Toronto’s Loose Tea Music Theatre has announced participants for their first-ever BIPOC Composer Librettist Development Program.
The two-year program is mandated to address systemic racism and underrepresentation in the opera and music theatre scene.
Two cohorts of BIPOC-identifying composers and librettists (Ashley Au, Christene Browne, Shreya Jha, and Nam Nguyenm) will write 30-45 minute chamber operas under the mentorship of four established composers and librettist. Composer mentors are Eliot Britton and Cecilia Livingston, and librettists mentors are Marjorie Chan and Marcia Johnson.
“We cannot wait to hit the ground running with the first cohorts of this program,” said Artistic Directors Alaina Viau and Joanna Diindiisikwe Simmons in a statement. “We believe that this program will help bring needed change to an industry where there is extraordinarily little BIPOC representation.”
Loose Tea was so impressed by the quality of applicants they decided to commission an opera from one of the composers, Olivia Shortt. The Museum will be an allegory about how our society treats missing person cases specifically MMIWG2S.
Congrats to all the participants.
#LUDWIGVAN
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