Experiments In Opera Announces Winter/Spring World Premieres In NYC/Brooklyn

EXPERIMENTS IN OPERA has announced its Winter/Spring 2025 Season. The four artist leaders of this fun & fearless composer collective will step out front to share their work.

New York's Experiments in Opera (EiO) is the curiously refreshing thirteen-year old darling of experimental opera. What makes their work so continuously rewarding? While commissioning and producing new operatic works, they constantly explore different mediums such as radio operas, podcast operas, made-for-television operas. They work with established artists from other disciplines, like Faith No More's Roddy Bottom and novelist A.M. Homes. They revive obscure works by great experimental masters such as Anthony Braxton, Robert Ashley, John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros. Ultimately, they are champions for a large community of composers, librettists, directors, and designers who are finding their voices as opera makers, many of whom have gone on to successful careers.

One of the most compelling rationales for EiO's success is their commitment to an artist-led perspective. From the outset, EiO has celebrated the possibilities present when artists work together to create and curate work, build community, and also share their own work. From February through April 2025, EiO showcases the work of its four artist leaders—composer/librettist Jason Cady, composers Kamala Sankaram and Aaron Siegel, and director Shannon Sindelar—in a series of operas that reinforce their staying power in the increasingly national new opera and experimental music scenes.

Works & Process will present a workshop performance at National Sawdust of the new opera Custom of the Coast featuring new music by EiO Artist Leader Kamala Sankaram and her collaborator, poet Paul Muldoon. The opera intertwines the life stories of Anne Bonny, an 18th century Irish pirate sentenced to death, and Savita Halapannavar, the Indian-born, Irish-based dentist who died in 2012 having been denied an abortion. The artists involved in the production will be in residence at Potash Hill in Vermont prior to this performance as part of a residency with Works & Process. The work is slated for premiere at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in August 2025.

The Tank presents SOLOperas this evening-length double feature of two world premieres that each feature a solo performer who inspired the composer. Both works are directed by EiO Artist Leader Shannon Sindelar.

In the first work, This is Not About Natalie, EiO Artist Leader Jason Cady has written the music and libretto about a singer/songwriter who was formerly one half of the underground duo, “Kris and Natalie.” When Natalie finds fame as a popstar, Kris starts a Youtube series where she debuts a new song each day, accompanying herself with an electric guitar and a ventriloquist dummy. Sarah Daniels, soprano and guitar, stars in this one-woman opera. She made her unforgettable debut with Experiments in Opera as the title character in Chunky in Heat (2019), after which her performance was described by James Jorden in The Observer as “so convincing that at times the piece felt more like reality television than an opera.” She has performed as Monica in The Medium with both Chelsea Opera and City Lyric Opera; as Constance in Dialogues of the Carmelites with Bronx Opera; and in many other roles with Fresh Squeezed Opera, dell' Arte Opera, Rainy Park Opera Company, and others. Sarah has a B.M. in Classical Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music and was a performance fellow in Longy's Divergent Studio.

The second work, The INcomplete Cosmicomics, is an opera by composer/librettist Anna Heflin for vocalizing cellist/actor and electronics in which author Italo Calvino's mystical entity Qfwfq continues his journey. After being stuck in a void for thousands of years with only a cello and a looper, the incongruous and multifaceted Qfwfq comes to life. Inspired by Calvino's The Complete Cosmicomics, Heflin's work is an original creation in which Qfwfq takes the reins of his own narrative. Equipped with a sharp sense of humor and sensuality, Qfwfq ruminates, charms and hypnotizes in his quest to break the loops of life.

The multi-talented cellist/actor Aaron Wolff brings this role to life. Described by the Chicago Tribune as “a musician of quicksilver brilliance,” Wolff gave his Carnegie Hall debut in Weill Recital Hall as the winner of the 2023 Leo B. Ruiz Memorial recital. He currently plays with numerous groups including New York Classical Players, Contemporaneous, Metropolis Ensemble, Argento New Music Project and Princeton Symphony. Aaron's acting credits include the lead role (Danny Gopnik) in the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man. He has an MM from Juilliard, where he was a Kovner Fellow under Joel Krosnick. 

Mabou Mines presents the world premiere of the new opera Rainbird, based on a novel by the celebrated New Zealand author Janet Frame. EiO Artist Leader Aaron Siegel and the Obie award-winning creator/director/librettist Mallory Catlett have been developing this work for seven years through residencies at The Collapsable Hole, The Baryshnikov Center, and the Skirball Center.

Rainbird tells the story of a middle-aged family man in New Zealand named Godfrey Rainbird who gets hit by a car and is pronounced dead. After the funeral arrangements have been made he wakes up in the morgue. What ensues is the emotional struggle of the Rainbird family, not in accepting Godfrey's death, but, rather, his resurrection.

Rainbird features an all-star cast of singers: Gelsey Bell (Natasha & Pierre, Mourning, Ghost Quartet), Katie Geissinger (Meredith Monk Ensemble), Chris DiMeglio (Anthony Braxton Trillium R), Shurmi Dhar, as well as instrumentalists Tariq Al-Sabir, Andie Tanning, and Jess Tsang.