👩🏻🚀 Spacewalk Opera Libretto Reading Is a Go
Hello everyone! Thanks for subscribing to receive updates on Hai-Ting Chinn and my upcoming opera Spacewalk about the first all-women spacewalk.
As promised, I will post updates here, so please mark your calendars for Saturday, October 21, at 7 p.m. ET.1 Hai-Ting and I will present a libretto reading of our upcoming opera Spacewalk and preview some musical excerpts from the show at the National Opera Center’s Marc A. Scorca Hall. The event will be live-streamed if you can’t make it in person.
My idea of possibly writing and producing an opera about the first all-woman spacewalk began as a project while participating in the BMP: Producer Academy during the pandemic. What a beautiful, inspiring story, I thought. Strangely, we were living in isolation in solidarity with the astronauts on the International Space Station. Or maybe they were living in solidarity with us.
I didn’t think I would be writing this opera anytime soon; this is one of those fun projects I would have on the back burner because very few people see me as an opera composer and would not be commissioning an operatic work from me shortly. However, I knew I had to make space for it, and maybe applying for some grants would not be a bad idea.
So, huge thanks to Opera America for awarding me (and Hai-Ting Chinn) a 2023 Opera Grant for Women Composers: Discovery Grant supported by The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. We needed funding for a libretto reading and a preview of a couple of arias from the project, and we got it. And I am thrilled that this opera might be happening.
In other news…
I may have deleted all my videos and content while switching my regular YouTube channel to a branding one. 🤦🏻♀️ I am not proud of this, mainly because I lost all of my comments and a performance of an Annea Lockwood Piano Burning. Sigh. That being said, could you please do me a favor and re-subscribe (or subscribe if you haven’t already)? The good news is I have brand new score videos online. They look so beautiful, thanks to Ashley Killam! (Seriously, she is magical.)
I will teach music composition again at Interlochen Arts Camp this summer from June 23 to August 6. Will I have performances? Possibly. Did I buy new navy blue dresses so I wouldn’t look like a dork? Yes, yes, I did.
I have reserved that date and time and am waiting for confirmation.