Composer Paola Prestini announces a singular 2024-25 season, featuring the world premieres of five major opera and music-theater works across the United States.
September 26-29, Prestini's chamber opera Silent Light will receive its world premiere for the opening the 10th Anniversary Season of National Sawdust, the groundbreaking new music venue Prestini Co-Founded in 2015. One of the few New York cultural institutions led by women, National Sawdust has developed a powerful model for equitable, inclusive classical music programming, and over the past decade it has become an international destination for new music under Prestini's artistic vision, with an artistic board that includes Renée Fleming and Philip Glass, thousands of premieres across genres, a world class mentoring program focused on gender equity, interdisciplinary ventures with artists as esteemed as Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and partnerships with institutions as varied as the Grammy Museum to the Onassis Foundation to the Metropolitan Opera. Marking the first performance of a full-length work by Prestini at National Sawdust, Silent Light is a retelling of the famed film by Mexican film director Carlos Reygadas, which delves into the complex moral dilemmas faced by members of a Mennonite community as they grapple with forbidden love and the limitations of restrictive society. The performances will present a completely reconfigured and immersive set at National Sawdust, and will feature Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch and Metropolitan Opera star Brittany Renee, NOVUS and Trinity Choir conducted by Christopher Rountree, a libretto by Royce Vavrek with direction and set design by Thaddeus Strassberger. The work was developed at BANFF, and co-commissioned by the Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, VisionIntoArt, and National Sawdust. After the National Sawdust world premiere, Silent Light will then also have a second production at the Eastman School of Music, October 31 to November 3, with performances conducted by Timothy Long.
January 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and VisionIntoArt will co-present the world premiere of Primero Sueño, a site-specific processional opera taking place at The Met Cloisters as part of the MetLiveArts performance season, exploring the life of proto-feminist Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Prestini's expansive, multi-modal opera Sensorium Ex will have its world premiere presented by the Common Senses Festival May 22-25, 2025, in Omaha, Nebraska, in a co-production by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. With a libretto by poet Brenda Shaughnessy that tells a dystopian tale centered on a scientist/mother and her non-verbal child, Sensorium Ex operates at the intersection of AI, disability, and the arts, exploring fundamental questions of what it means to have voice, and the nature of voice beyond language. The opera is part of a larger project that seeks to fundamentally change how the performing arts engage with the disabled community by creating more equitable systems, and it will also use Artificial Intelligence as a way of expanding the possibilities for voice and expression, incorporating technology developed in collaboration with the The NYU Ability Project and ARUP that allows people with disordered, impaired, or limited speech to communicate, with an emphasis on expressivity and personalization. The opera stars mezzo soprano Hailey McAvoy and Kader Wiedmann, performers who all have the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy, Laurie Rubin and Ju Hyeon Han, who are both blind, baritone Lucia Lucas, and baritone Joshua Jeremiah with direction by Jerron Herman and Jay Scheib. Sensorium Ex is commissioned by VisionIntoArt in association with Common Senses Festival, Jill and Bill Steinberg, and Beth Morrison Projects, developed and produced by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. The project has also received more than $1 million in support from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Also in the spring of 2025, Prestini will have the world premiere of her new immersive choral theater work Port(al), commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus (BYC) in collaboration with Radiolab founder and host Jad Abumrad, as well as multidisciplinary collaborator and director Jessica Grindstaff of Phantom Limb Company and BYC Founder and Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker. The evening-length piece explores the changing history of New York through the microcosm of the many vibrant and varied people who lived, worked, and pushed boundaries at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Part promenade, part installation, part immersive song cycle, the performance will take place in the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Agger Fish Building, taking audiences through pivotal moments in the history of our city and its people.
In August 2025, Pike Opera will give the world premiere of The Fourth Crow Prestini's new outdoor chamber opera featuring Julian Crouch and Sandbox Percussion, in Milford, PA. This eco-opera paints the birth of forestry in the U.S. through the eyes of the American forester and politician Gifford Pinchot-first chief of the US Forest Service- and is in collaboration with the Pinchot family.
