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
Opera Boot Camp: The 2025 Composer-Librettist Studio
Thanks to all our Composers, Librettists, and Singer -Actors for their full participation in our third annual CL Studio in DC hosted by the UDC Music Program.
We appreciate so much the support of Judith Korey, Professor of Music & Music Program Coordinator and Willie “Stu” Gardner, Music Equipment Technician these last three years.
Music Director Sonja Thompson is our Featured Artist this month. See article below about this gifted artist and collaborator.
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And thanks especially to Nathalie Anderson, one of our Librettists for providing these comments based on her experience at the CL Studio this past June.
What happens in opera between librettist and composer – between words and music – is clearly collaborative, as the two artists weave these elements together to create a powerful emotional story. The Composer-Librettist Studio – an intensive summer workshop for professionals across the spectrum of opera, musicals, and alternative music-theater – concentrates on this partnership, mentoring participants through a series of challenging creative exercises designed to extend their understanding of the interweaving of text and score. But, by foregrounding collaboration, the CL Studio does more: it keeps writer and composer aware of their interdependence, and aware too of their relationship with and responsibility to the singers who give voice to their compositions.
I think of this enterprise as Opera Boot Camp: it’s exacting, and exhausting, and exhilarating. Fifteen participants – five Librettists, five Composers, and five Singers/Actors – work in rotating teams to create a total of twenty-five brief assignments in sixteen days. Under the auspices of the Alliance for New Music-Theatre, workshop leaders Susan Galbraith and Sonja Thompson emphasize process over outcome, encouraging communication and consideration within each working team. Singers participate in several consultations and help to guide Librettist and Composer in exploring how best to make harmonic use of each particular voice. Librettists and Composers also observe rehearsals, as singers wrestle with complicated rhythms, vault between vocal extremes, or strain to hold fast to pitch if a score goes bi-tonal. Understanding more fully the demands they’re placing on the performers, the creative teams may reconsider and re-envision the assignments – or they may move beyond traditional expectations to invite singers to think out of the box and even to attempt to cackle and crackle and hum.
The exercises Susan and Sonja devised reminded participants of fundamentals: emphasizing operative words through scansion; marking shifts in mood and dramatic beats in a plot, and following traditional structural patterns to create a memorable melody. The leaders also encouraged the teams to think beyond convention. As a librettist, I especially enjoyed a morning spent listening as my composing partner noodled around on the piano, breaking chords apart and reassembling them in new configurations. This “piano bench” exercise reversed the expected working order, where words precede music, and invited the teams to work from contrasting moods in envisioning fresh formats. In another intriguing exercise, librettist, composer, and singer shared photographs representing personal takes on social issues, and each team developed a scenario synthesizing these diverse views. In the session’s culminating exercise, singers “commissioned” new songs from their teams.
Whether anthem or ballad, whether narrative of self-empowerment or lyric of baffled love, whether contemplative or resolute or snarky, the created pieces were among the most satisfying and the most accomplished of our time together – and I believe we could not have achieved that effectiveness earlier in the seminar. I think we needed to grapple with open-ended assignments to get a sense for the demands of the genre; and we needed to get to know each other – through assignments and through daily interactions – in order to trust each other’s strengths; and we needed to hear these many musical efforts – completely finished or not, fully successful or not – to hone our sense for what’s possible and what engages an audience. What a fine crucible for eliciting that power!
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The Washington National Opera provided us with a clip from the opera Blue that we presented during our Composer-Librettist Studio. The meeting between the father and son is an excellent example of dramatic structure in a work of music-theatre. Our participants provided their comments here on the relevance to our work in the CL Studio. Listen to comments about the clip from "Blue" HERE.
We are now planning our next annual Composer-Librettist Studio for June 2026. Stay tuned for details.
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The George Fulginiti Series: Cabaret, Cocktails, & Conversation
We are pleased to announce our 2025-2026 Cabaret Season in partnership with the Arts Club of Washington, DC’s oldest continuing cultural club and not-for-profit organization. Our series explores what makes for an optimal cabaret experience and gives outstanding local artists opportunities to devise and deliver their own unique take on Cabaret.
