The American Opera Project's Composers & The Voice Awarded Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant

Through the generous sponsorship of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The American Opera Project (AOP) has been awarded a $270,000 Grant to support the 2021-23 cycle of renowned training program, Composers & the Voice (C&V).

Created and led by C&V Artistic Director Steven Osgood, C&V is a two-year, tuition-free fellowship that provides experience writing for the voice and lyric theater stage. For the 2021-23 cycle, six composers and three librettists were selected to receive fellowships, including composers Gabrielle Herbst, J.E. Hernández, Raquel Acevedo Klein, Paul Pinto, Tidtaya Sinutoke and Ania Vu, and librettists Jeesun Choi, Isabella Dawis, and Troy Defour. Workshop sessions with professional opera singers, mentors, and instructors are being held at AOP's home base in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, as well as online, as necessitated by CDC guidelines.

Working collaboratively alongside the fellows is the Composers & the Voice Resident Ensemble of Singers, including light coloratura soprano Justine Aronson, lyric soprano Jasmine Muhammad, mezzo-soprano Max Potter, tenor Aaren Rivard, baritone Mario Diaz-Moresco and bass Kofi Hayford; and Music Directors, Mila Henry, Kelly Horsted, and Ron Robinson.

Since launching in 2002, C&V has fostered the development of 79 composers and librettists. Alumni works that continued through AOP's opera development program and went on to a world premiere include Companionship (Fort Worth Opera 2019, Rachel Peters), Love/Hate (ODC/San Francisco Opera 2012, Jack Perla), Paul's Case (UrbanArias 2013, Gregory Spears), The Scarlet Ibis (PROTOTYPE 2015, Stefan Weisman), Three Way (Nashville Opera and AOP 2017, Robert Paterson), The Summer King (Pittsburgh Opera 2017, Daniel Sonenberg), and Independence Eve (UrbanArias 2017, Sidney Marquez Boquiren), and The Echo Drift (PROTOTYPE 2018, Mikael Karlsson).

Composers & the Voice is also made possible in part by a Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information on current C&V projects, as well as more detailed information on the participants and alumni, visit https://www.aopopera.org/composers-voice.

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