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thru your company!
A DC-BASED COMPANY, and at our core:
DEVELOPING AND PRODUCING ORIGINAL WORKS OF MUSIC-THEATRE,
FOSTERING THE GROWTH OF ARTISTS,
AND ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY IN PARTNERSHIP
Changing the Conversation Through the Arts
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DC Emancipation and The Right to Vote
Workshop Presentation
Join us on our journey as we mark our commitment to this special project-in- development.
Two Performances: Tickets available HERE.
- Sunday April 6 at 3 pm
- Wednesday, April 16 at 7:30 pm (DC Emancipation Day)
On Sunday, April 6 at 3 pm, we are offering what we are calling a “workshop recital “ of words and music from DC Emancipation & The Right to Vote, a semi-fictionalized story of the history of Georgetown’s Black Community whose leaders leveraged their efforts through education, their church community, and political activism to help get Congress to pass DC’s early Emancipation, a full nine months before Lincoln’s Proclamation. Cone celebrate with us about this important chapter in America’s history.
We repeat the performance on April 16 at 7:30 pm, in celebration of DC Emancipation Day, DC’s proclaimed Public Holiday (thanks to the efforts of Vincent Orange.) It is still a too-little-known story, but we aim to sing it loud and clear.
Both performances will be at Dumbarton United Methodist Church, 3133 Dumbarton St. NW, one-half block off of Wisconsin on Dumbarton Street in Georgetown.
With music by the amazing, still-wunderkind composer Ronald “Trey” Walton and music direction led by the incomparable legend Ms. Evelyn Simpson Curenton, they are joined by a “Power-house” cast of singer-actors – Angeli Ferrette, Sheri Jackson, Kathy Richburg, Cara Schaefer, Daniel Smith, Tyrone Stanley, Greg Watkins, and Roz White. And featuring also Liz Hill on piano.
Read more about the project HERE.
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The Ukrainian Project: The Trumpeter
At the end of the month, on April 28 and 29 we return to Dupont Underground , standing in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and bring a new play, The Trumpeter, by Inna Goncharova, to Washinton audiences in the area premiere.
What could be more powerful than to tell the story of the siege of Mariupol in the subterranean echoey labyrinth the is Dupont Underground?
Directing The Trumpeter is Janos Szasz, and we couldn’t be more honored and excited. Two local luminary performers Michael Kevin Darnell and Lise Bruneau will share the stage and trumpeter Kevin McKee will make magic, exploring ‘the Underground’s unique acoustic chamber.
Tickets for these two performances are available HERE.
The full production will be presented later this Fall.
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Our Cabaret Series Continues With
Amy Bormet
Meet the Woman Behind Washington Women in Jazz Festival
Amy Bormet is a hustler – in the best sense of that term— and started the festival as a way to foster creative community spaces by and for women and non-binary musicians, now in its fifteenth year.
The two-day festival was packed and included lectures, meditation, breathing and vocal classes, jam sessions, two recordings for episodes on Turnaround Podcast, and a mind-blowing concert from an artist-in-residence this year, genre-bending vocalist Alison Crockett.
If you loved Amy’s free spirit jazz collaborations, you really should check out her Cabaret coming up as part of our George Fulginiti Series: Cabaret, Cocktails, and Conversation at The Arts Club of Washington. Part cabaret, part pushing boundaries of art song, her forays will expand your notion of how to tell stories of women’s experience through music+ theater.
For one night only, on Tuesday, May 6 at 67:30 pm Amy will present an original program, “Women on Love & Longing."
A signature cocktail and small bites will be included in the price of a ticket.
Purchase tickets HERE.
Susan Galbraith with Amy Bormet at the Washington Women in Jazz Festival
This is the third full Cabaret program in Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s partnership with the Arts Club of Washington in our ongoing examination of what makes for an optimal cabaret experience. The room’s intimacy at the Arts Club is part of it with the informal opportunity to linger in conversation with new friends.
Line-Up of future Cabaret Series at the Arts Club of Washington
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Tuesday, June 3 - Daniel Smith “Unmasked: Freedom in Full Color”
Shows start at 7p.m. Bar with Signature Cocktail opens at 6:30 p.m.