In addition to the five major world premieres, Prestini will also be in residence at Bowling Green State University, as part of the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts Series, where her work will be performed October 17-19, 2024. Featured pieces include her acclaimed cello installation Houses of Zodiac with cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, her piano concerto commissioned by Louisville Orchestra, Let Me See the Sun, and her string quartets performed by the Parker Quartet.
Prestini will also release the original cast recording of her acclaimed opera theater work The Old Man and The Sea on the VisionIntoArt Records label on August 30, 2024 (just ahead of the Sept 1 anniversary of the novel's publishing date). The work, created by Prestini, director Karmina Šilec and librettist Royce Vavrek, follows the last days of famed author Ernest Hemingway, as his final feverish reflections upon his life merge with scenes from his masterwork The Old Man and The Sea. The recording features baritone Armando Contreras as Hemingway/Santagio, soprano Measha Brueggergosman as La Mar, countertenor Rodolfo Girón as Manolin, and soprano Yvette Keong in the role of La Virgen del Cobre. The piece features onstage cello by Jeffrey Zeigler, and the Grammy-winning Phoenix Chorale.
Composer Paola Prestini announces a singular 2024-25 season, featuring the world premieres of five major opera and music-theater works across the United States.
September 26-29, Prestini's chamber opera Silent Light will receive its world premiere for the opening the 10th Anniversary Season of National Sawdust, the groundbreaking new music venue Prestini Co-Founded in 2015. One of the few New York cultural institutions led by women, National Sawdust has developed a powerful model for equitable, inclusive classical music programming, and over the past decade it has become an international destination for new music under Prestini's artistic vision, with an artistic board that includes Renée Fleming and Philip Glass, thousands of premieres across genres, a world class mentoring program focused on gender equity, interdisciplinary ventures with artists as esteemed as Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and partnerships with institutions as varied as the Grammy Museum to the Onassis Foundation to the Metropolitan Opera. Marking the first performance of a full-length work by Prestini at National Sawdust, Silent Light is a retelling of the famed film by Mexican film director Carlos Reygadas, which delves into the complex moral dilemmas faced by members of a Mennonite community as they grapple with forbidden love and the limitations of restrictive society. The performances will present a completely reconfigured and immersive set at National Sawdust, and will feature Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch and Metropolitan Opera star Brittany Renee, NOVUS and Trinity Choir conducted by Christopher Rountree, a libretto by Royce Vavrek with direction and set design by Thaddeus Strassberger. The work was developed at BANFF, and co-commissioned by the Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, VisionIntoArt, and National Sawdust. After the National Sawdust world premiere, Silent Light will then also have a second production at the Eastman School of Music, October 31 to November 3, with performances conducted by Timothy Long.
January 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and VisionIntoArt will co-present the world premiere of Primero Sueño, a site-specific processional opera taking place at The Met Cloisters as part of the MetLiveArts performance season, exploring the life of proto-feminist Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Prestini's expansive, multi-modal opera Sensorium Ex will have its world premiere presented by the Common Senses Festival May 22-25, 2025, in Omaha, Nebraska, in a co-production by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. With a libretto by poet Brenda Shaughnessy that tells a dystopian tale centered on a scientist/mother and her non-verbal child, Sensorium Ex operates at the intersection of AI, disability, and the arts, exploring fundamental questions of what it means to have voice, and the nature of voice beyond language. The opera is part of a larger project that seeks to fundamentally change how the performing arts engage with the disabled community by creating more equitable systems, and it will also use Artificial Intelligence as a way of expanding the possibilities for voice and expression, incorporating technology developed in collaboration with the The NYU Ability Project and ARUP that allows people with disordered, impaired, or limited speech to communicate, with an emphasis on expressivity and personalization. The opera stars mezzo soprano Hailey McAvoy and Kader Wiedmann, performers who all have the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy, Laurie Rubin and Ju Hyeon Han, who are both blind, baritone Lucia Lucas, and baritone Joshua Jeremiah with direction by Jerron Herman and Jay Scheib. Sensorium Ex is commissioned by VisionIntoArt in association with Common Senses Festival, Jill and Bill Steinberg, and Beth Morrison Projects, developed and produced by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. The project has also received more than $1 million in support from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Also in the spring of 2025, Prestini will have the world premiere of her new immersive choral theater work Port(al), commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus (BYC) in collaboration with Radiolab founder and host Jad Abumrad, as well as multidisciplinary collaborator and director Jessica Grindstaff of Phantom Limb Company and BYC Founder and Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker. The evening-length piece explores the changing history of New York through the microcosm of the many vibrant and varied people who lived, worked, and pushed boundaries at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Part promenade, part installation, part immersive song cycle, the performance will take place in the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Agger Fish Building, taking audiences through pivotal moments in the history of our city and its people.
