2024 9 Sept Newsletter | New Music-Theatre

Our Monthly Newsletter - September 2024

What’s Ahead for Alliance for New Music-Theatre in our 2024 -25 Season?

We are stepping up our activities this season in anticipation of celebrating in 2024-25 season our 30-Year Anniversary of our humble beginnings as a workshop for local artists to advance their collaborative capacities to experiment in the many art forms of music-theatre.

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The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin

Congratulations on the successful Launch this September!

We just brought the curtain down on The Man Ray Project: Caeser & The Mannequin

The full live-plus-mixed-media work received its World premiere September 12 – 22 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

Here's what our audience had to say:

Fine job! You are spoiling us with this quality of production. Keep going!

This piece is thought provoking and entertaining. I need to see it again to catch the details. Thank you for making this.

The “all things” dancing, speaking, singing, fights – lyrics – different genres – the instrumentalists & performers & composer & lyricist were very so well done: Brava tutti

Excellent – We need more of this.

Very relevant show! Great music, choreography, voices! I enjoyed the experience! Fun, profound – a great work of art in itself. Thanks

Fantastic Creation! Fantastic cast!

Always inventive work that stretches the audience.

Very thought provoking with emotional peaks & valley. Very well realized & performed.

Cara Schaefer, Danielle, and John were amazing!!

In response to the current contentious political climate in this election season brought on by former president and convicted felon Donald Trump’s decision to run again, the work (originally conceived as part of our 2020 Short Gems series,) has proved more prescient and ‘Dada’ than we could have ever imagined. Audiences responded enthusiastically to both the humorous lunacy while they found thoughtful and provocative the chilling ranting, lies, and abuse of the would-be-dictator Julius Caesar, who cites in our work, “I’m back! And I’m running for [office]—again!” At the heart of this work there lies the important dialectic in our society between political power and the power of art. What will endure?

The collaboration with Composer Andrew E. Simpson has produced a wonderful score of varied music genres both bold and entertaining. Company members John Boulanger and Cara Schaefer were joined by newcomer and triple-threat performer Danielle McKay. Susan Rider as the Harpo Marx look-alike Custodian-turned-Trumpeter rounded out the cast and all proved themselves more than capable of the multiple challenges thrown at them (including dance choreography, sword fights, and wrestling) and all shone in their roles.

This was indeed a project where creators, performers, designers, musicians, and our supportive partners on the Atlas Performing Arts Center team all ‘played nicely in the sandbox.’

The one review we received by Lisa Traiger for DCTA opened with, “A mashup of Marx Brothers pratfalls and Machiavellian politics feels about right for this Presidential election season… with tongue firmly in cheek, makes this seriously funny 90-minute one-act both prescient and precocious.”

Other talented artists joining the team are Dance Choreographer Anne Fisher, Cinematographer Blanca Gruber, Fight Instructor Casey Kaleba, and Costume Designer Dasha Pomerantseva. Art Curator and Man Ray specialist Wendy Grossman served the project as consultant and esteemed guide to all things

Check out the whole story HERE.

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Hispanic Youth Chorus - coro de la comunidad!

Weekly Rehearsals Resume in October

We are planning to resume our weekly rehearsals on Monday, October 21 and invite any interested Students to check us out.

Under the direction of Leo Herrera, our Youth Chorus -"Coro de la comunidad" has grown, attracting students as young as precocious third graders up through high school and is conducted in weekly after-school classes taught in Spanish and based in the heart of DC’s bilingual neighborhood at the DC Scottish Rite Center. Students acquire music literacy skills, learn basics of choral singing, and practice repertoire while experiencing the joy making music and making new friends.

We are currently recruiting for our Fall season to start October 21. If you know of any students who are interested, please register on our coro webpage HERE.

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Composer-Librettist Studio

Presentation of Works created in July Workshops

On Sunday, November 3 at 3:00 pm, we will be sharing selected "Assignments" created by our artists this past July during Alliance for New Music-Theatre's second regional Composer-Librettist Studio hosted by the Music Program of the University of the District of Columbia.

