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 responsible for bringing The Pigeon Keeper to the campus. Together they go behind the scenes of OperaLab, their new initiative to connect SMTD students with opportunities to workshop and perform contemporary music from living composers.

They also explore how the themes of the opera connect to modern realities with student musicians; learn about community support for refugees, asylum seekers, and others seeking humanitarian protection with Freedom House Detroit; and find out what advice principal artists would give to future cast members.

The episode ends with audience reflections on loss, exclusion, and opera as a catalyst for hard conversation. “The arts,” said one workshop goer, “can facilitate tangible action, dialogue, and change that can come from this emotionally resonating work.” It’s insights like this that keep OFAV commissioning new works and collaborating in inventive ways.

Learn more about Freedom House Detroit at freedomhousedetroit.org.

FEATURING:

Rebecca Clark - Cover for Orsia

Ava Hawkins - Ensemble

Jamiyah Hudson - Ensemble

Tyrese Byrd - Cover for The Pigeon Keeper

Caitlin Lynch - Assistant Professor of Music at U-M

Jayce Ogren - Director of Contemporary Directions Ensemble at U-M

David Hanlon - Composer, The Pigeon Keeper

Daniel Millan - Clarinet

Lulu Nester, Engagement Coordinator, Freedom House Detroit

David Siebert, volunteer, Freedom House Detroit

Nathan Harah - Kosmo

Bernard Holcomb - The Pigeon Keeper, The Widow Grocer, The Schoolteacher

And numerous students and audience members.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Arts Initiative at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance

SMTD OperaLab

Contemporary Directions Ensemble

Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio

Freedom House Detroit

The House On Mango Street opera

University Philharmonia Orchestra

THE PIGEON KEEPER CREATIVE TEAM:

David Hanlon, Composer

Stephanie Fleischmann, Librettist

Kelly Kuo, Music Director And Conductor

RELATED EPISODES:

Season 2 Episode 4 - Hope Is the Thing With Feathers: A first look at The Pigeon Keeper

Season 4 Episode 4 - In a Room Making Music With People: The Pigeon Keeper with Stephanie Fleischmann and David Hanlon

Season 4 Episode 9 - Competing Interest: How Do You Workshop a New Opera?

Season 5 Episode 5 - Music Born Out of a Modern Experience: The Pigeon Keeper Orchestral Workshop

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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

Technical Director: Edwin R. Ruiz

Production Support from Alex Riegler

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 SantaFeOpera.org. And for more Key Change, visit SantaFeOpera.org/KeyChange.