A Day in the Life Before a World Premiere
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Release Date: 03/01/2023
Points Unknown: Exploring Our Relationship To Otherness Through The Pigeon Keeper
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
To workshop a new opera in front of an audience is a little like agreeing to a trust fall: at some point, you’ve just got to surrender to the unknown and… trust. Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia return to the orchestral workshop for The Pigeon Keeper, a collaboration between Santa Fe Opera’s Opera For All Voices (OFAV) initiative and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD). Andrea and Anna introduce folks to Caitlin Lynch, Assistant Professor of Music at U-M, and Jayce Ogren, Director of Contemporary Directions Ensemble at U-M, the visionary duo...
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Music Born Out of a Modern Experience: The Pigeon Keeper Orchestral Workshop
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
It takes a village - and multiple revisions! - to mount a modern, original opera. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia journey to an orchestral workshop for The Pigeon Keeper, a first for (OFAV)! Imagine a stage filled with an eight-member student orchestra, four principal singers, and a women's chorus. Drop in the composer, librettist, and members of the OFAV team. Truncate the rehearsal period and invite an audience for a live presentation plus a feedback session. Now, you understand the excitement and angst surrounding an orchestral workshop. Andrea reconnects...
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From Gardening to Greeting Guests, Volunteers Run the World! with Marissa Aurora, Artist & Volunteer Liaison
Key Change: Creating Opera for All Voices
Cue the lights! It’s time to illuminate a vital yet often invisible component of life at Santa Fe Opera: volunteerism. Key Change co-hosts Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia chatted with Marissa Aurora, Santa Fe Opera’s , on her first anniversary in the role. And what a year it’s been! Marissa, a multi-discipline artist and radio DJ, has worked hard to revitalize relationships between the Opera and its volunteers. She’s also introduced an exciting new performing arts production internship in collaboration with Northern New Mexico College. So, how do you quantify the...
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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...
info_outlineIt’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 Democratic National Convention and became an exemplar of the Civil Rights movement. A Black woman who knew her worth despite a world that told her otherwise.
But hold on! A lot has happened between the time Opera For All Voices (OFAV) of The Santa Fe Opera first commissioned TLLoM and this triumphant evening. Key Change co-hosts (yep, a lot has happened) Andrea Fellows Fineberg and Anna Garcia check in with members of the production’s creative team in the hours leading up to the world premiere.
What do they want folks to understand about Mrs. Hamer’s life and legacy? How has the piece expanded discussions around whose stories get told onstage? And what’s the connection between self-care and a tiny table?
If OFAV’s goal to foster community beyond opera’s traditional audience is central to this conversation, then TLLoM acts as the initiative’s standard bearer. It’s a fitting tribute to Mrs. Hamer’s innate ability to speak truth to power and galvanize individuals under one unifying voice.
FEATURING
Chandler Carter – Composer
Diana Solomon-Glover – Librettist
Jeri Lynne Johnson – Conductor & Music Director
Beth Greenberg – Stage Director
Laurel McIntyre – Stage Manager
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
The Lensic Performing Arts Center
New Mexico Black Leadership Council
THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE PLAYLIST
Mother of a Movement: This Little Light of Mine
Singing A Call to Action: Is This America?
Making a Choice With Conviction: A conversation with Jeri Lynne Johnson
Lighting a Fire: The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer
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Key Change is a production of The Santa Fe Opera in collaboration with Opera for All Voices.
Produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios
Hosted by Andrea Fellows Fineberg & Anna Garcia
Audio Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Show Notes by Lisa Widder
Theme music by Rene Orth with Corrie Stallings, mezzo-soprano, and Joe Becktell, cello
Cover art by Dylan Crouch
This podcast is made possible due to the generous funding from the Hankins Foundation, the Andrew W Mellon foundation, and an Opera America innovation Grant supported by the Anne & Gordon Getty Foundation.
To learn more about Opera For All Voices, visit us at SantaFeOpera.org.