian David Allen Grier to join him for An Evening of Comedy and Music in 2012.

Moran has also reshaped and refocused the Center's Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead professional development program for young artists, bringing in new faculty and expanding the curriculum to include collaborations with other D.C. arts organizations.

He also teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and has been lecturer/instructor at Yale University, Dartmouth University, University of Pennsylvania, Eastman School of Music, The New School, New York's Museum of Modern Art, Banff Center for The Arts, Denmark's Vallekilde Jazz Camp, Skidmore, and Stanford Jazz Workshop.

In almost every category that matters-improvisation, composition, group concept, repertoire, technique, and experimentation—Moran and his group The Bandwagon, with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits, have challenged the status quo.

A graduate of New York’s Manhattan School of Music, Moran was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2010. He has since performed and/or recorded with artists such as Cassandra Wilson, Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, Dave Holland, Marian McPartland, Don Byron, Uri Caine (duo), Bunky Green, Sam Rivers, Jenny Scheinman, Christian McBride, and Stefon Harris.

He scored a ballet for Alonzo King's LINES ballet, as well as video works for contemporary American artists Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker. Moran also has worked with pivotal visual/performance artists Joan Jonas and Adrian Piper. His recordings include the September 2014 release All Rise: A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller, TEN, Soundtrack to Human Motion, Facing Left, Black Stars, Modernistic, The Bandwagon, Same Mother, and Artist-in-Residence.

James Robinson (Director)
James Robinson’s production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (co-directed with choreographer Camille A. Brown) opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 2021–22 season to sensational acclaim after its world premiere at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2019. First seen at English National Opera and Dutch National Opera, his Grammy Award^®-winning production of Porgy & Bess opened the Metropolitan Opera season in 2019 and returns this fall. He will direct Written in Stone, a trio of new operas commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Center, at Washington National Opera in February 2022. In March 2022, he will make his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut with Fire Shut Up In My Bones. He will also direct the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s Awakenings (based on the book by Oliver Sacks) and a new version of Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk (co-directed with choreographer Sean Curran) for Opera Theatre of St. Louis, as well as the world premiere of Huang Ruo’s M Butterfly (based on the play by David Henry Hwang) for Santa Fe Opera as part of their 2022 season.

Robinson has been the Artistic Director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis since 2009. During his tenure he has directed numerous world premieres, including Terence Blanchard’s Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Ricky Ian Gordon’s 27 and Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown. For Opera Theatre of St. Louis he has also mounted productions of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer and Nixon in China, Dominick Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Fire, Weill’s Street Scene, Tobias Picker’s Emmeline, Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath, and the American premiere of Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland.

He has also directed numerous new productions for Houston Grand Opera (most recently Giulio Cesare and the world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s A House Without a Christmas Tree and San Francisco Opera (L’elisir d’amore and Tobias Picker’s Dolores Claiborne). His work has also been seen at Opera Australia, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Wexford Festival, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Hollywood Bowl, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, and Carnegie Hall.

Erhard Rom (Set Designer)
Erhard Rom has designed settings for over 250 productions across the globe. In 2015 he was named as a finalist in the Designer of the Year category for the International Opera Awards in London. His design work has frequently been displayed in the Prague Quadrennial International Design Exhibition and at the National Opera Center in Manhattan. Originally from Seattle Washington, he now lives just outside of New York City and teaches design at Montclair State University in the Department of Theatre and Dance.

From a very early age he showed strong interests in both theatrical design and in music, which ultimately led him to pursue, first a degree in music, at the University of Washington and then an M.F.A. in design at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Following his graduation in 1992, he began working regularly for regional companies throughout the country. While the bulk of his work has been for opera (including 14 world premieres) he has designed extensively for theater companies as well, and brings a theatrical sensibility to his operatic work that is combined with a deep understanding of the music.

He has collaborated with many of the world’s leading directors of opera, including Francesca Zambello, Nicholas Muni, Michael Cavanagh, Tomer Zvulun, Thaddeus Strassberger, Leon Major, Colin Graham and Lillian Groag. His list of world premieres includes John Musto and Mark Campbell’s Volpone and The Inspector, both for Wolf Trap Opera, as well as Later the Same Evening for Maryland Opera Studio and the Manhattan School of Music. Other premieres include The Shining for Minnesota Opera and the 2011 Glimmerglass Festival production of A Blizzard on Marblehead Neck with music by Jeanine Tesori and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner. In 2014 he designed the European premiere of Kevin Puts recent opera, Silent Night. The production was awarded two accolades at the 2015 Irish Times Theatre Awards Ceremony, including the audience choice award and best opera production of 2014.

