Marnie Breckenridge (born September 24, 1982 ) [1] is an American singer. She is a soprano performing opera, classical music, cross-over, operetta and classical sacred music.
She graduated from Pacific Union College in Angwin, overlooking the Napa Valley, with a bachelor's degree in music in 1993. She went on to get a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Celebrated for her roles in contemporary opera, she originated the role of Mother in David T. Little and Royce Vavrek's Dog Days [2] in 2012. In 2020 she was awarded the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance by an Individual in the operatic field for her performance as Jacqueline du Pré in Luna Pearl Woolf and Royce Vavrek's world premiere presentation of Jacqueline presented by Tapestry Opera. [3]
Jacqueline Mary du Pré OBE was a British cellist, widely regarded as one of the greatest cellists of the 20th century. Born in Oxford, she began studying at the Guildhall School of Music in the mid-1950s with William Pleeth, earning the school's Gold Medal in 1960. Her musical development was further enhanced by advanced studies with prominent cellists such as Paul Tortelier, Pablo Casals, and Mstislav Rostropovich.
Royce Vavrek is a Canadian-born Brooklyn-based librettist, playwright, dance scenarist, musical theatre writer and filmmaker known for his collaborations with composers David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Mikael Karlsson, Ricky Ian Gordon, Paola Prestini and Du Yun, soprano Lauren Worsham, producers Beth Morrison and Lawrence Edelson, and conductors Steven Osgood, Julian Wachner and Alan Pierson.
Cristian Amigo is an American composer, improviser, guitarist, sound designer, and ethnomusicologist. His compositional and performing output includes blues and soul, music for the theater, chamber and orchestral music, opera, avant-jazz and rock music, and art/pop song. He has also recorded solo albums on the innova, Deep Ecology and BA labels. Amigo earned a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UCLA where he focused on the music of Chile, Peru, and Argentina, as well as anthropological theory, critical studies, and intercultural aesthetics. While in graduate school, he was second guitarist to the Peruvian Afro-Criollo guitarist Carlos Hayre, with whom he played in concerts and festivals including the World Festival of Sacred Music. He is currently composer-in-residence at INTAR Theater in New York City and Music/Design/Production Faculty @ CalArts School of Theater Department of Experience Design and Production in Valencia, California.
David T. Little is a Grammy-nominated American composer, record producer, and drummer known for his operatic, orchestral, and chamber works, most notably his operas JFK,Soldier Songs, and Dog Days which was named a standout opera of recent decades by The New York Times. He is the artistic director of Newspeak, an eight-piece amplified ensemble that explores the boundaries between rock and classical music, and is the Chair of the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music.
Andrew Gerle is an American composer and pianist known for his musical adaptation of "Meet John Doe" with librettist Eddie Sugarman which premiered at the Ford's Theater in Washington. He is the recipient of four Richard Rodgers Awards administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Jonathan Larson Grant. His opera "The Beach", a collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek was presented on May 14, 2011 as part of New York City Opera's VOX Contemporary American Opera Lab.
Pentatone is an international classical music label located in Baarn, Netherlands.
Missy Mazzoli is an American composer and pianist who is a member of the composition faculty at the Mannes College of Music. In 2018, she became one of the first two women to receive a commission from the Metropolitan Opera House. She is the founder and keyboardist for Victoire, an electro-acoustic band. From 2012-2015 she was composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia, in collaboration with Gotham Chamber Opera and Music-Theater Group. Her music is published by G. Schirmer. Mazzoli received a 2015 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a Fulbright Grant to the Netherlands, and in 2018 was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Classical Composition. In 2018, Mazzoli was named for a two-season term as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mazzoli was named the Bragg Artist-in-Residence at Mount Allison University in Canada beginning in 2022.
27 is an opera by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek in a prologue and five acts that explores the relationship of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and the salons that they hosted at their residence at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. The work was commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. The full cast of five singers was featured on the cover of the June 2014 issue of Opera News. The opera premiered on June 14, 2014, in a production directed by James Robinson and conducted by Michael Christie at the Loretto-Hilton Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The world premiere was recorded by Albany Records.
Du Yun is a Chinese-born American composer, performer, vocalist and performance artist. She won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her opera Angel's Bone, with libretto by Royce Vavrek. She was a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. Du Yun was named as one of the 38 Great Immigrants by the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 2018, and received a 2019 Grammy nomination in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her work Air Glow. In its decade review, UK's Classic FM listed Du Yun's winning of the Pulitzer as No. 6 in "10 ways the 2010s changed classical music forever." Rolling Stone Italia named her as one of the women composers who defined the 2010s.
Jeff Myers is an American composer.
Ana Sokolovic is a Canadian music composer based in Montreal, Quebec, whose contemporary pieces have won several awards in Canada. She is also the Artistic Director of the Quebec Contemporary Music Society.
Steven Osgood is an American classical music conductor.
Katharine Goeldner American mezzo-soprano singer. Goeldner earned a Bachelor's in Music from the University of Iowa in 1985, and Magister Diplom in German Lieder from the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. She has sung dozens of operatic roles with the Metropolitan Opera, the Opéra National de Lyon, the New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Santa Fe Opera, and numerous other houses around the world. She has performed a large symphonic and oratorio repertory with orchestras including the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, and Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and given recitals in the Kennedy Center, Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, and many other venues.
Abigail Fischer is an American mezzo-soprano.
Beth Morrison is an American producer of contemporary opera.
The Music Critics Association of North America gives an Award for Best New Opera annually to given to a composer and librettist.
Talise Trevigne is an American operatic soprano.
Luna Pearl Woolf is a Canadian-American composer, producer, and dramaturg. Her oeuvre includes opera, chamber music, orchestra, and choral compositions including works for dramatic chamber music, silent film scores, and musical story-telling. Her works have been commissioned Carnegie Hall, Washington National Opera, Tapestry Opera, Minnesota Sinfonia, Salle Bourgie, ECM+, Perelman Performing Arts Center, Concours Musical International de Montréal, among others, with collaborations with artists including Jeremy Irons, Cornelia Funke, Joyce DiDonato, Frederica von Stade, Royce Vavrek, David Van Taylor, Matt Haimovitz, and Dame Evelyn Glennie amongst many others.
Mark Campbell is a New York-based librettist and lyricist whose operas have received both a Pulitzer Prize in Music and a GRAMMY Award. Mark began writing for the stage as a musical theatre lyricist, but turned to libretto-writing after he premiered Volpone, his first full-length opera in 2004 at Wolf Trap Opera Company.
Lester Lynch is an American operatic baritone.