In August 2025, Pike Opera will give the world premiere of The Fourth Crow Prestini's new outdoor chamber opera featuring Julian Crouch and Sandbox Percussion, in Milford, PA. This eco-opera paints the birth of forestry in the U.S. through the eyes of the American forester and politician Gifford Pinchot-first chief of the US Forest Service- and is in collaboration with the Pinchot family.
In addition to the five major world premieres, Prestini will also be in residence at Bowling Green State University, as part of the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts Series, where her work will be performed October 17-19, 2024. Featured pieces include her acclaimed cello installation Houses of Zodiac with cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, her piano concerto commissioned by Louisville Orchestra, Let Me See the Sun, and her string quartets performed by the Parker Quartet.
Prestini will also release the original cast recording of her acclaimed opera theater work The Old Man and The Sea on the VisionIntoArt Records label on August 30, 2024 (just ahead of the Sept 1 anniversary of the novel's publishing date). The work, created by Prestini, director Karmina Šilec and librettist Royce Vavrek, follows the last days of famed author Ernest Hemingway, as his final feverish reflections upon his life merge with scenes from his masterwork The Old Man and The Sea. The recording features baritone Armando Contreras as Hemingway/Santagio, soprano Measha Brueggergosman as La Mar, countertenor Rodolfo Girón as Manolin, and soprano Yvette Keong in the role of La Virgen del Cobre. The piece features onstage cello by Jeffrey Zeigler, and the Grammy-winning Phoenix Chorale.
Composer Paola Prestini announces a singular 2024-25 season, featuring the world premieres of five major opera and music-theater works across the United States.
September 26-29, Prestini's chamber opera Silent Light will receive its world premiere for the opening the 10th Anniversary Season of National Sawdust, the groundbreaking new music venue Prestini Co-Founded in 2015. One of the few New York cultural institutions led by women, National Sawdust has developed a powerful model for equitable, inclusive classical music programming, and over the past decade it has become an international destination for new music under Prestini's artistic vision, with an artistic board that includes Renée Fleming and Philip Glass, thousands of premieres across genres, a world class mentoring program focused on gender equity, interdisciplinary ventures with artists as esteemed as Julie Mehretu and Nick Cave, and partnerships with institutions as varied as the Grammy Museum to the Onassis Foundation to the Metropolitan Opera. Marking the first performance of a full-length work by Prestini at National Sawdust, Silent Light is a retelling of the famed film by Mexican film director Carlos Reygadas, which delves into the complex moral dilemmas faced by members of a Mennonite community as they grapple with forbidden love and the limitations of restrictive society. The performances will present a completely reconfigured and immersive set at National Sawdust, and will feature Canadian baritone Daniel Okulitch and Metropolitan Opera star Brittany Renee, NOVUS and Trinity Choir conducted by Christopher Rountree, a libretto by Royce Vavrek with direction and set design by Thaddeus Strassberger. The work was developed at BANFF, and co-commissioned by the Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, VisionIntoArt, and National Sawdust. After the National Sawdust world premiere, Silent Light will then also have a second production at the Eastman School of Music, October 31 to November 3, with performances conducted by Timothy Long.
