Joanie Brittingham, librettist
Joanie's works we've performed:
Serial Killers and the City (Night of the Living Opera, 2024) |
Joanie Brittingham is a writer and soprano living in New York City. She is also the Associate Editor for Classical Singer Magazine.
She is the author of Practicing for Singers, and has contributed to many classical music textbooks. Her writing has been described as “breathless comedy” and having “real wit” (New York Classical Review). She is the librettist for the opera Serial Killers and the City, which premiered with Experiments in Opera, and will be a part of New Wave Opera's Night of the Living Opera. Visit her on Instagram and TikTok at @joaniebrittingham. |
Monica Chew, composer
Monica's works we've performed:
COVID Bake-Off (Summer Splash, 2024) |
Monica Chew (she/her) is an Oakland composer and pianist who celebrates presenting rarely performed music and new works from around the world.
A “gifted player with an affinity for deeply sensitive expression” (Whole Note), she has composed since 2017 and couldn’t be happier about it. Her work has been featured as part of the Gabriela Lena Frank’s Creative Academy for Music, Verdant Vibes, Hot Air Music Festival, Community Women’s Orchestra, and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Her writing has been reviewed as “monumental” and “stunning” by San Francisco Classical Voice. Prior to 2015, she worked nearly a decade as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google. She lives in Oakland with her husband, an 1899 Steinway B, a clavichord, and a disused violin. |
Basil Considine, librettist
Basil's works we've performed:
Meow and Forever (Summer Splash, 2024) |
Basil Considine is an award-winning playwright, composer, and opera director. A passionate developer of new works for the stage, he has curated more than two dozen world premieres and authored more than a dozen plays, musicals, and operas.
Named one of Musical America Magazine’s Top Movers & Shapers for 2018, he is a queer-identified, multi-racial artist of Chinese and Caucasian descent; his musical and stage works have been performed on three continents, and broadcast on national television. His play “The Abortion Bomb” has been exhibited in multiple university theatre and literature programs, and his opera “The Frat Party” was a Semi-Finalist for The American Prize in Composition (Opera / Theater / Film / Dance Division) in 2017. Basil is the artistic director of the Minneapolis-based opera company Really Spicy Opera. He is an alum of Nautilus Music Theater’s Composer-Librettist Studio and was the 2021-2022 U.S. Fulbright Faculty Scholar to Madagascar. 2023 Winterthur Artist-in-Residence. |
Dianne Davies, composer
Dianne's works we've performed:
Sleep Saga (Summer Splash, 2024) |
DIANNE DAVIES is a pianist, composer, arranger, and pedagogue whose musical roots began in childhood growing up in a musical family. Early on, she was playing tunes by ear. Dianne started piano lessons at age eight and began serving as a church pianist by age ten. Her Bachelor of Arts degree is in piano performance from Lewis and Clark College with certification for K-12 public school instruction.
Her compositions are centered on the natural world of creation or her own life experiences. Her favorite instruments to write for are piano, piano duet, violin, solo voice and choir. Dianne is a member of Cascadia Composers, Oregon’s chapter of the National Association of Composers USA (NACUSA), and Christian Fellowship of Art Music Composers (CFAMC). As an artist/educator, Dianne is deeply committed to the creation and performance of new music. For her upcoming projects, check out Dianne and her music at www.musiqPOWER.com. |
Sandra Flores-Strand, librettist
Sandra's works we've performed:
COVID Bake-Off (Summer Splash, 2024) |
Librettist Sandra Flores-Strand is based in the US. She writes on a variety of topics but feels compelled to tell stories with a focus on marginalized communities, particularly Latin American and immigrant representation on stage.
Sandra has an extensive background in classical singing and theatrical production and her works have been featured by Opera America, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Arizona Women’s Collaborative, Really Spicy Opera, and more. |
Jodi Goble, composer
Jodi's works we've performed:
Meow and Forever (Summer Splash, 2024) |
Composer Jodi Goble writes text-based, character-driven music fueled by her extensive background as a vocal coach and song-specialist collaborative pianist.
Her compositions have been performed across both the United States and internationally, and featured on National Public Radio. She won the Iowa Music Teachers Association Commission Competition in 2013 and is the 2024 NATS Art Song Composition Award winner for her soprano song cycle Sea Creatures. Her art songs are published in anthologies by New Music Shelf and North Star Music. |
Felix Jarrar, composer
Felix's works we've performed:
The Oval Portrait (Night of the Living Opera, 2024) |
Felix Jarrar is a composer/coach/pianist whose 262 works includes 232 art songs, 13 operas, 2 string quartets, and a symphony.