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and Friday, June 6 & Saturday, June 7 encore performances
- Daniel Smith - “Unmasked: Freedom in Full Color” - at Dupont Underground
Shows start at 8p.m
Read more about the Cabaret Series HERE.
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Our Artists and Partners on View
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Friday May 9 at Mr. Henry’s on Capitol Hill
As a special tribute to Roberta Flack, whose passing in February was a great loss and whose voice as a singer, activist, teacher and humanitarian, will be much missed, our very own Roz White will reprise her own “First Take: Roberta Flack at Mr. Henry’s.”
Roz first performed this Cabaret at the Arts Club in December as part of our Cabaret Series. DC native and Howard University Alumna, Roz White takes on the mantle of breathing life into this first glimpse of the magic that has made Roberta Flack a staple of American popular music for over sixty years. Stay tuned for details.
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Featured Artist -Robert Darling
In Robert's own words:
"The spoken theater excels in creating in our heads an imaginary place. The music theater excels when it drives idea and thought out of the ordinary space into some other world that may inform us in a positive way.
And that's what I think all of the job is. I mean, I think that's what our work is: is to inform us of a new possibility.
So as we go into the future, I want us to tackle some big themes as well as not lose track of the small themes."
In January 2019, founder and mentor of Alliance for New Music-Theatre Robert Darling wrote a response to a “Hidden Brain” segment on NPR in what he described as “a way forward” for our company. Coming upon his response six years later, it seems not only to speak to our company’s journey but imparts wisdom from an artist who since the 1960’s has always been radical, prescient, and generous in showing the way, most particularly to the increased pressure and challenges we face today….
Alliance for New Music-Theatre (ANMT) for several years has continued to explore and develop work of and between diverse cultures. These explorations were prompted by several projects in ‘Cultural Diplomacy’ working with different Embassies in Washington DC.
Robert Darling with Susan Galbraith at the DC Premiere of "Floral Arrangements" on the Spanish Steps in 2023
ANMT entered into collaborations and partnership with the Embassies of the Czech Republic, Myanmar/Burma, and Afghanistan, and also the Cultural Institute of Mexico. The resulting music-theater works explored— the courage it takes for an individual to stand up and speak truth to power, making music and education in a non-western, authoritarian society, trials of contemporary war springing from one of the founding works of western theatrical literature, and the challenges posed by immigration and the flow of divergent societies today upon our own evolving culture – have been strong examples of building stories through long-term relationships and bringing the community into the different stages of a work’s development…
Alliance ‘happened’ upon vital subjects as a means to increase the likelihood of other highly creative music-theater responses to stories needing to be told and to charge up conversations around the world we live in today.
So, I wanted to ask Robert, “How do we respond to the new world order of 2025 where diversity is no longer valued, even deemed dangerous ?”
And he seemed to be talking to this particular moment, and not just to us in our lean, artist-led company but to our whole community of theater makers in the following words:
"We [must] recognize more diversity, not only in the work we do and the music-theater pieces we develop, but also in how our organization is structured to enable us to grow. This will lead to more vital and unique creative responses… and -- what theater does best – to gather together people in a space to listen to stories we need to hear and help us heal. We consciously form alliances with diverse cultures and institutions to foster transformational music-theater events, using a wide variety of musical language, forms or presentations to make engaging ‘singing theater’ resonant in our complex society.”
If you want to hear the original impulse to Robert Darling’s thoughts, see: “Hidden Brain” —The Creative Mind and Diversity —
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/24/687707404/creative-differences-the-benefits-of-reaching-out-to-people-unlike-ourselves
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As a small not-for-profit 501(c)3 public charity organization, Alliance for New Music-Theatre’s mission is to:
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Nurture the creation, development and production of new works of music-theatre
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Foster the growth of professional and aspiring artists and their collaborations across cultures and musical languages;
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Engage community by bringing audiences and other partners into the creative process to promote a deeper understanding and critical appreciation of the transformative power of music-theatre.
We need your support to continue to fulfill our mission. There are many opportunities to provide support at various levels by supporting an artist, a production, or general support.
The Donate page on our website has information about ways to contribute. Donate | New Music-Theatre (newmusictheatre.org)