2020 Composer-in-Residence

FrancesPollock

Frances Pollock

Known for her “bold and bracing” (Baltimore Sun) opera writing, Frances Pollock’s music “pulls no punches and never flinches” (City Paper). Originally from North Carolina, Frances is inspired by a variety of artists including Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, Francis Poulenc, Joni Mitchell, Missy Elliot, Stephen Sondheim, Jonathan Dove, and Billy Joel.

Frances’ first opera, Stinney, was workshopped in Baltimore in 2015, where it won a Johns Hopkins Diversity Grant and a Best of Baltimore award. It was presented again in workshop in the 2019 PROTOTYPE festival in New York City and will have its world premiere in 2021 with Greenville Light Opera Works in Greenville, SC. Frances has since written operas for Washington National Opera (What Gets Kept, librettist Vanessa Moody) and Lyric Opera of Chicago/Seattle Opera (Earth to Kenzie, librettist Jessica Murphy Moo). This coming season, Frances is writing music that will be premiered by Opera Omaha, Bel Cantanti Opera, and Chautauqua Opera Company. In addition, she is currently developing a cross-disciplinary piece called Salt, with librettist (and wife and best friend) Emily Roller, which will be presented in workshop at the 2020 YOST conference at Yale University.  

Frances is a founding member of the new music non-profit, Prima Volta. She holds a Bachelors of Music in theory and composition from Furman University and a Masters of Music in vocal performance from Peabody Conservatory. She is currently completing her doctorate in composition at Yale University.

Learn more at FrancesPollock.com

About the Residency

Chautauqua Opera Company's Composer-in-Residence initiative was launched in 2016 as part of incoming General and Artistic Director Steven Osgood's first season. With the support of The American Opera Project (AOP), one alumni of AOP's groundbreaking Composers & the Voice Fellowship is invited to join the Chautauqua Opera Company for its full summer producing season. The Composer-in-Residence is a prominent public face for the company, speaking passionately about the company's season, and exploring the role of a composer in today's society. Members of the Chautauqua community build a personal bond with each Composer-in-Residence, through which they have a deeper and more nuanced experience with the works of that composer and with contemporary classical music.

From 2016 through 2019, AOP commissioned three pieces from each Composer-in-Residence. These new compositions, for solo voice with piano or orchestral accompaniment, very often set texts drawn from the works of authors, poets, lecturers and speakers at the Chautauqua Institution. Since their premieres at Chautauqua, several of these pieces have been featured on concert programs in New York City.

In 2020, the company will reimagine this residency, positioning the Composer-in-Residence as an ambassador, bringing compelling local stories to life through music. For the 2020 season, Frances Pollock and librettist Jerre Dye will create a new song cycle for Chautauqua Opera Company. From interviews held in early June with each of this season’s 20 Young Artists, Jerre Dye will create short poems, which will be set by Pollock. Each micro-piece will be for a cappella solo voice. The resulting song cycle will be a work which responds immediately to this unique moment in the world, and embraces the isolation virtually all singers in the opera field are experiencing today. Listen to the song cycle here.

"I have been most fortunate during my career to work alongside dozens of America's most promising composers and librettists," says Steven Osgood. "It is a privilege to bring this experience to Chautauqua Opera's artists and audience, and I have been thrilled to watch new music thrive at Chautauqua since 2016."

Past Composers-in-Residence

2019 Composer-in-Residence: Gilda Lyons

GILDA LYONS, composer, vocalist, and visual artist, combines elements of renaissance, neo-baroque, spectral, folk, agitprop Music Theater, and extended vocalism to create works of uncompromising emotional honesty and melodic beauty. The premiere of A New Kind of Fallout—Lyons’ mainstage opera inspired by environmentalist Rachel Carson, commissioned by Opera Theater of Pittsburgh—was described as “powerfully effective” (Pittsburgh Stage Magazine), “haunting” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) and “spot-on at re-creating the atmosphere of the early '60s” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review). Lyons serves as Co-Chair of the Composition Program at Wintergreen Summer Music Academy, VA, and as Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition at The Hartt School, CT. She is Artistic and Executive Director of The Phoenix Concerts, New York's "intrepid Upper West Side new-music series" (The New Yorker), and serves on the Board of Advisors of Composers Now and the Steven R. Gerber Trust. An active vocalist and fierce advocate of contemporary music, Lyons has commissioned, premiered, and workshopped new vocal works by dozens of composers. Her works and performances are available on the Clarion, GPR Records, Naxos, New Dynamic Records, and Roven Records labels. Lyons’ music is published by Schott, E.C. Schirmer, and Burning Sled. www.gildalyons.com

World premieres performed as part of Gilda Lyon's 2019 residency:

Leavings

Text by Martha Collins; Song for voice and piano

Afternoon of Song Recital - June 27, 2019

Performed by tenor Brian Jeffers and pianist Allison Voth

End-of-Summer Haibun

Text by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; Song for voice and piano

Afternoon of Song Recital - August 1, 2019

Performed by mezzo-soprano Timothi Williams and pianist Emily Jarrell Urbanek

When I'm Away From You I Feel Like the Second-Place Winner in a Bee-Wearing Contest

Text by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; Song for voice and orchestra

Opera Pops Concert - August 3, 2019

Performed by soprano Lauren Yokabaskas and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra

2018 Composer-in-Residence: George Lam

Composer George Tsz-Kwan Lam (b. 1981) grew up in both Hong Kong and Winthrop, Massachusetts, and studied music at Boston University, the Peabody Conservatory, and Duke University, where he received his PhD. George is interested in works that intersect music, theater, and the documentary process, and his current projects include the cello-percussion duo The Emigrants for New Morse Code (Lawrence, Kansas), based on collected oral history recordings with emigrant musicians from Queens, New York.

