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Spotlight on Proving Up
TODD F. EDWARDS is excited to make his Journey North debut. He is a member of United Scenic Artist 829 and holds an MFA in Theatrical Design and Production; designing over 200 productions nationally and abroad at such organizations as Ordway, Park Square, Frank Theatre, Commonweal Theatre Co., Lyric Arts, Cincinnati Shakespeare Co., (former) MN Jewish Theatre Company and others. In addition to his freelance work, Todd is an Assistant Professor of Theater Design at St. Olaf College. Click on the image above to learn more about Todd.
Click on the image above to learn more about Colleen Meier, our bold, determined Founder and Executive Director
Click on the image above to learn more about Brian Dowdy, our discerning, witty and nuanced Principal Conductor and Music Director, known for his distinct ability to craft “palpable ensemble energy” and “a sensitive environment” (Schmopera).
Click on the image above to learn more about Missy Mazzoli, Grammy winning composer of the new American, Engligh-language opera, Proving Up (our Fall 2022 production). n 2018 she made history when she became one of the two first women (along with composer Jeanine Tesori) to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. That year she was also nominated for a Grammy in the category of “Best Classical Composition” for her work Vespers for Violin, recorded by violinist Olivia De Prato.
Click on the image above to learn more about Karen Russell, Pulitzer Prize winning author of the short story Proving Up, on which our Fall 2022 production is based. She won the 2012 and the 2018 National Magazine Award for fiction, and her first novel, Swamplandia! (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and one of The New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2011.
Click on the image above to learn more about Amanda Carlson, our “gifted, intense, and committed” Stage Director.
Click on the image above to learn more about Jared Miller, our immensely skilled, focused Collaborative Pianist, possessing of the sharpest quiet wit you'll ever be delighted by.
Click on the image above to learn more about Royce Vavrek, Pulitzer Prize winning librettist of Missy Mazzoli’s opera, Proving Up (our Fall 2022 Production), who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio).
Proving Up Teaser Trailers
Spotlights on living Women & Nonbinary Composers
Kaija Saariaho is a prominent member of a group of Finnish composers and performers who are now, in mid-career, making a worldwide impact. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by combining live music and electronics. Although much of her catalogue comprises chamber works, from the mid-nineties she has turned increasingly to larger forces and broader structures, such as the operas L’Amour de Loin, Adriana Mater and Emilie. Click on the image above to visit her website.
Chrysanthe Tan (they/she) is an autistic, Cambodian-Greek-American composer, violinist, and singer-songwriter named by Arts Boston as 1 of 10 Contemporary LGBTQ Composers You Should Know in 2018. As a solo artist, she performs electroacoustic musical poetry and chamber folk-pop, and as a composer, their work indulges the intersection of music and spoken word. Click on the image above to visit their website.
American art song composer Juliana Hall specializes in creating vocal works: “glistening, poignant music” (Gramophone), “complex in conception and construction” (Planet Hugill, London) with “graceful, nuanced vocal lines” (Opera News).
Hall’s more than 60 song cycles, monodramas, and vocal chamber works have been described as “brilliant” (Washington Post), “beguiling” (The Times, London), and “the most genuinely moving music of the afternoon” (Boston Globe)—“masterful writing in every respect” (NATS Journal of Singing). Click on the image above to visit her website.
Nkeiru Okoye [in KEAR roo oh KOY yeh] is an internationally recognized composer of opera, symphonic, choral, chamber, solo piano and vocal works. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in music composition and is perhaps best known for her opera, Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed that Line to Freedom; the orchestral work, Voices Shouting Out, composed as an artistic response to September 11th; and her suite, African Sketches, which is performed by pianists around the globe. Click on the image above to visit her website