Beth Morrison Projects

The Silver Cypress (سرو سیمین)
Niloufar Nourbakhsh, composer
Stephanie Fleischmann, librettist

The Silver Cypress (سرو سیمین) is set in a hostile desert world where small settlements of people, who have lost the ability to cry, drill the bone-dry earth for the last vestiges of water. The loss of tears signals the loss of cultural memory, empathy, and the capacity to be moved by one another. The young Yatim is charged with finding the Silver Cypress, a mythic tree that once held the memories of their people and granted rain to their land, discovering the power of friendship and the truth of her past along the way. Drawing from Persian mythology and Farsi poetry, The Silver Cypress is a mythic frame for addressing an urgent contemporary condition: how quickly we lose willingness to hear one another and how we must reclaim that openness to renew empathy, connection, and the same life-giving power as water.

Niloufar Nourbakhsh, composer
Niloufar Nourbakhsh is an Iranian American composer who won Beth Morrison Projects’ Next Gen competition in 2022. Her orchestral work Knell (2018) was commissioned by the Nashville Symphony and performed at the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. Her other works include Deep Time (Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra commission, 2026), En Cherchant (Amsterdam Sinfonietta commission, 2023), and An Aria for the Executive Order (World Composers Festival of Hartford commission, 2017). Nourbakhsh’s music has been commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet, Orchestre de Paris, Library of Congress, and Center for Contemporary Opera, and performed at Carnegie Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Kennedy Center, among many others. She is a founding member and co-director of the Iranian Female Composers Association. Nourbakhsh currently teaches music theory and composition at Longy School of Music at Bard College and Berklee College of Music. She holds a B.A. from Goucher College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stony Brook University.

The Glimmerglass Festival

The Snow Queen 2.0
B.E. Boykin, composer
Deborah Brevoort, librettist

In this modern riff on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” Kai receives his first smartphone and is seduced by “Squeenie,” a bot he believes to be a real person, who promises to teach him the secrets of coolness but instead leads him deep into the dark web of temptations. Kai’s friend Gerta searches for him as he pursues the personal perfection promised by Squeenie’s looksmaxxing routines. When Gerta finally finds Kai, she presents him with proof that Squeenie is not a real person. Kai is devastated; now he will never be perfect. Gerta counters with an “imperfection aria,” naming all the things she loves best about Kai, and leading him back to the world of personal connection.

B.E. Boykin, composer
B.E. (Brittney Elizabeth) Boykin is a distinguished composer, conductor, and pianist. Her music appears on two albums nominated for the 2026 Grammy Awards in the Best Classical Solo Vocal Album category: Black Pierrot and In This Short Life. Her operas include Oshun, which premiered in 2023 with the American Opera Initiative with support from Washington National Opera; Two Corners, which premiered in 2024 with Finger Lakes Opera; and My Name Is Florence, created as part of a seven-year residency with Minnesota Opera. In addition to her work in opera, Boykin continues to leave a lasting impact on the choral world as a sought-after conductor and clinician. Her recent features include conducting the Atlanta Music Project Senior Youth Choir in a closing concert for the 2024 Chorus America Conference and leading them to emerge as the category winner at the 2024 World Choir Games.

Hogfish

Wholly Unwinding
Hailey McAvoy, composer and librettist

Wholly Unwinding is an autobiographical work that traces composer Hailey McAvoy’s journey toward embodiment, healing, and self-acceptance. Living with cerebral palsy, she spends her early life in an exhausting cycle of medical treatments that seek to “fix” her body and, over time, internalizes society’s belief that her body is something to correct. When she encounters the Alexander Technique, she begins to reconnect with her body not as a problem to solve, but as a source of intelligence and possibility. This leads her to reclaim her voice, confront the limitations imposed by medical and social narratives, and open herself to a more integrated sense of self.

