0304: Singing a Call To Action, Is This America?
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Release Date: 02/24/2021
Harmony in Process: The Young Voices of the Santa Fe Opera with Amy "Process" Owens
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
What does an award-winning, multi-disciplinary artist, dynamic educator, and former Sweet Potato do for an encore? She brings that boundless energy and collaborative spirit to her new Santa Fe Opera role, fueled by a deep passion for opera and music education. Co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia roll out a virtual red carpet welcome for Amy Owens, Director of the . Get to know this exuberant, optimistic talent and learn more about the program under her stewardship. Andrea, Anna, and Amy also explore the profound community impact of two beloved SFO programs: , a storytelling...
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Making Learning Sticky: Creative Compassion for Kids & Educators Through Opera with Charles Gamble
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
We're taking an Opera For All Voices-adjacent excursion to the realm of wiggly kiddos, innovative teachers, and fresh vocabulary words, highlighting the power of playful arts integration. Join Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia with special guest Charles Gamble, Santa Fe Opera's Director Of School Programs, as they introduce two of Santa Fe Opera's most dynamic community engagement programs: , a multi-session residency within the Santa Fe Public Schools that incorporates creative arts to make learning delightfully sticky; and , professional development...
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The Key Change Time Machine: Reflecting the Times, Speaking to the Human Condition
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
It’s all systems go for season five of Key Change! But before we commence with the anniversary celebrations, co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia dust off the time machine for a whirlwind tour of seasons past. Think of this episode as part process evaluation––an appraisal of Opera For All Voices (OFAV), the Santa Fe Opera initiative committed to co-commissioning and co-producing new, diverse operatic works––and part indispensable playlist for repeat audiences and newcomers alike, covering the essential artistic and emotional moments that have made Key Change an...
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Season 5: Stretching The Boundaries Of What Opera Can Be
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
It's season 5! This season, we're inviting you, our favorite listeners, on a journey through time and space -- traveling back in time to the origins of Key Change and Opera For All Voices and forward into the future of boundless possibilities. This spring, Andrea Fellows Feinberg and Anna Garcia take you through through the community engagement portal to hear from the voices transforming the future of opera. And in the fall, they'll offer a backstage pass to latest Opera For All Voices commissions as we continue to shift the conversation about what opera is and what it can be. New...
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Connections Across Time and Space: Opera in the Cosmos
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Seven years ago, Santa Fe Opera started a conversation that would reverberate throughout American Opera, shaping this celebrated art form into something more reflective of the world in which it's created. Today, Opera For All Voices (OFAV) commissions have surpassed even our wildest storytelling expectations. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia tuck into the time machine for a season-ending trip around the OFAV universe, revisiting the initiative's greatest hits and offering fans a glimpse at what's to come––with Ruth Nott, consultant, Opera for All Voices;...
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Competing Interests: How Do You Workshop a New Opera?
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Roadtrip! After many long months of necessary virtual collaboration, the creative team behind The Pigeon Keeper, a Santa Fe Opera Opera For All Voices (OFAV) commission, finally got to spread their wings for an emotional workshop in San Francisco. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia discover what it was like to have everyone (well, almost everyone) in the same room for the very first time––featuring composer David Hanlon, librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, stage director Mary Birnbaum, music director Kelly Kuo, dramaturg Cori Ellison, Ruth Nott, consultant for...
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Hometown to the World Debuts on Broadway
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
If a chorus of 12 teens can provide compelling commentary on immigration enforcement from the stage of a venerable performing arts center in Santa Fe, how might ten times that number of voices impact the debate? From a Broadway venue that has welcomed some of the twentieth century’s most influential social justice visionaries? Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows-Fineberg and Anna Garcia pilot the time machine east to find out, setting a course for the 2022 premiere of at New York’s storied . Adding their insights to this aural postcard are Hometown’s composer Laura Kaminsky...
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Telling Hard Truths
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
What do you know about the life and legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer? Chances are, not much. That's about to change. Co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia dust off the Key Change time machine for a trip back through time and place to the real-life inspiration for This Little Light of Mine (TLLoM), the modern operatic masterpiece commissioned by Santa Fe Opera's Opera For All Voices initiative. Good thing this ride is roomy because joining them are two women who can claim a direct connection to Mrs. Hamer: Jacqueline "Cookie" Hamer Flakes, Mrs. Hamer's last surviving daughter, and...
