Taking Care of the Art with Chandler Johnson, Director of the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers
Key Change
Pop quiz: Name an opera training initiative that creates space for self-discovery, serious fun, and a bit of Broadway adoration. Spoiler alert: there’s only one answer. On this episode of Key Change, co-hosts Anna Garcia and Olga Perez Flora get to know Chandler Johnson, Director of Santa Fe Opera’s Apprentice Program for Singers, and uncover what early-career singers selected for this internationally acclaimed program can expect from their 13 weeks in the desert. “It’s a pressure cooker!” exclaims Chandler of the four-month-long apprenticeship, initially developed by John...
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TEASER: Unlocking Opera Success
Key Change
Audition trends, career pivots, and pragmatic advice for young opera talent... It's all coming up in our 2-part series of Key Change with Chandler Johnson, Director of the world renknowned Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers. *** Key Change is a production of , Department of Community Engagement & Education. Produced and edited by Hosted by Anna Garcia & Audio Engineering: Collin Ungerleider & Kabby Technical Director: Edwin R. Ruiz Production Support from Alex Riegler Show Notes by Lisa Widder Theme music by with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe...
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Safe Space for Creative Risks with Community Engagement and Education
Key Change
Bet you didn’t know that nurturing the next generation of opera performers, technicians, and enthusiasts begins in classrooms. Join Key Change co-hosts Anna Garcia and Olga Perez Flora on an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Santa Fe Opera Department of Community Engagement and Education, featuring guest appearances by Season 5 favorites Charles Gamble, Director of Community Engagement, and Marissa Aurora, Community Engagement Liaison, plus new friend Olivia Dorrell, Administrative Coordinator. “We’re all moved by the extraordinary pageantry, music, and movement of opera,”...
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TEASER: Community Engagement Pop Quiz [VIDEO]
Key Change
What is the minimum age you have to be to start training at the Santa Fe Opera? What are 3 ways you can volunteer at the Santa Fe Opera? What secret do we reveal on Season 6, Episode 2 about our new Director of Community Engagement, Charles Gamble? *** Key Change is a production of , Department of Community Engagement & Education. Produced and edited by Hosted by Anna Garcia & Audio Engineering: Collin Ungerleider & Kabby Technical Director: Edwin R. Ruiz Production Support from Alex Riegler Show Notes by Lisa Widder Theme music by with Corrie Stallings,...
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Six Carmens Later & Putting On Productions with Olga Perez Flora and Anna Garcia
Key Change
What do disco naps, pantsuits, and chili preferences have to do with life at the opera? If you’re new to the art form in general and Key Change specifically, welcome! And don’t worry, all will be revealed. To our returning fans, a hearty welcome back! We’re excited to share another season and a fresh focus with you. Back to that opening inquiry... “I was thinking it would be really great if we did a lightning round together where we got to know a little bit more about each other and about what's coming up this season,” explains Olga, making her official debut as Key Change co-host,...
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TEASER: Welcoming our new co-host! [VIDEO]
Key Change
Coming up on Season 6, Episode 1 of Key Change... *** Key Change is a production of , Department of Community Engagement & Education. Produced and edited by Hosted by Anna Garcia & Audio Engineering: Collin Ungerleider & Kabby Technical Director: Edwin R. Ruiz Production Support from Alex Riegler Show Notes by Lisa Widder Theme music by with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe Becktell, cello Cover art by Dylan Crouch This podcast is made possible due to the generous support of the Hankins Foundation, Principal Education Sponsor of the Santa Fe Opera. To learn...
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Season 6: Nurturing the Next Generation of Artists [VIDEO]
Key Change
What does it take to build a rewarding and sustainable career in opera? What happens when you realize you don’t really have the drive to BE an opera singer? How do you find the courage to take more creative risks in your own work and life? The answers to these questions and more on Key Change Season 6 from the Santa Fe Opera Department of Community Engagement and Education, with the returning co-host you know and love, Anna Garcia, and the new co-host you’re going to love, Olga Perez Flora! If you're new here, catch up on seasons 1-5 with this recommended playlist: Season 1 Episode 1:...