Kamala Sankaram (Composer)
Praised as “strikingly original” (New York Times), and a “new voice from whom we will surely be hearing more” (Los Angeles Times), Sankaram has received commissions from WNO, Houston Grand Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, the PROTOTYPE Festival, Opera on Tap, Opera Memphis, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, among others. She is the recipient of a Jonathan Larson Award from the American Theater Wing, and has received grants from Opera America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kevin Spacey Foundation, and the MAP Fund. Residencies and fellowships include the MacDowell Colony, the Watermill Center, the Civilians, HERE Arts Center, CAP21, Con Edison/Exploring the Metropolis, the Hermitage, and American Lyric Theater. As a resident artist at HERE Arts Center, Kamala created MIRANDA, which was the winner of the New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical. Thumbprint, her second opera (written in collaboration with librettist Susan Yankowitz), premiered in the 2014 PROTOTYPE Festival, and was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Agence French Presse, and over 25 media outlets around the world. Thumbprint has since received productions at LA Opera and Opera Ithaca. She is currently working with Opera on Tap and librettist Jerre Dye on The Parksville Murders, the first opera written for virtual reality. Episode 1 is now available on SamsungVR. As a performer, Sankaram has been hailed as “an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes” (Wall Street Journal).

She has performed and premiered pieces with Beth Morrison Projects, Anthony Braxton, and the Wooster Group, among others, and is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble whose debut was named Best Eclectic Album by the Independent Music Awards Vox Pop. Bombay Rickey’s opera-cabaret on the life of Yma Sumac premiered in the 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival and was most recently presented in London at Tête-à-Tête Opera’s Cubitt Sessions. Bombay Rickey was selected for the 2017/18 season’s Mid-Atlantic Arts touring roster, and will release their sophomore album in the spring of 2018. Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.

Carlos Simon (Composer)
Carlos Simon is a native of Atlanta, Georgia whose music ranges from concert music for large and small ensembles to film scores with influences of jazz, gospel, and neo-romanticism.

Simon was named one of the recipients for the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence. The Sphinx Medal of Excellence is the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization, recognizing extraordinary classical Black and Latinx musicians. Simon’s latest album, My Ancestor’s Gift, was released on the Navona Records label in April 2018. Described as an “overall driving force” (Review Graveyard) and featured on Apple Music’s “Albums to Watch,” My Ancestor’s Gift incorporates spoken word and historic recordings to craft a multifaceted program of musical works that are inspired as much by the past as they are the present.

As a part of the Sundance Institute, Simon was named as a Sundance/Time Warner Composer Fellow in 2018. His string quartet, Elegy, honoring the lives of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner was recently performed for the Mason Bates Jukebox Series. With support from the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and US/Japan Foundation, Simon traveled with the Asia/America New Music Institute (AANMI) on a two-week tour of Japan in 2018 performing concerts in some of the most sacred temples and concert spaces including Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan.

His piece, Let America Be America Again (text by Langston Hughes) is scheduled to be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary chronicling the inaugural Gabriela Lena Frank Academy of Music. He has served as a member of the music faculty at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and now serves as Assistant Professor at Georgetown University.

Acting as music director and keyboardist for Grammy Award® winner Jennifer Holliday, Simon has performed with the Boston Pops Symphony, Jackson Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony. He has toured internationally with soul Grammy®-nominated artist, Angie Stone, and performed throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Simon earned his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. He has also received degrees from Georgia State University and Morehouse College. Additionally, he studied in Baden, Austria at the Hollywood Music Workshop with Conrad Pope and at New York University’s Film Scoring Summer Workshop.

Carlos Simon, Jr. is a member of many music organizations including the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, where he was honored as one of the “Composers to Watch” in 2015. He is also an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Music Sinfonia Fraternity and a member of the National Association of Negro Musicians, Society of Composers International, and Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society.