A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING THE GROWTH OF ARTISTS,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
In Flanders Fields
This Veterans Day, Tuesday, November 11, (previously Armistice Day,) join us in a music-theatre program in remembrance of ancestors and others lost to commemorate what was known as “the war to end all wars.”
Alliance member artists John Boulanger, Alan Naylor, and Cara Schaefer will transport audience members back over a hundred years, bringing to life a very different era of the nation’s history through the lens of one American family caught up in the war. Portraying noted essayist, biographer, and playwright John Jay Chapman, his wife, Elizabeth Astor Chapman, and son Victor, they reminisce about Victor’s service in the French Foreign Legion and as a WWI aviator.
The program features Victor’s letters home, interspersed with poetry and songs written during the “Great War.” Selections include the iconic “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, and poems by other noted war poets including Wilfred Owen, Alan Seeger, and Siegfried Sassoon. You’ll hear American popular songs by George M. Cohan and others, settings of John McCrae’s famous title poem by Charles Ives and John Phillip Sousa, and a group of settings of A.E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad” poems by British composer George Butterworth, a British composer who died in the war.
Victor joined the Foreign Legion in September 1914. After a year in the trenches, he joined the “Lafayette Escadrille,” the Legion’s American Aviation Corps, and was the first American aviator to perish in the conflict, all before the United States entered the war in 1917.
John Boulanger has curated the program after many years of research into the Chapmans legacy and led a showcase workshop of the work in 2017, which we presented at the Woodrow Wilson House to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into the conflict.
John and Cara have been featured in several original productions of New Music-Theatre. Helen Hayes award-winner Alan Naylor will serve as pianist in addition to portraying Victor Chapman.
The evening is a joint presentation with the Arts Club of Washington, and will take place in the historic Monroe House, which served as the Presidential residence after the White House was damaged during the War of 1812.
The Arts Club will provide a small bites buffet and beverages, included in the price of the ticket. The salon program starts at 7:00 pm.
Period Dress encouraged.
Tickets available HERE.
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The George Fulginiti Series: Cabaret, Cocktails, & Conversation
Thanks to all who came to our first Cabaret for this season to enjoy Josh Cleveland in his curated Cabaret - "One True Sentence'"- on October 7 at the Arts Club of Washington. With his collaborator Alyssa Payne, the performance embodied the spirit of our Cabaret Series to the letter, innovatively and energetically expanding the definition of classic blues and jazz, bringing modern sensibility and context to golden-age favorites, and speaking to today’s DC experience with incisive musical storytelling.
Here is an excerpt from his performance - his song "Constitution Blues." Enjoy!
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We continue our second season at the Arts Club of Washington
on Tuesday, December 2
with Awa Sal Secka
in her original program "Bi-Coastal Acoustic"
Awa Sal Secka (Actor/Writer) is a first generation Gambian-American multi-award winning artist working all over the country. Awa has a large DMV following who was recently featured in PLAY ON! and won the Helen Hayes award for Outstanding Supporting Performer in a Musical in the role of Sarah in Ragtime, both at Signature Theatre.
A New York native, she moved to the DMV in 2005 and has lived here since. Awa has forged a place for herself in the theatrical world and is intent upon re-imagining what kind of art people of color can be a part of, and adding to the canon of stories that people of color were always meant to tell.
Awa is our Featured Artist this month. Read down to the end of the newsletter.
These are the other artists in our season:
February 3 -- Javier Arrey -- “Music without Borders"
April 7 – Oren Levine & Aaron Myers “A Jazzy Something”
June 2 -- Alan Naylor -- “Songs We Need Now”
Hope you will join us for these special events.
What can you expect coming to our cabaret evenings? Sometimes familiar tunes, to be sure, but we specialize in original cabaret compositions, sometimes crossover genres, and we encourage artists to bend and push boundaries of the cabaret form and always speak to our current times, in the space and the place where we are. We come together for an intimate experience with artists who have something to say and engage in lively conversation with the artists following every performance.