Wholly Unwinding moves fluidly between grounded scenes of childhood and richly imagined spiritual landscapes, reflecting an inner journey as much as an external one. As she progresses, she lays down long-held defenses, finds transformative support from her community of friends, and begins to remember parts of herself that had been buried. Her path unfolds through forests, oceans, storms, deserts, and star-filled nights, each environment mirroring a stage of her healing. Alongside this physical and emotional awakening, she embraces her identity as a queer woman, reconciles the relationship with her body, and unearths a lifelong sense of spirituality.

Hailey McAvoy, composer and librettist
Hailey McAvoy is a composer-performer who trained primarily as an opera singer. She grew up outside of Boston and sang and wrote songs from a young age. She enrolled in voice lessons and ultimately fell in love with the poetry of art song and opera libretti. McAvoy studied voice at the Eastman School of Music and the Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard College. Throughout both programs, she studied poetry and verse in addition to music, writing and performing songs in which she self-accompanied on piano and shruti box. Her work as a singer has included performances at the Metropolitan Opera (for the Opera Evolved series), Beth Morrison Projects, Aspen Music Festival, National Sawdust, the Appel Room, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, and others. Her repertoire spans from the leading role in the premiere of Paola Prestini and Brenda Shaughnessy’s Sensorium Ex to roles in Mozart, Dvořák, and Strauss.

Opera Memphis

Catalogue Gurl
Lisa DeSpain, composer
Jerre Dye, librettist

It is the early aughts in Memphis. A man at a coffee shop is reminiscing about Christmas. He shares his experience with the Sears Wish Book, an annual catalogue of all the new toys mailed to every American household a few months before Christmas. He reminisces how in 1972, he fell in love with "Simone," a doll made by the legendary Luigi Firga of Italy. But of course, little boys don’t play with dolls, so he was forbidden from getting it, left to wonder, "Why does beauty belong only to the girl child?" As he finishes reminiscing, he mentions how times have changed, and how you can find almost anything on the internet these days. In fact, guess what he just found on eBay, still new in the box...?

Lisa DeSpain, composer
Lisa DeSpain was the recipient of a 2018 OPERA America Discovery Grant for That Hellbound Train. Based on a story by Robert Bloch (author of Psycho) with libretto by David Simpatico, That Hellbound Train premiered in April 2026 at the University of North Texas under the baton of Stephanie Rhodes Russell. DeSpain was the winner of the Zepick Modern Opera Competition from Opera Kansas for Staggerwing (Rachel J. Peters, librettist), which highlights the historic win of female pilots in the 1936 Bendix Trophy Air Race.

DeSpain’s other operas include Song of the Nightingale (On Site Opera) with librettist Melisa Tien; and Men I’m Not Married To (Cleveland Opera Theatre) and No Ladies in the Lady’s Book (Utah Opera), both with librettist Rachel J. Peters. Her operas are licensed through E. C. Schirmer Publishing. DeSpain is a professor of music at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, can deadlift 210 pounds, and ran away with the circus — twice.

Resonance Works

The Velveteen Rabbit
Gilda Lyons, composer and librettist

In this bilingual reimagining of The Velveteen Rabbit, belonging has a language. Born into the English-speaking nursery and carrying the imprint of the world beyond the window, the Rabbit longs for a place to feel whole. Mocked by the other toys, Rabbit finds an ally in the Old Horse — El Caballo Viejo — who teaches that to become “Real” is to be loved into change. As the Child and Rabbit grow inseparable, the Rabbit moves fluidly between English and Spanish. When the Child falls ill and is sent to the seaside, Rabbit is discarded with the other toys. Remembering the love that shaped them, Rabbit sheds a tear that summons a Fairy, who transforms them into a living Rabbit. Later, the healed Child glimpses a familiar wild Rabbit; their silent recognition affirms that to become Real is to be changed by love — and, finally, to find a place to belong.

