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I'm beyond honored to be part of the cohort of amazing female composers receiving Discovery Grants from Opera America! The grant will go to support a workshop of REB+VoDKa+ME, to happen in the first half of 2019. From the Opera America press release:
Opera Grants for Female Composers seek to promote the development of works by women, as well as raise the visibility of women writing for the operatic medium and increase diversity across the field. The program consists of two granting components: Discovery Grants of up to $15,000 that are awarded directly to female composers to advance new works; and Commissioning Grants of up to $50,000 that are awarded to opera companies for commissions by female composers. Since its inception, the program has awarded a total of $800,000 to opera companies and composers. The most recent round of Discovery Grants attracted 47 applicants, and an independent adjudication panel selected eight composers to receive a total of $100,000 to support operas in development. The recipients are: · Lisa DeSpain for That Hell-Bound Train · Alexa Dexa for Be a Doll · Germaine Franco for ¡La Capitana! · Elizabeth Kelly for Losing Her Voice · Leanna Kirchoff for Friday After Friday · Veronika Krausas for Ghost Opera · Julia Meinwald for REB+VoDKa+ME · Liza Seigido for Cyborgs Are Dancing These grants, the only ones awarded by OPERA America directly to individual artists, provide the composers with financial assistance to advance and promote their operas. 
On the heels of our REB+VoDKa+ME workshop at NYU, Gordon and I went into the recording studio with our NYU cast to record more demos for the show! We were engineered and mixed by the wonderful Chris Gilroy, adding to the the work of the wonderful Andy Zinsmeister, who engineered and mixed our first set of demos for the show. You can now hear the show in its full 89 minutes of glory here!
I'm joining forces with the inimitable Sam Heldt to make a podcast! It's an interview podcast where we talk with theatre people, especially those involved in making new work. So, if you like musical theatre and you like talking, this might be just the thing for you. New episodes will be released every other Monday, and you can listen (and subscribe! And rate us five stars! And write a review saying our voices sound like smooth melted butter!) here!
Gordon and I are so very excited to be part of this year's Interstate 73 Writers Group at Page 73! We'll be using our time in this fabulous company to finish a draft of The Magnificent Seven and start up a brand new show (more info on that when it's more than a twinkle in our collective eye.) More info about the group and the wonderful writers we get to meet with here.  Thrilled to announce that our world premiere production of The Loneliest Girl in the World at the Diversionary Theatre in San Diego received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts! You can check out an article about this and other San Diego grant recipients here, and get more info about the production (including tickets!) here!
Lately I've been enjoying the company of some very inspiring women as part of Maestra, a group put together by Georgia Stitt with the support of Kara Unterberg and The New York Songspace. The group is a community for women composers in theatre, opera, etc, and is a chance to meet some very cool ladies for chatting, tutorials, and casual concerts like the one pictured below!  So grateful to the Dramatists Guild Foundation for awarding Gordon and I, in partnership with Diversionary Theatre, a grant for the upcoming world premiere of The Loneliest Girl in the World. We're beyond honored to be in the company of the rest of this year's recipients, and to be getting support from the organization that helped us write our first full-length musical as a writing team. (We wrote Pregnancy Pact as Dramatist Guild Fellows in 2009-2010). Also, I've been waiting all my life to be called "whip smart and emotionally deep" in print. Check out the Playbill article with the other awesome grant recipients here!  We got some beautiful production photos of REB+VoDKa+ME at NYU from Sub/Urban Photography! Words by Gordon Leary Music by Julia Meinwald Directed by Ben Kamine Music Direction by Rich Silverstein Dramaturgy by Megan McClain Choreographed by Tara Forseth Set Design by Bp Houle Lighting Design by Charlotte Seelig Costume Design by Lux Haac Stage Managed by Lindsay Egalité Kipnis ASM Tara King Photos by Sub/Urban Photography. www.sub-urbanphotography.com Here's a tasteful few!
Emily Walton and Rich Silverstein, two wise souls filled to the brim with holiday magic even on regular calendar days, performed Gordon and my holiday song, Merry Hmm-Mas, at the Lincoln Center Holiday Songbook last month. Here it is! This year I was trying to be really good about buckling down and applying for things -- and I won an ASCAP Plus award -- Wahoo!
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