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Season 6: Nurturing the Next Generation of Artists
Key Change
What does it take to build a rewarding and sustainable career in opera? What happens when you realize you don’t really have the drive to BE an opera singer? How do you find the courage to take more creative risks in your own work and life? The answers to these questions and more on Key Change Season 6 from the Santa Fe Opera Department of Community Engagement and Education, with the returning co-host you know and love, Anna Garcia, and the new co-host you’re going to love, Olga Perez Flora! If you're new here, catch up on seasons 1-5 with this recommended playlist: Season 1 Episode 1:...
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An Opportunity to Encounter Excellence (and Big News!)
Key Change
We’ve arrived at the end, or the beginning, depending on how you mark time. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia close out this podcast season with an epic career coda and an equally impressive introduction. Join us as we say farewell (but not goodbye) to Andrea and welcome , DMA, Associate Professor of Voice, University of New Mexico (UNM), who will assume Key Change co-hosting duties next season. And what would our final episode of the year be without a trip in the trusty Key Change Time Machine? Cue the tears and cheers as we set a course for legacy-defining moments...
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What’s Opera to a Bunch of High School Students? Young Voices, “The New Crop”
Key Change
One of the greatest gifts you can offer a teen is confidence. The other? A process for refining that raw self-assurance into an impressive talent and invaluable life skill. But where to start? At the beginning, of course! Join Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia as they happily infiltrate Orientation Day for the , one of several prestigious youth-focused initiatives at Santa Fe Opera. Get to know this year’s cohort as they share their first-day impressions and program goals. Key Change favorites Amy Owens, director of the Young Voices program, and Charles...
info_outlineAt its heart, Hometown To The World is a simple story of hope set amongst the emotionally complicated aftermath of a 2008 Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Postville, IA––the largest ever in US history. It’s fitting, then, that host Andrea Fellows-Fineberg and her guest Chorus Master Carmen Flórez-Mansi close out this season of Key Change charting a buoyant, optimistic course towards the future.
In addition to her roles as founder and director of the Choral Arts Society at St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe, she’s also music director for the Cathedral Basilica where OFAV usually holds its summer concerts, pandemics not withstanding. Carmen is an artist in her own right, a musician, singer, mother, and community activist––identities that coalesce in her work with Hometown To The World.
As the production prepares for its world premiere at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in December 2021, Andrea and Carmen discuss the joys of working with the talented young adults of the chorus and reflect on their deeply personal responses to Composer Laura Kaminsky’s and Librettist Kimberly Reed’s urgent, ultimately uplifting contemporary opera.
Carmen is no stranger to OFAV’s commitment to developing new operatic works, having held the baton, or magic wand as we like to say, for 2019’s premiere of Sweet Potato Kicks the Sun, the initiative’s first-ever commission. “This was such an honor for me to be asked to be a part of this really important project. Sweet Potato…, the themes in that were about beauty and inclusion and love, and it carries over to what Hometown... is speaking about, but in a much more serious nature,” she says.
For Hometown To The World, Carmen brought together twelve singers ranging in age from 13 to 17 years of age. “I know that they're musically able to hold this together,” she says, her voice swelling with pride as she acknowledges the teens’ willingness to so freely explore raw and powerful emotions, some of which are intensely personal, about immigration that the piece so beautifully confronts. “I think that the music is very challenging. So this will challenge them and also open whole new worlds.”
Hometown To The World challenges audiences to redefine the future, offering hope through family and, of course, opera.
RELATED EPISODES
Hometown to the World: Discovering "Postville" with Laura Kaminsky and Kimberly Reed
America Is Impossible Without Us: Revisiting Hometown to the World
Responding to the World, Hometown to the World
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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 Carmen Flórez-Mansi - Chorus Master, Hometown To The World
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 Dylan Crouch
MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE
This music in this episode is NOT from Hometown To The World... you'll have to catch the stage premiere in Santa Fe or stream the digital premiere from Hawaii Opera Theater to hear more.
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
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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