An in-demand collaborative artist, Jarrar has worked with The New School, Opera Naples, University of Memphis, Opera Ithaca, Penn Square Opera, Hogfish, OPERA San Antonio, Opera North, and Santa Fe Opera. Past commissions have been given/underwritten by New England Repertory Orchestra, University of Missouri Kansas City, Prismatic Arts Ensemble, Spark Duo, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He collaborates extensively with stage director/librettist Bea Goodwin. In 2022, he debuted The Jarrar and Brea Duo with soprano Maria Brea. Jarrar’s song “Sun of the Sleepless” was featured on the 2024 GRAMMY-nominated album 40@40 by Laura Strickling and Daniel Schlosberg. His operas focus on queer narratives and adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, among other subjects. |
Lisa Neher, Resident Composer
Lisa's works we've performed:
Sense of Self (Summer Splash & Music in the Manor, 2024) How Doth the Little Crocodile? (Summer Splash & Music in the Manor, 2024) Snapshots (Summer Splash & Music in the Manor, 2024) she conjures (Music in the Manor & Night of the Living Opera, 2024) |
Dr. Lisa Neher (she/her) is an award-winning composer and new music mezzo on a mission to transform audiences through sound, story, and vulnerability. A singer of “great stamina” with the power to “open up and shine” (New York Classical Review) using her “full and rich” and “especially alive” voice (Oregon Arts Watch), Neher’s performance credits include Third Angle New Music, Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Resonance Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, and Renegade Opera. She is President of New Wave Opera and a member of Portland Opera Chorus.
A “supremely talented,” “visionary composer,” (Willamette Week), “maestro of beautifully wacky noises” (Oregon Arts Watch) and author of “liquid, impressionist piano writing and fluent melding” of voices (New York Classical Review), Neher’s compositions are inspired by the climate crisis, the tender love of friends, and the mystery of ocean life. Her commissioners include NATS, Cincinnati Song Initiative, Third Angle New Music, and Opera Elect. She is Composer in Residence for the Beaverton Community Band. Learn more at www.lisanehermusic.com |
Kimberly R. Osberg, Resident Composer
Kim's works we've performed:
Mango Salad (Summer Splash & Music in the Manor, 2024) If You Cheese (Music in the Manor 2024) THUMP (Music in the Manor & Night of the Living Opera, 2024) |
Kimberly R. Osberg (b. 1992) is a Portland-based composer from Eau Claire, Wisconsin who specializes in interdisciplinary collaboration. Her projects have included dance, film, environmental sound installations, instrumental theatre, plays, opera, visual art, award ceremonies, and stage combat.
Her music has been described as “brilliant,” “highly-engaging,” “wonderfully suspenseful,” “intensely colorful,” and “wonderfully humorous and witty” and has received acclaim from academic, commercial, and public audiences alike. She is also a passionate educator, working closely with schools and individual composers and musicians across the country for over 12 years. Since moving to Portland, Oregon in 2020, Kimberly’s prolific output has exploded into a dynamic array of works—resulting in over 75 new musical works between 2020 and 2024. She continues to live in Portland, Oregon where she enjoys writing, hiking, watching movies with her partner Mauricio, and attempting to keep a few plants alive. |
Kendra Preston Leonard, librettist
Kendra's works we've performed:
Sense of Self (Summer Splash, 2024) |
Kendra Preston Leonard writes about music, movies, gorgons, werewolves, Shakespeare, feminism, nature, ghosts, disability, drama, race, paleontology, and much more.
As a librettist and lyricist, her collaborations with composers and performers tell stories about empowerment, resilience, and compassion. Recent premieres include the 2023 operas Neither Created Nor Destroyed with jessica Rudman, commissioned by ENA Ensemble; and Waters Rising with composer Tim Hinck, commissioned by Arts Capacity and created in partnership with the inmates of Walker State Prison in Georgia. Leonard is the award-winning author of two chapbooks of poetry, Making Mythology (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020) and Grab (Red Ogre Review, 2023); and a novella in verse, Protectress (Unsolicited Press, 2022). Trained as a musicologist, she has written numerous scholarly books in addition to poetry, plays, lyrics, and libretti. Visit her online at kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org. |