Lila Blue, composer and librettist
SEE/UNSEE

Lila Blue is a composer, playwright, performer, and musician from New York City. Their work explores grief, epigenetics, queer mischief, and transcendence, and often includes collisions with a ghost or two. Blue has performed and composed professionally for 14 years, including a six-year run co-starring in The Kilbanes’ Drama Desk- and Lucille Lortel-nominated Weightless and writing a 52-song score for a production of The Cherry Orchard presented at Under the Radar in 2019 and 2020. They have released four records to critical acclaim, toured internationally, and composed for film and television, most notably for MTV and Lifetime. In 2024, Blue was a winner of Kerrville’s Grassy Hill New Folk Award for Emerging Songwriters. Their original ritual SEE/UNSEE is in development at HERE Arts Center and set for production in 2027.

SEE/UNSEE
SEE/UNSEE is a queer folk ritual based on the work and life of artist and mystic Hilma af Klint. Now regarded as the earliest abstract painter (pre-dating the men who claimed the title for decades), af Klint sought to reveal an unseen world beyond the binaries and hierarchies of her time. Sensing her contemporaries wouldn’t understand this message, she stipulated that her paintings be locked away for 20 years after her death. Eighty years later, a cadre of queer and trans performers led by folk musician Lila Blue gather to conjure Hilma’s story. Surfacing where Blue’s life overlaps with that of the pioneering painter and mystic — in queerness, in love, and in loss — SEE/UNSEE invites you (and any ghosts who might tag along) into a ferocious song cycle séance.

Catherine Brookman, composer
Easy Baby
Jen Pitt, librettist, and Emily Duncan, collaborator

Catherine Brookman is a Brooklyn-based performer and composer. Her music has been described by The New York Times as “vocally complex, rich, and consistently surprising” with a “sonic glow as entrancing as a phosphorescent sea.” By mixing vocals with electronics, synthesizers, and poetry, her music seeks to uncover the majestic inside of the mundane. Originally from Baltimore, the classically trained Brookman uses her voice as the primary instrument to create wordless vocal loops and samples to build dreamlike textures and soundscapes. Her music combines storytelling techniques found in folk music with ambient landscapes to create a sonic cocoon, a soft landing space for heartbreak. Her work has been featured at Lincoln Center, Pioneer Works, The DiMenna Center, The Public Theater, The Broad, MOCA Geffen, Ars Nova, and more.

Easy Baby
“The Third Baby is the Easiest” is one of Shirley Jackson's lesser-known and least fantastical stories. And yet, it’s her scariest because it’s an unflinching look into one of the most horrific and dehumanizing events a person can ever go through: navigating the American healthcare system. In this semi-autobiographical birth story, the Jackson-insert begins by frantically completing her mountain of domestic tasks, even while in active labor. When she finally goes to the hospital, she is ignored by virtually everyone, including her doctor, told to quiet down when moaning in pain, and repeatedly pressed to stop making a fuss so as to not upset her husband.

Easy Baby, a 50-minute chamber opera adaptation of Jackson’s story, is most interested in the protagonist’s loss of agency and inability to communicate with those around her. To illustrate this, the Jackson-insert is performed by a non-speaking flutist while the rest of the company is composed of vocalists.

Suzanne Farrin, composer
Macabéa
Sergio Chejfec, librettist
Based on the novel The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Suzanne Farrin’s works have been performed around the world. Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called her first opera, dolce la morte, a work of “shattering honesty.” Recent commissions include works for the New York Philharmonic, Talea Ensemble, the Parker Quartet, the Library of Congress, Sō Percussion, the JACK Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. Farrin’s second opera, Macabéa, commissioned by Talea Ensemble, will have its concert premiere at Miller Theatre in 2026 and its staged premiere at Theatro São Pedro in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2027. In addition to composing, Farrin is a performer of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument created by the engineer Maurice Martenot in the 1920s. Farrin is the chair of music at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is the director of the Ph.D. program in composition. She holds a doctorate from Yale University.

Macabéa
A Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector disrupts historical tropes regarding poverty by creating a character who is miserably poor yet strangely free. Young Macabéa lives in Rio’s slums, barely existing, loving hot dogs, and spending time with her repulsive boyfriend. Macabéa goes to see a fortune teller, and as she arrives, another client is running out crying hysterically. The fortune teller explains that the woman will soon be killed by a hit-and-run, but that Macabéa will soon meet a rich, European boyfriend who will give her furs. Tragically for Macabéa, the seer’s signals were crossed: As Macabéa steps onto the street, a yellow Mercedes barrels down and strikes her. As she dies, the passersby do not see that her blood is a beautiful color of red, but it is clear to the audience that Macabéa possessed a special inner beauty. In this adaptation by novelist Sergio Chejfec, the narrator is a film director who, rather than observing Macabéa’s death from a distance, builds a conspiracy to the climax of the fortune teller’s misreading.

