C O M P O S I T I O N
This is not that dawn
Opera in two acts for 6 voices and chamber orchestra.
This is not that dawn is the story of two women separated during the 1947 Partition of India. Meera is a kathak dancer who falls in love with a local muslim boy. Anitha is her daughter. Raised in England by her aunt Manju, Anitha journeys back to India to find answers to her questions about the fate of her mother who was lost and thought dead during the violence of Partition.
Upcoming Workshop Performance:
May 23, 2022
Center for Arts at the Armory
Somerville, MA
En la ardiente oscuridad (2019)
Opera in three acts for 12 voices and piano. Sung in Spanish.
Based on the play by Antonio Buero-Vallejo, En la ardiente oscuridad (In the burning darkness) is a thrilling drama set in a school for the blind. Follow the story of rival students Carlos and Ignacio, as their ideological war threatens to tear their community apart.
World-Premiere Workshop Performance:
September 6 / 8, 2019
Mosesian Center for the Arts
Watertown, MA
Upcoming Productions:
Phoenicia Festival of the Voice
August 2022
Phoenicia, NY
Three Poems of Angelina Weld Grimké (2021)
-comissioned by Dana Lynne Varga-
soprano, viola, piano
I. Tenebris
II. Trees
III. The Black Finger
Ozymandias (2020)
4 voices SATB, piano
Text by Percy Bysshe Shelley:
I met a stranger from a far off land
Who said "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the ground,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies
Whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.
Nothing beside remains, round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Sonnett (2018)
Voice, piano
Text by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
I know my mind and I have made my choice;
Not from your temper does my doom depend;
Love me or love me not, you have no voice
In this, which is my portion to the end.
Your presence and your favours, the full part
That you could give, you now can take away:
What lies between your beauty and my heart
Not even you can trouble or betray.
Mistake me not - unto my inmost core
I do desire your kiss upon my mouth;
They have not craved a cup of water more
That bleach upon the deserts of the South;
Here might you bless me; what you cannot do
Is bow me down, who have been loved by you
The light remained (2022)
7 songs for tenor and piano
I. He told me that he loves me
II. Requited love
III. The light remained
IV. We clasped hands
V. A wedding
VI. He will never know
VII. Kiss me under the high Sierra
Grace Darling (2017)
SATB choir, piano
Text by William Wordsworth:
Oh! That winds and waves could speak
Of things which their united power called forth
From the pure depths of her humanity!
A maiden gentle, yet at duty's call
Firm and unflinching, as the Lighthouse reared
On the island-rock, her lonely dwelling place;
Or like the invincible Rock itself that braves,
Age after age, the hostile elements.
All night the storm had raged, nor ceased, nor paused,
When, as day broke, the Maid, through misty air,
Espies far off a Wreck, amid the surf,
Beating on one of those disastrous isles
Half of a Vessel, half no more, the rest
Had vanished.