Laura Kaminsky Named AOP Composer in Residence

American Opera Projects Inc. (AOP) announces the appointment of Laura Kaminsky as its composer-in-residence commencing September 1, 2014, three days before her opera "As One" premieres at BAM in an AOP production (performances September 4, 6, and 7). In this role, Kaminsky will bring broad expertise to AOP enabling the Brooklyn-based company to expand its mission of identifying, developing, and presenting new and innovative works of music theater by emerging and established artists and to engage audiences in an immersive, transformative theatrical experience.

Laura Kaminsky Recently celebrating its 25th anniversary season, AOP creates, develops and presents opera and music theater projects collaborating with the young, rising, and established artists in the field. General Director Charles Jarden and the board of directors invited Kaminsky to take on this position for a two-year cycle because she is an active and engaged composer who is also renowned as an innovative presenter and producer, and an arbiter of contemporary music trends with a broad and open-minded aesthetic. Jarden states, "Having first worked with Laura when we collaborated on an historic presentation of two of Lee Hoiby's operas (one a premiere) in 2008, I was eager to further develop our working relationship. When she expressed interest in composing As One, AOP commissioned it and during development, with the addition of Laura's co-creators Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, we quickly found we had a fantastic work on our hands. Our working relationship during As One has been vibrant and creative, and led, naturally, to AOP's desire to continue working with Laura. We are delighted that she has come on board to help us further our mission."

As Composer-in-Residence at AOP, Kaminsky will serve as both a public face for AOP as well as a strategic partner, collaborating with the staff and board to articulate and implement a series of events and activities that will allow AOP to better serve the field while making AOP a more robust organization at this critical time when traditionally structured opera companies are increasingly vulnerable and yet there is an efflorescence of new opera activity. She will work with the General Director to identify projects that will be considered for development, and will plan a series of artistic events that will be of interest both to professionals within the opera world as well as to the general opera-loving public. Having just composed her first opera As One, Kaminsky will bring fresh insights and expertise from her experience of conceiving, collaborating, composing, developing and producing a new opera to the programs she will develop for AOP.

Kaminsky notes, "the time I spent working with AOP to develop As One has been personally and professionally transformative to me in so many extraordinary ways, and it is my intention now to bring all that I have learned to this new position of composer-in-residence so that I can help AOP to better support other composers who also have the desire to make an opera, and to help AOP expand its reach so that more people both can understand the exhilarating collaborative creative process of opera, and can experience the best of what is being created today. I am thrilled to be named composer-in-residence at AOP and look forward, as soon as As One closes, to dedicate myself to the tasks at hand."

At the forefront of the contemporary opera movement for a quarter-century, AOP creates, develops and presents opera and music theatre projects collaborating with young, rising and established artists in the field. AOP has produced over 20 world premieres including Nkeiru Okoye's Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom, Lera Auerbach's The Blind, a co-production with Lincoln Center Festival 2013. Other notable premieres include Kimper/Persons' Patience & Sarah (1998), Stefan Weisman's Darkling (2006), Lee Hoiby's This is the Rill Speaking (2008), and Phil Kline's Out Cold (2012) at BAM. AOP-developed projects with premiere with collaborating companies: Gregory Spears's Paul's Case at Urban Arias (2013) and PROTOTYPE Festival (Jan 2014), Kamran Ince's Judgment of Midas at Milwaukee Opera Theatre (2013), Jack Perla's Love/Hate at ODC Theater with San Francisco Opera (2012), Stephen Schwartz's Séance on a Wet Afternoon at New York City Opera (2011), Tarik O'Regan's Heart of Darkness at London's Royal Opera House (2011), Jorge Martín's Before Night Falls at Fort Worth Opera (2010), Lee Hoiby's This Is the Rill Speaking at Opera Memphis (2013) and Purchase College (2008). Upcoming: As One at BAM and Composers & the Voice: Six Scenes, September 2014.

Laura Kaminsky is a composer with "an ear for the new and interesting" (New York Times) whose music is "full of fire as well as ice, written in an idiom that contrasts dissonance and violence with tonal beauty and meditative reflection." (American Record Guide)

As both composer and presenter/producer, Kaminsky has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Opera America, New York State Council on the Arts, Aaron Copland Fund, Chamber Music America, American Music Center, USArtists International, CEC ArtsLink International Partnerships, Likhachev Foundation, Kenan Institute for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission, North Carolina Arts Council, Meet the Composer, and others. She has received six ASCAP-Chamber Music America Awards for Adventurous Programming and the Polish Ministry of Culture National Heritage 2010 Chopin Award. Kaminsky serves on the national advisory council of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle and on the board of directors of the Hermitage Artist Retreat Center in Florida. She is a professor in the School of the Arts at Purchase College/SUNY.

AOP is very excited about Laura, both as a creative force and an administrator. We believe we are lucky to bring her on board at this critical juncture, in our 26th season, to help with both long range artistic aims and advancing institutional goals. Laura has a dedicated following in NYC. AOP has been fortunate to have been working along side her since 2008, and now she has been bitten by the opera bug. Be on the lookout for a schedule of Laura's special events.

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