We are kicking off our season at the Arts Club on Tuesday, October 7 with Josh Cleveland,
Composer in our 2023 Composer-Librettist Studio in his curated work One True Sentence.
About the Cabaret Josh has created for this event, he writes; "We live in a moment in which many people's sense of a shared reality is declining. We not only disagree; we disagree about the underlying facts of our world and our experience. It's all too tempting to try to hurl facts at those who would bury themselves in their conspiracy theories or, failing this, to retreat to our own echo chambers. Instead, why not take a page out of the novelists' playbook and counter misinformation with storytelling: with stories that are grounded in our own realities that ring true at a human, emotional level? Why not find, as Hemingway put it, "at least one true sentence?" Join me for an evening of original songs that tell versions of my own story as a young songwriter and educator, as well as songs drawn from musical theatre works I've written, including adaptations of The Great Gatsby and Despicable Me. I can't promise we'll heal our nation's fractious discourse in one night of musical storytelling. But maybe we can share a signature cocktail or two, open our ears, tell our own stories, and find a few true sentences along the way."
Followed by the first Tuesdays of every other month:
Melisa Bonetti on December 2 - Javier Arrey on February 3 - Oren Levine & Aaron Myers on May 5 - Berliner Cabaret on June 2
Hope you will join us for these special events. Stay tuned for options to subscribe to the whole series.
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Our Artists and Partners on View
Roz White continues her tribute to Roberta Flack
Monday July 14 @ 7:00 pm at the Green Room 42 in NYC
As a special tribute to Roberta Flack, whose passing in February was a great loss and whose voice as a singer, activist, teacher and humanitarian, will be much missed, our very own Roz White will reprise her own "Roberta's First Take."
Roz first performed this Cabaret at the Arts Club in December as part of our Cabaret Series. DC native and Howard University Alumna, Roz White takes on the mantle of breathing life into this first glimpse of the magic that has made Roberta Flack a staple of American popular music for over sixty years.
Tickets available HERE.
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Featured Artist Sonja Thompson
Sonja Thompson is a Minneapolis-based musician, but we like to think D.C. with Alliance for New Music-Theatre is her second home. For the third summer in a row, she has co-led the DC Composer-Librettist Studio. There are not enough superlatives to describe this woman – her artistry, her deep knowledge of vocal repertoire, her articulation of collaborative principles and skills, her passion for language and meter, her compassion for the vulnerable work of artists, and her openness to learn from others.
In addition to solo piano lessons and recitals as a kid, she accompanied choirs, various music contests and musical productions at church and school. She earned her undergraduate degree in Theory/Composition from the University of Minnesota followed by a graduate degree in Accompanying from The Juilliard School. While at the UofMN, she was fortunate to meet and work with stage director Wesley Balk, Artistic Director of the Minnesota Opera, co-founder of the Merola Program of the San Francisco Opera, and Theatre professor at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Balk developed innovative pedagogical frameworks and training opportunities for artists working across the spectrum of Music-Theater. Along with Ben Krywosz, he created the Singer-Actor Institute and the original Composer Librettist Studio. Ben has continued developing and leading the nationally-renowned Composer Librettist Studio in major cultural hubs since the mid-1980s.
Sonja has spent decades as a college prof, coach, performer and Music Director. An active proponent of new music, she has supported the development of new works with a variety of colleagues, venues and organizations in the Midwest and beyond.
We are honored to work beside this inspiring partner who is such a champion of new music-theater.
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As a small not-for-profit 501(c)3 public charity organization, Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s mission is to:
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Nurture the creation, development and production of new works of music-theatre
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Foster the growth of professional and aspiring artists and their collaborations across cultures and musical languages;
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Engage community by bringing audiences and other partners into the creative process to promote a deeper understanding and critical appreciation of the transformative power of music-theatre.
We need your support to continue to fulfill our mission. There are many opportunities to provide support at various levels by supporting an artist, a production, or general support.
The Donate page on our website has information about ways to contribute. Donate | New Music-Theatre (newmusictheatre.org)