Kick-off party for Composers & the Voice and Opera Genesis fellows held at South Oxford Space.
On September 9th, the American Opera Projects family joined At AOP's Brooklyn home at South Oxford Space to celebrate the beginning of the latest cycle of Composers & the Voice. The new composers, librettists for the 2015-2017 C & V season were in attendance along with various alumni from past seasons.
Charles Jarden, the General Director of AOP opened the evening and Steven Osgood, the Artistic Director of Composers & The Voice, acknowledged new and veteran C&V participants. Composers & the Voice offers two-year fellowships for composers and librettists which combines education with project development and performances.
One of the biggest highlights of the evening was the announcement of the Genesis Fellowship Program and The Hermitage Artist Retreat. Composer Mikael Karlsson and librettist and visual designer Elle Kunnos de Voss will be the first two artists to attend. The two artists will be developing their opera The Echo Drift while in Florida. The Echo Drift is being developed by AOP to be produced in collaboration with HERE and Beth Morrison Projects.
The night was a booming success, a great introduction for the new composers, a celebration of past compositions and composers, and a great start to a new chapter in American Opera Projects' long standing tradition in fostering and encouraging new music.
Charles Jarden believes “this new partnership with the Hermitage allows us to further support some of our most successful C&V fellows once they have completed the program. The time they will be granted to develop their work at The Hermitage will enable these creative teams to prepare their works for full-scale production. In the current climate, there is much energy surrounding the development of new opera, but not always enough time for the creative process to unfold; the Genesis Fellowships directly address this, and we are all eager to see the work that results.”
More information about The Opera Genesis Fellowship program in collaboration with The Hermitage Artist Retreat can be found here. Additional photos from the evening can be found here.