George Lam’s music has been performed by the University of Idaho Wind Ensemble (Moscow, ID), Gotham Chamber Opera (New York, NY), Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Rhymes With Opera (New York, NY), Christ Church United Methodist (New York, NY), Emerging Voices Project (New York, NY), Contemporary Musiking (Hong Kong), Volti (San Francisco, CA), American Opera Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Red Clay Saxophone Quartet (Greensboro, NC), AM/PM Saxophone Quartet, and the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.

Recent commissions include works for Oak Middle School (Shrewsbury, MA), Hong Kong Voices, the Romer String Quartet (Hong Kong), Asian Young Musicians Connection (Taipei, Taiwan), Black House Collective (Kansas City, USA), and Synergy Percussion (Sydney, Australia). George Lam is an Assistant Professor of Music at York College, The City University of New York, and is a co-artistic director of Rhymes With Opera, an NYC-based ensemble that commissions and produces new operas. For more information, please visit www.gtlam.com

World premieres performed as part of George Lam's 2018 residency:

Sisserieta Jones, Carnegie Hall, 1902

O Patria Mia

Text by Tyehimba Jess; Song for voice and piano

Afternoon of Song Recital - June 28, 2018

Performed by soprano Kayla White and pianist Emily Jarrell Urbanek

Underwater Acoustics

Text by Rajiv Mohabir; Song for voice and orchestra

Opera Highlights concert - July 14, 2018

Performed by mezzo-soprano Alexandra Rodrick and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra

Such Sweet Sorrow

Text by Allison Joseph; Song for voice and piano

Afternoon of Song Recital - August 2, 2018

Performed by bass Brett Bode and pianist Miriam Charney

2017 Composer-in-Residence: Gity Razaz

Gity Razaz

Hailed by the New York Times as “ravishing and engulfing,” Gity Razaz’s music ranges from concert solo pieces to large symphonic works. With an ear for intense melodies and expanding harmonic language, Gity’s compositions are often dramatically charged; as described by John Corigliano: “…her Middle-Eastern roots have merged with her Western sensibilities to produce music that is both original and startling. She is on her way to becoming a major force in contemporary music.”

Ms. Razaz’s music has been commissioned and performed by former cellist of the Kronos Quartet Jeffrey Zeigler, National Sawdust, Metropolis Ensemble, Canada’s National Ballet School, Albany Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian string orchestra 1B1, New York Virtuoso Singers, Cellist Inbal Segev, La Jolla Symphony & Chorus, American Composers Orchestra, Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, VisionIntoArt, New York Choreographic Institute, Amsterdam Cello Biennale among others. Her compositions have earned national and international awards, such as the 2013 Jerome Foundation award, the Libby Larsen Prize in the 28th International Search for New Music Competition, Milwaukee Orchestra Composer Institute, Juilliard Composers’ Orchestra Competition, three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer awards, and Juilliard’s Palmer Dixon Award for the outstanding composition of the year in 2010 and 2012, to name a few.

As composer-in-residence at National Sawdust’s inaugural season, Ms. Razaz presented a series of concerts of her music featuring her 35-minute dramatic song cycle, “Valley of Not-Knowing” as well as a new work for string orchestra and percussion for 1B1 String Ensemble, commissioned by National Sawdust. Upcoming projects include a 60-minute ballet score for Moscow Theatre Ballet, which is scheduled for a world premiere in Moscow in June 2017, as well as a work for classical guitar duo commissioned by Duo Noir(e).

Born in Tehran, Ms. Razaz started her musical studies in piano at a young age and began composing intuitively at age nine. Ms. Razaz attended The Juilliard School on full scholarship, and received her Bachelor and Master of Music in Composition under the tutelage of Samuel Adler, Robert Beaser and John Corigliano. GityRazaz.com

World premieres performed as part of Gity Razaz's 2017 residency:

Lucea, Jamaica

Text by Shara McCallum; Song for voice and piano

Afternoon of Song Recital - June 30, 2017

Performed by soprano Tookah Sapper and pianist Emily Jarrell Urbanek

Flight of Faith

Text by Marion Strobel; Song for voice and orchestra

Opera Highlights Concert - July 15, 2017

Performed by tenor Arnold Livingston Geis and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Steven Osgood

The Broom, the Shovel, the Poker and the Tongs

Text by Edward Lear; Song for voice and piano

Afternoon of Song Recital - August 3, 2017

Performed by soprano Rebekah Howell and pianist Miriam Charney

2016 Composer-in-Residence: Jeremy Gill

Jeremy Gillʼs music has been lauded as “vividly colored” (The New York Times), “exhilarating” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), “intriguing” (The Washington Post), and “work of considerable intensity” (American Record Guide). His recent works include an oboe concerto for Dallas Symphony principal oboe Erin Hannigan (commissioned by the donors of the Dallas Symphony), a clarinet concerto for Christopher Grymes and the Harrisburg Symphony (commissioned by the Lois Lehrman Grass Foundation), a piano concerto/choral work for Rubinstein Prize-winning pianist Ching-Yun Hu and the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia (commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club), and Capriccio, an hour-long string quartet for the Grammy-winning Parker Quartet (commissioned by Chamber Music America and released in 2015 by innova Recordings). During the 2013–14 season he was a Fellow of the American Opera Projectsʼ Composers & the Voice program and a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and was recently selected to join the American Composers Forumʼs Artistic Delegation to the 2015 Havana Contemporary Music Festival in Havana, Cuba. His music has been featured in Chamber Music Magazine and The Strad, as well as on Minnesota Public Radio and WGBH Boston. jeremytgill.com