This work is everything dreamed and imagined, produced and performed with utmost care, consciousness and soul. “Primero Sueño” lights the way forward for all.

A deeply satisfying blend of musical styles that are alternatingly gentle, mystical and joyous.

Timeless and otherworldly and, somehow, boldly, a product of New York City.

Each shift in Prestini’s score was arresting.

The music was at every point dramatically compelling, without seeming cheap or manipulative.

[Paola's] use of the human voice as an interpreter of the ethereal is perfectly showcased in “Silent Light”.

A mourning hymn “There’s a city of light ’mid the stars,” set with jarringly dissonant intervals, was followed by a hypnotic choral echo of “White linens,” an aria sung by Esther’s mother, as the women washed and laid out the body. The resolution of the story seemed almost beside the point, and the clock—which Johan stopped when he first left the house after breakfast—was started again, implying that life goes on.

A richly ambiguous, provocative, and heady experience.

In a way, Silent Light could almost have been about National Sawdust: its dimensions, its versatility, its history of experimental work. It’s as if Prestini was paying tribute to the venue she has led for the past decade.

Prestini’s score moves seamlessly between environmental sound and music, combining some jazz and country influences with an otherwise highly contemporary musical language... a sexy, sinister number dominated by grooving drums and trombone was both surprising and memorable. Her chorus work is highly compelling… contemporary harmonies meet hymns in beautiful, surprising ways.

Throughout the 90-minute opera, Prestini utilizes the small orchestra with precision to support the libretto … the writing for the chorus is spectacular, borrowing the note-against-note harmonizing of the Mennonite hymn-singing tradition, but flavored with emotional tinges of dissonance...

Prestini has a thrilling knack for the aleatoric, and her vocal writing gives the singers a wide range of expression.

It is time to revisit everything you know about the opera, because it is a brave new world, and this new opera presentation of The Old Man and the Sea, is a game-changer.

In 2015, Prestini co-founded National Sawdust, one of the few New York cultural institutions led by women. An incubator for a wide variety of experimental music, the Brooklyn venue models what an equitable classical music environment actually sounds like.

Like a public square, each Prestini piece is a meeting place across aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural lines.