The American Modern Opera Company Receives $750,000 Grant From The Mellon Foundation

The American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), led by Artistic Director Zack Winokur, has received a $750,000 grant from the celebrated Andrew W. Mellon Foundation "to support visionary artists in collaborative processes that re-envision a long-enduring art form in an artist-centric and contemporary manner." This grant will catalyze AMOC's crucial next three years as they embark on building their transformative work.

Founded in 2017 by Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, the mission of AMOC is to build and share a body of collaborative work. Cited as "blindingly impressive" by The New York Times and "revitalizing what American music theater can mean with several of our most revolutionary young talents" by The Los Angeles Times, the ensemble comprises seventeen of the most exciting creators working at the intersection of tradition and experimentation today.

Winokur, Artistic Director of AMOC, states, "We are so deeply honored to receive this transformative grant from the Mellon Foundation. This is a huge step for AMOC as we enter our fifth year of making new, discipline-colliding work, allowing us to deepen our process, expand our web of collaborators, and better support our artists as we continue to move toward a vision of opera in the expanded field."

Current and past projects include The No One's Rose, a devised music-theater-dance piece featuring new music by Matthew Aucoin, directed by Zack Winokur with choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith; EASTMAN, a multi-dimensional performance piece contending with the life and work of Julius Eastman; Winokur's production of Hans Werner Henze's El Cimarrón, which has been performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Repertory Theater; a new arrangement of John Adams's El Niño, premiered at The Met Cloisters as part of Julia Bullock's season-long residency at the Met Museum; Davóne Tines's and Winokur's Were You There, a meditation on black lives lost in recent years to police violence; and Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt's dance/music works With Careand A Study on Effort, which have been produced at San Francisco's ODC Theater, Toronto's Luminato Festival, and elsewhere. Conor Hanick's performance of CAGE, Zack Winokur's production of John Cage's music for prepared piano, was cited as the best recital of the year by The New York Times in 2018 and The Boston Globe in 2019. Additionally, AMOC will serve as the Ojai Music Festival's 2022 Music Director, only the second ensemble, and first explicitly interdisciplinary company, to hold the position in the Festival's 75-year history.

In addition to Aucoin (composer/conductor) and Winokur (director), the AMOC ensemble includes core members Jonny Allen (percussion), Paul Appleby (tenor), Doug Balliett (double bass/composer), Julia Bullock (soprano), Jay Campbell (cello), Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor), Miranda Cuckson (violin/viola), Julia Eichten (dancer/choreographer), Emi Ferguson (flute), Keir GoGwilt (violin/scholar), Conor Hanick (piano), Coleman Itzkoff (cello), Or Schraiber (dancer/choreographer), Bobbi Jene Smith (dancer/choreographer), and Davóne Tines (bass-baritone). AMOC administrative staff includes Jennifer Chen (managing director), Cath Brittan (producer), and Mary McGowan (company manager).

To post a comment, you must register and login.