The Arts Club of Washington venue is intimate, perfect for an optimal cabaret experience. Also thrown into the price of a ticket, the Arts Club will provide a small bites buffet and a signature cocktail created for this performance. Following the show you will meet the artist and enjoy other fine company. For each performance, the bar opens at 6:30 pm, the show starts at 7:00 pm.
Hope you will join us for these special events. We are also offering the Cabaret Series on a subscription basis for all five performances for $275
Tickets for individual performances are $65. For tickets, go HERE.
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Live & About 2025 Fall Season
We thank you for joining us in past seasons for our Live & About series. We have completed two Outings in our 2025 Fall Season:
· September - at Signature Theatre for PLAY ON! & October - at the Arts Club of Washington for our Cabaret Series with Josh Cleveland
We have two more Outings this season:
- November – at Theater Alliance, a new venue for us to see Furlough’s Paradise
- December – at GALA Hispanic Theatre for THE OTHER SIDE STORY
If you are interested in joining us for the rest of the Fall season, email us at info@newmusictheatre.org
Check out our full Fall program with performance dates HERE.
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2026 Composer-Librettist Studio
We are now planning the fourth annual Washington DC Composer-Librettist Studio for June 2026. The sessions will be conducted from June 13 - 28 and hosted by the Music Department of the University of the District of Columbia.
If you are interested in applying for our 2026 CL Studio (or you know someone who might be interested,)
please fill out this brief INTEREST FORM HERE.
The full On-line application forms for professional Composers, Librettists, and Singers-Actors will be available December 1, 2025.
More information on our webpage HERE.
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Featured Artist Awa Sal Secka
We are excited to announce that our Featured Artist for our next cabaret is the phenomenal singer-actress Awa Sal Seka, who will curate and headline in her own program, “Bi-Coastal Acoustic” in our George Fulginiti Series: Cabaret, Cocktails, & Conversation at the Arts Club of Washington on Tuesday, December 2.
Awa is devising her special cabaret to feature acoustic/folk music from both her mother’s homeland, The Gambia, and her own home in the US. Come, follow her journey with acoustic/folk music as she traces themes of the struggle with assimilation in either country, the tug of similarities and differences in the music of both cultures, and how, through music, she found a way into a grounded identity straddling both “homes.”
Hers is quite a story. Born and raised in New York City, Awa Sal Secka is a first generation Gambian-American who lives in the DC area and works all over the country. Awa is a multi-faceted, award-winning artist, whose outstanding local performance include Sarah in Ragtime, for which she won a Helen Hayes, and most recently, Lady Liv in Play On!, both at Signature Theatre. She has also performed off-Broadway (in Goddesses and After Midnight,) on tour, and in multiple regional theaters. Wherever she travels, she continues to forge a place for herself in the artistic space.
Along with performing, Awa is a writer, intent upon re-imagining what kind of art people of color can be a part of and adding to the canon of stories that people of color were always meant to tell.
You can bet the evening will be cohesive, comfortable and connected – yet full of delicious and cool surprises. Whatever Awa does, she is authentic and a very special artist.
As a company devoted to helping new voices develop cross-cultural stories through music-theatre that need to be told and heard, Alliance for New Music-Theatre is excited to begin a collaboration with such a talented creative world spirit. We look forward to more to come.
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Artists and Partners on View
Two of our alumnae from our 2025 DC Composer-Librettist Studio - Mia Athey and Elisheva Pront will be performing on Saturday, October 18 at TellTale Opera Theatre in "Voices of Contemporary Resistance - Shadow & Light." Come hear a chamber vocal concert featuring ten new works selected in TellTale’s inaugural call for scores that present a spectrum of ways to look at resistance.
The concert venue is Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 811 Cathedral St, Baltimore, MD 21201. Doors open at 7:00pm, Concert starts at 7:30pm.
Tickets available on the TellTale Opera Theatre webpage HERE.
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Company member Roz White is currently on the national tour of Hell's Kitchen which opened in Cleveland on October 10. Per the review, "(Roz) White brings grace and conviction to a stirring “Perfect Way to Die.” Full review HERE. The two-year tour will be in DC next year.