Danielle Jagelski, composer
Little Ones
Rhiana Yazzie, librettist

Danielle Jagelski is a composer, conductor, and creative producer who serves as artistic director and co-founder of Renegade Opera. Her recent and upcoming commissions include works for Portland Opera, American Composers Forum, Voices of Ascension, ChamberQUEER, New Native Theatre, the North American Indigenous Songbook, and CUNY’s Segal Center. An enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, Jagelski often collaborates with other Indigenous and Native American artists and is passionate about kinship building and decolonization through interdisciplinary projects. A sought-after conductor of contemporary works, Jagelski recently conducted Voiceless Mass with International Contemporary Ensemble, Next Gen 3 with Beth Morrison Projects, Amistad with Harlem Opera Theater and Connecticut Lyric Opera, Voices of Mannahatta with Voices of Ascension, and Missing at Anchorage Opera, among other engagements. She is a First Peoples Fund 2026 Performing Arts Fellow as well as part of the 2025 LIFT cohort at Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

Little Ones
Little Ones is a dark-comedic opera that unfolds in 1984, exploring life at Intermountain Indian School, a Native American residential school in Brigham City, Utah, in the final decade of its operation. The story is told through the journeys of six characters: Marigold, an Ojibwe girl uprooted from her reservation in Northern Wisconsin; Lily, a Navajo girl from a sheep farm and Marigold’s bashful and boy-crazy best friend; Jackson, Marigold’s rebellious boyfriend trying to be a man; Victor, a Navajo boy trying to stay out of foster care; Mrs. Ross, a 20-year-old White teacher at the school; and Ruby The Lunch Lady, the caretaker and matriarch. The students grapple with the complexities of assimilation guided by the church and the difficulties of coming of age in a rapidly changing world. The work is based on true events experienced by composer Danielle Jagelski’s uncle and mother, who attended Intermountain Indian School from 1978 through 1984, as well as Jagelski’s and librettist Rhiana Yazzie’s experiences as children of boarding school survivors.

Jiyoung Ko, composer and librettist
Three Women

Jiyoung Ko is a Korean-born composer whose orchestral, chamber, and vocal works are driven by narrative, emotional transformation, and a deep commitment to communicating lived experience through sound. Ko’s compositional language is grounded in rich textures, resonant color, and poetic, delicately sculpted melodic lines. Her works have been performed internationally by the Grand Rapids Symphony, La Jolla Symphony, the Mivos Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Brightwork Ensemble, Cepromusic Ensemble, wasteLAnd, Del Sol String Quartet, and the New York New Music Ensemble. Recent projects include Leaf by Leaf, Dream by Dream, commissioned by La Jolla Symphony, and the Asian premiere of Undulate at the National Gugak Center in Seoul. Her orchestral work was selected for the American Composers Orchestra’s EarShot New Music Readings and for the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s New Music Workshop. Ko is currently completing her Ph.D. in music composition at the University of California, San Diego.

Three Women
Three Women is a new opera inspired by jeong (정), a uniquely Korean concept describing a deep emotional bond formed through shared experience, care, and connection. The project explores how human relationships sustain us in an increasingly divided world, asking what kind of invisible force allows people to remain connected across distance, culture, and uncertainty. Set in a foreign port city defined by constant arrival and departure, the opera follows three migrant women who share a temporary living and working space. Each carries a different form of absence: a middle-aged laborer supporting family from afar, a young mother living apart from her child, and a woman living with unstable legal status, prepared to leave at any moment. At first, the women remain strangers and unsure of the future. Through daily gestures such as covering shifts, sharing food, and helping one another navigate unfamiliar systems, a bond begins to grow. Without words, jeong takes shape.

Hailey McAvoy, composer and librettist
Wholly Unwinding

Composer-performer Hailey McAvoy, recognized as a “gorgeous-voiced soprano” (BroadwayWorld), is a versatile performer of opera, song, and concert works. McAvoy makes her compositional debut with Wholly Unwinding and will perform in the opera’s premiere with Hogfish Regenerative Arts Festival in Portland, Maine, in July 2026, and in a second performance at National Sawdust in fall 2026. McAvoy’s recent operatic performances have included the lead role of Mem in the world premiere of Paola Prestini and Brenda Shaughnessy’s Sensorium Ex at the Common Senses Festival in Omaha, Julia Child in Bon Appétit! with Opera Praktikos, and Zora in Svadba with Hogfish. She will appear at the Royal Opera House in London in a showcase of Sensorium Ex in June 2026. As a performer with cerebral palsy, McAvoy is committed to making the performing arts more inclusive for all. She recently published essays on accessibility in AGMAzine and Our Singing Bodies and has appeared on panels about accessibility for organizations including the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Ithaca, and Opera NexGen.

