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A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING ARTISTS IN THEIR DEVELOPMENT,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
OUR Mothly NewsLetter - Febuary 2023
What’s Ahead for Alliance for New Music-Theatre in 2023?
As we continue to develop major productions of new works in 2023, we work to amplify our commitment to foster professional development and collaborative opportunities of artists across cultures and to engage audiences in the creative process across all our programs to promote a deeper understanding of the transformative power of music-theatre in its many forms.
Our first Outing for the Winter/Spring Live & About program is coming up soon. Hope you can join us.
We are also embarking on a series of monthly community workshops and master classes that can advance our projects and bring the greater community into the excitement of process and the art of collaboration.
Live & About Winter / Spring Outings
We have put together another eclectic program for the Winter/Spring 2023 Season with Outings to five different productions in the DC metro area from February to June - with an optional bonus add-on in July. As in past seasons we scheduled both a midweek evening show and a weekend matinee for each Outing.
Full details and monthly Winter/Spring Schedule is on our website HERE.
“Live & About” is an outreach and community engagement series where we take groups monthly to different theatre companies in the DC metro area and to productions across the spectrum of music-theatre.
Participants will enjoy the experience of attending performances as a group, expanding their appetites and critical appreciation for new forms, and supporting a variety of large and smaller music-theatre companies.
After each show, they will have the opportunity to deepen their experience by engaging with other group members in an informal gathering and discussion to understand the deeper intentions of the show’s creators.
We have arranged the Winter/Spring 2023 Season on a subscription basis with our group discounts. If interested to subscribe to the series, please contact us directly at info@newmusictheatre.org to arrange payment and determine which performance you plan to attend for each monthly Outing.
I hope you will join us for this new season. Our Live & About 2023 Winter/Spring Schedule of Outings is on our website HERE
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Master Class in Afghan Music’s Vocal Techniques and Open “Rehearsal”
On Tuesday, April 25, Alliance is hosting Afghan singer, musician and educator Humayun Khan to lead a master class in Afghan vocal techniques at George Mason University. In addition to teaching about the modes and complex scales of Afghanistan’s rich musical heritage, he will introduce a few important melodies and repertoire as well as incorporating one or two songs from our original music-theatre work in development, Women of Troy; Voices from Afghanistan. This will be followed by an informal sharing for George Mason students and faculty, friends, family, and invited guests.
This workshop is specifically designed as a cross-cultural experience for Afghan women and local female artists who wish to support and learn more about the traditional music of Afghanistan.
We invite Afghan women living in the DMV, who want to reconnect with their cultural roots to join us as we support keeping the music alive in this free master class.
For more details to participate, go to our Afghan Project webpage HERE. Or contact us at info@newmusictheatre.org
At the end of the class, we will open up the work to a small audience of Afghan and other friends and join Humayun in a demo of what we have learned plus share a handful of short videos Alliance has been commissioning by Afghan filmmaker Airokhsh Faiz Qasary, interviewing female artists speaking about practicing other art forms, including poetry, calligraphy, painting, and dance.
Celebrate with us the resiliency and creative artistry of Afghan women as our company members stretch our individual professional capacities and understandings.
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Workshop for On the Road to Arivaca
From May 1-5, we will conduct a weeklong intensive workshop of our Act II of On the Road to Arivaca in DC at the Scottish Rite Center and will be sponsored by the consortium of embassies of Central American and Caribbean embassies.
On the Road to Arivaca is an original opera by composer Rosino Serrano, based in Mexico City, and librettist Susan Galbraith. The opera will put the audience “on the road” in difficult situations that surround the many issues of immigration, national boundaries, and cross-cultural-and-linguistic engagement. How does one act when one has to decide in a split second on the fate of a fellow human being?
The workshop will feature Javier Arrey as The Samaritan, Israel Lozano as The Sojourner, Darcy Monsalve as Maria, and Melisa Bonetti as Consuelo, as well as Alliance’s youth chorus, coro de la comunidad.
Join us on Friday afternoon, May 5 at the end of the workshop for an open rehearsal to experience the voices and Serrano’s beautiful music. More details are on our On the Road to Arivaca webpage HERE.
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Composer-Librettist Studio
From June 3 to 18, we will host our first full Composer-Librettist Studio since our inaugural studio in 1994, which seeded our company.
A major national training program, these “studios” have been hosted regularly since 1984 in NYC, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, and Chicago among other music centers. It debuted in DC in 1994 under the joint auspices of the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and American University. From that initial group of 15 trainees, Alliance for New Music-Theatre was founded. The company has been invited to accept the mantle for carrying the program forward in this region.
The Composer-Librettist Studio is designed to provide an opportunity for five writers and five composers to work with five professional performers, exploring the possibilities and basic elements of music-theater. The studio focuses on the process of collaboration through a series of brief exploratory assignments for writers and composers. The exercises are then sight-read by the performers in brief working sessions. The participants rotate partners, and the process is repeated four more times. Within the two-week period, all composers work with all writers and all performers. Toward the end of the studio, an informal reading of all the compositions is held.
At the end of the intensive workshop, we will present an informal sharing of those pieces followed by a conversation about the process.
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What are our company Artists up to now?
We caught company member Matty Griffiths in a preview performance of Endgame at Washington Stage Guild. If Samuel Beckett’s 20th-century masterpiece Waiting for Godot was a ballet, as directed by Himself in the mid-1970’s on Germany’s Schiller theatre, then Endgame, as intended by the playwright, is a cantata. The four actors in the current production were seriously beginning to play the music under Alan Wade’s direction, especially David Bryan Jackson and Rosemary Regan as the progenitors stuffed in trashcans, Nag and Nell. As for Matty, his brilliant physicalizing (think emperor penguin with a broken back) made Clov both a funny clown and at times touchingly tender. The play, seen revisited at the dawn of what some are calling the age of climate catastrophe and the sixth extinction, seems more relevant and gut-punching now than when it was first written. Well worth seeing. Information and tickets HERE.
Our colleague, Company Composer Dawn Avery had a new commission by Sound Impact Quartet, who premiered the work as part of Dumbarton Concerts on Friday night, January 27th. The piece, inspired by Dawn’s Mohawk traditions, is titled The Coming of Faces, blended soothing melodic lines in the strings punctuated with indigenous rattles and wood clackers. It received a standing ovation in the warm acoustical hall of Dumbarton Church. She recently reunited with our team to help further develop our Afghan Women’s Project. Find out more about all the work Dawn is doing HERE.