January 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and VisionIntoArt will co-present the world premiere of Primero Sueño, a site-specific processional opera taking place at The Met Cloisters as part of the MetLiveArts performance season, exploring the life of proto-feminist Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Prestini's expansive, multi-modal opera Sensorium Ex will have its world premiere presented by the Common Senses Festival May 22-25, 2025, in Omaha, Nebraska, in a co-production by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. With a libretto by poet Brenda Shaughnessy that tells a dystopian tale centered on a scientist/mother and her non-verbal child, Sensorium Ex operates at the intersection of AI, disability, and the arts, exploring fundamental questions of what it means to have voice, and the nature of voice beyond language. The opera is part of a larger project that seeks to fundamentally change how the performing arts engage with the disabled community by creating more equitable systems, and it will also use Artificial Intelligence as a way of expanding the possibilities for voice and expression, incorporating technology developed in collaboration with the The NYU Ability Project and ARUP that allows people with disordered, impaired, or limited speech to communicate, with an emphasis on expressivity and personalization. The opera stars mezzo soprano Hailey McAvoy and Kader Wiedmann, performers who all have the neurological condition Cerebral Palsy, Laurie Rubin and Ju Hyeon Han, who are both blind, baritone Lucia Lucas, and baritone Joshua Jeremiah with direction by Jerron Herman and Jay Scheib. Sensorium Ex is commissioned by VisionIntoArt in association with Common Senses Festival, Jill and Bill Steinberg, and Beth Morrison Projects, developed and produced by VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects. The project has also received more than $1 million in support from the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Also in the spring of 2025, Prestini will have the world premiere of her new immersive choral theater work Port(al), commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus (BYC) in collaboration with Radiolab founder and host Jad Abumrad, as well as multidisciplinary collaborator and director Jessica Grindstaff of Phantom Limb Company and BYC Founder and Artistic Director Dianne Berkun Menaker. The evening-length piece explores the changing history of New York through the microcosm of the many vibrant and varied people who lived, worked, and pushed boundaries at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Part promenade, part installation, part immersive song cycle, the performance will take place in the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Agger Fish Building, taking audiences through pivotal moments in the history of our city and its people.
In August 2025, Pike Opera will give the world premiere of The Fourth Crow Prestini's new outdoor chamber opera featuring Julian Crouch and Sandbox Percussion, in Milford, PA. This eco-opera paints the birth of forestry in the U.S. through the eyes of the American forester and politician Gifford Pinchot-first chief of the US Forest Service- and is in collaboration with the Pinchot family.
In addition to the five major world premieres, Prestini will also be in residence at Bowling Green State University, as part of the Dorothy E. and DuWayne H. Hansen Musical Arts Series, where her work will be performed October 17-19, 2024. Featured pieces include her acclaimed cello installation Houses of Zodiac with cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, her piano concerto commissioned by Louisville Orchestra, Let Me See the Sun, and her string quartets performed by the Parker Quartet.
Prestini will also release the original cast recording of her acclaimed opera theater work The Old Man and The Sea on the VisionIntoArt Records label on August 30, 2024 (just ahead of the Sept 1 anniversary of the novel's publishing date). The work, created by Prestini, director Karmina Šilec and librettist Royce Vavrek, follows the last days of famed author Ernest Hemingway, as his final feverish reflections upon his life merge with scenes from his masterwork The Old Man and The Sea. The recording features baritone Armando Contreras as Hemingway/Santagio, soprano Measha Brueggergosman as La Mar, countertenor Rodolfo Girón as Manolin, and soprano Yvette Keong in the role of La Virgen del Cobre. The piece features onstage cello by Jeffrey Zeigler, and the Grammy-winning Phoenix Chorale.
