Spring Speed Dating Tonight! productions

This spring has seen a nice new group of Speed Dating Tonight! productions, including productions at Columbus State, Eastern Michigan, and Opera Roanoke. A production up at SUNY-Potsdam (pictured) had over thirty five singers. Several of these productions included premieres of new dates.

One of those pieces "The Love of My Life" is a gender non-binary song that begins: 

The love of my life will be the love of my life

I don't care what it has been its legs.

You can hear a rehearsal of it with the original singer, Kaylee Tasber. 

The Appraisal...

Grant Wood's painting from 1931 can be seen at the Dubuque Museum of Art.  In my upcoming opera, EIGHT WOODS AND A VAN, the painting is brought to life and sung by Jessica Pray (Farmer's Wife) and Jessica Grigg (Banker's Wife) The photo is by Taylor Fiser. Although the women in the picture have a cool, appraising air, in their song, I imagine them as having more in common in their struggles during the Great Depression. Costumes are perfectly done by Kathryn Bowery Huang.

Interview on IPR

Thanks to Jacqueline Halbloom at IPR for doing a great job making me seem lucid for this radio interview I did about my upcoming opera, EIGHT WOODS AND A VAN, for the Cedar Rapids Opera. Here's a link to the interview.

EIGHT WOODS AND A VAN is about the artist Grant Wood. I've used eight of his works of art as a point of departure along with one by Jan van Eyck.

If I had the chance to make the opera longer, I would have liked to include Grant Wood's WOMAN WITH PLANTS.