The program will feature all five of our Singers performing works by the Composers and Librettists in the CL Studio. We invite you to join us to support the development of new works of music-theatre in our region. Music Director Sonja Thompson will return to accompany the singers.

We hope you will join us to experience these new works by our talented local artists.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to info@newmusictheatre.org

Thanks to our talented group

of 5 Composers:

- Deja Crenshaw

- Elizabeth Gartman

- William Kenlon

- Danielle Moore

-Thomas Whitman

And 5 Librettists:

- Susan Bywaters

- Ned Eckhardt

- Colette Gregory

- Oren Levine

- Marianna Mott Newirth

...and 5 Singer/ Performers:

- Mia Athey

- Ari Jacobson

- Farah Kidwai

- Greg Watkins

- Laura Whittenberger

Looking forward to seeing you all again at UDC and enjoying your creative works.

The CL Studio is a unique, ongoing professional development program that provides an opportunity for five composers, five librettists and five singer-actors to focus on the principles and process of collaboration through a series of exploratory assignments in the hybrid form of music-theatre. All participants emerged with renewed confidence, energy and tools of the craft, as well as a commitment to joining in the building of a network of sustaining supporters to advance the field of new Music-Theatre for the 21st century. Read more HERE.

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Live & About Fall Season

After The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin, our next Outing is to see

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill

starring our Company Member Roz White at Mosaic Theatre

on Thursday, October 3 @ 7:30 pm or Sunday, October 6 @ 2:00pm.

Alliance for New Music-Theatre curates “Live & About” as a community engagement subscription series that attends different DC area theater productions that represent a variety of genres from opera and musicals to cabaret and mixed-media events. Find out more about our season HERE.Contact us at info@newmusictheatre.org if interested in joining us.

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Featured Artist and Company Member - Danielle McKay

Alliance for New Music-Theatre is pleased to welcome Danielle McKay as its newest company member. Danielle joined the cast of The Man Ray Project: Caesar & The Mannequin for its debut last month on the recommendation of the work’s composer, Andrew Simpson, and we couldn’t be more pleased to have found in this talented performer an ideal artist and colleague. Equally talented as a singer, actor, and dancer, Danielle made her mark on the ATLAS stage and on our adoring audiences as a deeply dimensional Kiki – painter, poet, “model, muse, and whore” – Who teeters out on pointe shoes at the beginning of the work and then fascinates with a teasing tango, only to engage in searing sophisticated insult battles with Julius Caesar and to fiercely assert her autonomy as a woman and a creator in the face of marginalization at the hands of two would-be male dominators. All of this, of course, without batting an eyelid at the numerous delicious intricacies of Simpson’s score, which she handled with impeccable grace in her silvery lyric coloratura.

With credits spanning opera, oratorio, and music-theatre, Danielle is as intricately faceted offstage as on. She holds a Doctor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from The Catholic University of America, where she now serves as an adjunct voice professor. She teaches vocal technique at the prestigious Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where she also directs the “Sophisticated Ladies” vocal ensemble. Also a certified Yoga instructor, she teaches at Georgetown Law. She loves the outdoors as much as the stage and classroom, and dotes on her tuxedo cat, Ellington.

Originally from Buffalo, NY, our outstanding colleague has become deeply embedded in the DC musical community as a performer and educator, making her an ideal addition to our team of performers striving towards a mission of creating responsive works of new music-theatre, nurturing emerging professional and aspiring talent, and engaging the broader community through theater.

A few of her favorite past roles include Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, Laurie Moss in The Tender Land, Madame Pompous in Too Many Sopranos, Laurette in the English version of Bizet’s Le Docteur Miracle, two roles in Speed Dating Tonight!, and the Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel.

Danielle is looking forward to singing with the Washington National Opera in the (R)evolution of Steve Jobs next year.