Gotham Chamber Opera and Missy Mazzoli Conspire May 22, 2013

Gotham Chamber Opera, now on its 11th season, is the nation’s leading opera company dedicated to the highest quality productions of chamber operas rarely performed today. Its mission is to produce vibrant, fully-staged productions of works from the Baroque era to the present that are intended for intimate venues. As the only company committed solely to producing chamber opera, Gotham has a unique brand that is recognized nationally.
Founded by conductor and Artistic Director Neal Goren, Gotham Chamber Opera debuted in 2001 as Henry Street Chamber Opera, with the American premiere of Mozart’s Il Sogno di Scipione and, in subsequent seasons, produced such works as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Milhaud’s Les Malheurs d’Orphee, Bohuslav Martinu’s Les Larmes du Couteau and Hlas Lesa, Heinrich Sutermeister’s Die schwarze Spinne, Handel’s Arianna in Creta, Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring, and Rossini’s Il Signor Bruschino. The company renamed itself Gotham Chamber opera and became an independent 501(c) 3 organization in 2003.
In its first ten years, Gotham Chamber Opera has produced eighteen operas, including seven American premieres, two New York City premieres and two world premieres. Gotham Chamber Opera has partnered with notable New York and US institutions, including Lincoln Center Festival and Spoleto USA for the 2005 production of Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco; the Morgan Library and Museum for an evening of song cycles by Janáček and Dvořák, Scenes of Gypsy Life, in 2008; and the American Museum of Natural History and the American Repertory Theater for 2010’s production of Hadyn’s Il mondo della luna, which featured lunar exploration video, developed by the Museum and NASA, and broadcast on the Hayden Planetarium’s 180-degree dome.
Gotham Chamber Opera has earned a reputation for showcasing outstanding young singers alongside established professional and world-class directors and choreographers such as Mark Morris (the 2009 production of Hadyn’s L’isola disabitata), David Parsons (the New York stage premiere of Astor Piazzola’s tango opera, María di Buenos Aires), Karole Armitage (the world premiere of Ariadne Unhinged), Basil Twist (La bella), Christopher Alden (Scipione and Arianna in Creta), and Diane Paulus (Il mondo). In October 2010, Gotham Chamber Opera partnered with director Moisés Kaufmann and his company, Tectonic Theater Project, to co-produce the first United States stage performances of Xavier Montsalvatge’s El Gato con Botas at the New Victory Theater. For the 2011-2012 season, Gotham Chamber Opera celebrated its tenth anniversary with the world premiere of Dark Sisters, by composer Nico Muhly, and a revival of Gotham’s first production, Mozart’s Il sogno di Scipione (1772).
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Recently deemed “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working in New York” (New York Times), “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York) and “one of the new wave of scarily smart young composers” (Sequenza 21), Missy Mazzoli’s music has been performed all over the world by the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the American Composers Orchestra, New York City Opera, the Minnesota Orchestra, cellist Maya Beiser, the Albany Symphony, the South Carolina Philharmonic, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble and many others. She is currently Composer-in-Residence with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, and in 2011/12 was Composer/Educator in residence with the Albany Symphony.
The 2012/13 season will include many exciting new projects, including the October premiere of SALT, a re-telling of the story of Lot’s Wife, written for cellist Maya Beiser and vocalist Helga Davis. SALT will premiere at UNC Chapel Hill and at the BAM Next Wave Festival. The work includes text by Erin Cressida-Wilson and will be directed by Robert Woodruff. This coming season also includes premieres by Ensemble ACJW (Carnegie Hall), the Kronos Quartet (Carnegie Hall) and the Detroit Symphony (Orchestra Hall, Detroit), and performances by the La Jolla Symphony and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. November 2012 will also see the release of the original cast recording of Missy’s first opera, Song from the Uproar, on New Amsterdam Records. In October 2012 acclaimed contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird released their CD Meanwhile, featuring Missy’s work Still Life with Avalanche.
Recent projects include the critically acclaimed sold-out premiere of Missy’s first opera, Song from the Uproar, at New York venue The Kitchen in March 2012. The Wall Street Journal called this work “powerful and new” and the New York times claimed that “in the electric surge of Ms. Mazzoli’s score you felt the joy, risk, and limitless potential of free sprits unbound.” Other recent projects include premieres by the Albany Symphony, performances by the Britten Sinfonia at London’s Barbican Centre, and new works for eighth blackbird, Kronos Quartet, the League of Composers Orchestra, violinist Jennifer Koh (a new solo work commissioned by the LA Philharmonic), the Santa Fe Chamber Players, violist Nadia Sirota, and scores to accompany films by Alice Guy Blaché, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of Art. Missy’s ensemble Victoire has also been touring extensively, recently performing at the M.A.D.E. Festival in Sweden, the C3 Festival in Berlin, and across Europe touring with Efterklang, My Brightest Diamond, and many others.
Mazzoli is the recipient of four ASCAP Young Composer Awards, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, the Detroit Symphony’s Elaine Lebenbom Award, and grants from the Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, and the Barlow Endowment. She is also active as an educator and a mentor to young composers; in 2006 she taught composition in the Music Department of Yale University, and from 2007-2010 was Executive Director of the MATA Festival in New York City, an organization dedicated to promoting the work of young composers.
Mazzoli is an active pianist and keyboardist, and often performs with Victoire, a band she founded in 2008 dedicated to her own compositions. Their debut full-length CD, Cathedral City, was named one of 2010′s best classical albums by Time Out New York, NPR, the New Yorker and the New York Times. In the past few years they have played in venues all over the world including Radialsystem (Berlin), Millennium Park (Chicago), The Winter Garden (New York, as part of the Bang-on-a-Can New Music Marathon), Overtoom 301 (Amsterdam), The Music Gallery (Toronto) and Le Poisson Rouge (New York, as part of the Wordless Music Series). In February 2011 they joined The National, Owen Pallett and Efterklang on a tour of the Netherlands as part of the Cross-Linx Festival, and in November 2011 joined My Brightest Diamond (Shara Worden) for performances in Belgium and Paris. Pitchfork praised Victoire for “condensing moments of focused beauty and quiet conviction from the pandemic distractions of modern life“, WNYC dubbed the group “consuming and arresting“, and NPR’s First Listen asks “Is Victoire’s music post-rock, post-mimimalist or pseudo-post-pre-modernist indie-chamber-electronica? It doesn’t particularly matter. It’s just good music.”
Missy attended the Yale School of Music, the Royal Conservatory of the Hague and Boston University.
Her music is published by G. Schirmer.

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