Wholly Unwinding
Wholly Unwinding is a chamber opera that tells McAvoy’s story of growing up with cerebral palsy and journeying the long path toward genuine acceptance of disability and connection with body and spirit, which she finally found through the Alexander Technique. In the opera, McAvoy (who also performs in the work) and her friends embark on a pilgrimage of sorts that mirrors her lived experience, exploring dreamscapes, visions, meditations, and resolutions that have been part of her disability journey. Themes include redefining one’s relationship to the medical model of disability, the power of community, and finding one’s own path to genuine, joyful embodiment — a reality that is the right of all people unconditionally.

Gillian Rae Perry, composer
Desert Bloom
|Mo Holmes, librettist

Gillian Rae Perry is a composer and songwriter whose work is dedicated to themes of mental health, vulnerability, and interconnectedness. She grew up on a bird farm in rural Texas, and her first compositions were written for the birds. Perry was the Vanguard Emerging Opera Composer with Chicago Opera Theater for 2022–2024 and is a 2025–2026 recipient of New Music USA’s Creator Fund, which is providing funding for her latest album, gilly’s garden, set to release in April 2026. Her work has been performed by the Chicago Philharmonic, Chicago Opera Theater, The Atlanta Opera, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, among others. With degrees in both film and music composition, as well as having grown up a theater kid, Perry actively integrates art forms outside of music into her artistic practice. She holds an M.F.A. in music composition from California Institute of the Arts and is currently a D.M.A. candidate at the Peabody Institute. She released her first collection of poetry, What Will I Wish for Now?, in 2024.

Desert Bloom
Desert Bloom is a one-act chamber opera inspired by Big Bend ghost towns and the revolutionary young people, past and present, who persist through war, grief, and loneliness to bloom in the desert.

In the heat of West Texas, Mia is lost. She should be in church, but since her momma died, she has struggled to fulfill her duties to family, faith, and tradition. Her father, in his disappointment, has turned her away from taking Communion and sent her home. Unwilling to return and beset with grief, Mia instead walks beyond the limits of her small world, drawn by a mysterious voice and the only shade for miles, beneath a little mulberry tree. There, she discovers Teo, a vaquera whose spirit has been trapped for a century at the graveside of her friend and mentor Angel, a soldadera who fought in the Mexican Revolution. Is it the thin veil between heaven and earth that allows Mia and Teo to find each other, or delirium? Will Mia cross the divine border to join the one she loves?

Diana Wharton Sennaar, composer
YITA (Seeing Again)
Mai Sennaar, librettist

Diana Wharton Sennaar is an American composer and performer. She has been the recipient of the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and has received grants from New Music USA, Meet the Composer, Maryland State Arts Council, and the Deutsch Foundation. Her musical Carry On! was a semifinalist for the 2023 Eugene O’Neill Music Theater Conference. Her work has been glowingly reviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Essence, DownBeat, and The Baltimore Sun. She is a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock and the composer for the historic Broadway choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. Wharton Sennaar is co-founder and executive director of Piano for Youth123, an award-winning Maryland-based music education and leadership organization that is celebrating 23 years. She is a graduate of Howard University.

YITA (Seeing Again)
YITA (Seeing Again) integrates the subjects of Fulani metaphysics, climate change, and transatlantic African and American history to explore one modern woman’s battle for reproductive autonomy. It begins in the drought-stricken Sahel of 1755, as a Fulani Ancestral Chorus of three women chants a lament for an end to the punishing climate and the mourning of those enslaved and sold away in the wake of the drought’s devastation. We then meet one of their descendants: a spirited Gaola, an African American dancer whose high-risk pregnancy triggers a spiritual and clinical reckoning. When Doctor Ceedu — the modern manifestation of a 1755 noblewoman — discovers a cancerous growth and suggests a termination, Gaola’s struggle for her child becomes a journey across time and realms. As her husband, Ndungu, succumbs to clinical pressure and authorizes a forced procedure, Gaola is rescued by an Ancestral Chorus, who leads her out of a hospital bed and into a timeless, arid realm mirroring the Great Sahel Drought of 1755. Here, she confronts her lineage’s history of loss and the “natural order” that once deemed certain children were meant to perish.