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A Day in the Life Before a World Premiere
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
It’s October 28, 2022. As a brisk, still night settles over Santa Fe, things are heating up inside The Lensic Performing Arts Center. Longtime opera patrons mingle alongside never opera goers. Soon, the curtain will rise on This Little Light of Mine (TLLoM), a modern operatic masterpiece composed by Chandler Carter with libretto by Diana Solomon-Glover. The one-act production is an unflinching yet uplifting dramatization of the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, a Black woman born on the very lowest rung of the American caste system. A Black woman who nonetheless rose to speak at the 1964...
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Spark of Imagination: Generations of the Pueblo Opera Program with Sonja & Seth Martinez
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
If you’re unfamiliar with Santa Fe Opera’s (POP), take a quick journey back in time for of this conversation. Go ahead; we’ll wait. In it, you’ll meet Renee Roybal and Claudene A. Martinez, both members of Pueblo of San Ildefonso. The pair recall the early days of POP and the formation of the (POCC). Now that you’re sufficiently caught up, join Andrea Fellows Fineberg as her time machine co-pilot Kyle Gray, SFO’s Manager of Community Relations & Government Affairs, wraps up the conversation (for now.) Renee and Claudene return to share recollections of their early...
info_outlineHow do artists lend their talents in support of social change when they’re literally and figuratively stifled by a global pandemic? They do as voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer did in 1964: they find a way to make their voices heard.
Andrea Fellows Fineberg takes listeners on a short trip with maximum impact. Travel back to the autumn of 2020, to the final weeks of a contentious presidential campaign, to the deck of a historic oil tanker docked in New York Harbor, to the timely world premiere of Is This America? a one-of-a-kind opera event that addressed this country’s history of voter suppression while at the same time celebrating the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer and those who stood with her.
A three-scene workshop of This Little Light Of Mine, a new one-act opera by composer Chandler Carter and librettist Diana Solomon-Glover, Is This America? portrays pivotal moments in the life of Ms. Hamer dovetailed with scenes related to the Black Lives Matter protests that took place last summer. The piece is a catalyst for advancing these crucial conversations. It is the antithesis of the division that voter disenfranchisement seeks to further.
Is This America? swiftly became the imperfectly perfect OFAV storytelling vehicle with which to reinforce artistic and democratic ideals. The Mary A. Whalen - that previously mentioned 613-ton oil tanker - with its contemplative views of the Statue Of Liberty and Freedom Tower proved the imperfectly perfect outdoor stage.
This episode features conversations with the interpretive artists whose Herculean efforts took Is This America? from stoop-front inspiration to online rehearsals to a pandemic-approved performance space. Beth Greenberg, the stage director associated with both works, shares creative insights. Carolina Salguero, founder and director of PortSide NewYork, the community partner and venue provider, offers commentary on the production’s unique locale. Music director Jeri Lynne Johnson provides social context. And the emotional recollections of singers Nicole Joy Mitchell, Briana Elyse Hunter, and Heather Hill speak to an artist’s role in these tumultuous but hopeful times.
VIEW THE FULL WORKSHOP:
Is This America?
ALSO MENTIONED IN EPISODE:
PortSide NewYork - nonprofit organization helmed by Carolina Salguero, home of the Mary A. Whalen, our performance venue for Is This America?
Winston’s Smoke BBQ in Centennial, CO - Heather Hill’s family’s restaurant
RELATED EPISODES:
Season 2, episode 7: Mother of a Movement. - introduction to the commission of This Little Light of Mine with composer Chandler Carter and librettist Diana Solomon-Glover
Season 3, Bonus Episode: Is This America? - interview with voting and civil rights activist, LaToya Ratlieff, Fannie Lou Hamer’s grand-niece; and Diana Solomon-Glover
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Key Change is a production of The Santa Fe Opera in collaboration with Opera for All Voices.
Hosted by Andrea Fellows Fineberg
Featuring:
Beth Greenberg - Stage Director
Carolina Salguero - Founder & Director, PortSide NewYork (community partner, venue provider)
Jeri Lynne Johnson - Music Director
Nicole Joy Mitchell - Fannie Lou Hamer
Briana Elyse Hunter - Tanya, and other characters
Heather Hill - June Johnson/SNCC Worker
Produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios
Audio Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Theme music by Rene Orth with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe Becktell, cello.
Cover art by David Tousley
This episode contains excerpts from the Is This America? workshop. Other artists include: Michelle Cann, Pianist; Carol Szwei, Jacqueline Gregg, Jacob Terrell, Roosevelt Credit.
Special thanks to PortSide NewYork and Carolina Salguero.
Is This America? was sponsored by Lynn J. Loacker.
This podcast is made possible due to the generous funding from the Melville Hankins Family Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and an OPERA America Innovation Grant, supported by the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
To learn more about Opera for all voices, visit us at SantaFeOpera.org