Gilda Lyons, composer and librettist
Composer-vocalist Gilda Lyons creates works that sing from the inside out, vigorously redefining what constitutes composition and performance through the lens of vocalism. Whether instrumental, electronic, theater, or concert-based, her resolutely pan-historic creative and physical voices are uncompromising in their emotional honesty. Social activism and her Nicaraguan roots underpin much of Lyons’ work, from the environmentalism of her “powerfully effective” (Pittsburgh Stage Magazine) mainstage opera A New Kind of Fallout; to her upcoming searing political chamber opera film Corazón de Esperanza for Esperanza Arts Center with the Dalí Quartet and percussionist Ben Toth; to Cenizas, commissioned by the Mid-American Conference Band Directors Association. Her music — described as “irresistible” and “vivacious” (Gramophone), “hair-raising, yet elegant” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), “like nothing you’ve ever heard before” (NATS’ Journal of Singing), and “masterly” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) — is available on the Albany/Parma, AMP Recordings, Clarion, GPR, Naxos, New Dynamic, New Focus, and Yarlung labels.

The Industry

Si me tocaras el corazón
Tania León, composer
Librettist to be announced

The Industry will premiere Si me tocaras el corazón (“If You Touched My Heart”), a new opera composed by Tania León based on the eponymous short story published in 1989 by renowned Chilean American author Isabel Allende. When the wealthy, socially prominent Amadeo Peralta engages in a torrid affair with the young Hortensia, putting his political career at great risk, he decides to keep the episode out of public view by “entombing” her in a dungeon-like cellar for decades. Eventually, the citizenry of Peralta’s town rescues Hortensia and swiftly convicts Amadeo, who nevertheless shows no remorse — leaving the townspeople to consider how they ever allowed themselves to become so ensnared in this web of desire, secrecy, and neglect. With its epic sense of cultural stakes, Si me tocaras el corazón offers a haunting portrait of moral decay, judgment, and culpability.

Tania León, composer
Tania León, born in Havana, Cuba, is among the most acclaimed musicians of her generation, renowned as a composer, conductor, and educator. In 2021, she was the first Latin American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music. The following year, she was a recipient of the 45^th annual Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime artistic achievements. Since then, León has been awarded the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition by Northwestern University; the Distinguished Artist Award from the International Society for the Performing Arts; and the Recording Academy’s Special Merit Award, the Trustees Award. León was also recognized by Carnegie Corporation of New York in their 2025 Class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans. The first music director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, León held Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair for its 2023–2024 season and was composer-in-residence with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 2023 to 2025.

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera

Song of the Lark
Laura Kaminsky, composer
Andrea Fellows Fineberg, librettist

The opera Song of the Lark, based on the 1915 Willa Cather novel of the same title, centers around the tumultuous yet determined life of Thea Kronborg from her youth in the village of Moonstone, Colorado, to her ultimate triumph as a diva at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. A singular woman with passion and talent, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery as she overcomes great loss and a crisis of spirit to become a renowned artist. Song of the Lark has been commissioned to culminate Utah Opera’s 50^th anniversary season in 2027–2028. As the final production of the four mainstage operas in this landmark year, it demonstrates the company’s commitment to the evolution of the art form on the American stage. The opera will premiere at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre, a historic venue in downtown Salt Lake City and Utah Opera’s mainstage home since 1979.

Laura Kaminsky, composer
Laura Kaminsky, with “an ear for the new and interesting” (The New York Times), often addresses social-political issues in her work. As One (Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, co-librettists) has had more than 65 productions internationally since its 2014 premiere. Kaminsky’s other operas include Some Light Emerges and Today It Rains (Campbell and Reed), Hometown to the World (Reed), Finding Wright (Andrea Fellows Fineberg), February (co-librettist, with Lisa Moore), Lucidity (David Cote), Time to Act (Crystal Manich), and The Post Office (Elaine Sexton). Classical Voice America posits: “Kaminsky writes effectively for the voice, whether in searing, soul-baring arias and duets or recitative-like passages that propel the narrative.” Her piano concerto and piano quintet were written for the legendary Ursula Oppens. For Fry Street Quartet, Kaminsky wrote quartets and a score for TV's Poetry in America. Co-director with Deborah Brevoort of Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab, she teaches at SUNY Purchase and Boston Conservatory at Berklee.