Musical Works
Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing
Music by Scott Davenport Richards
A story about the creation of the world and the evolution of man. Five actors play eight characters ranging from Mosquitoes and Slugs to Brown Bears and Eagles taking the audience on a comic romp through the stages of life, including birth, coming of age, falling in love and death. Inspired by Saturday morning cartoons and trickster legends from world mythologies, the story of Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing is not a Native American myth nor is it a children’s show. Suitable for audiences of all ages.
Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing can be produced using a synthesizer, with the arrangements created by the composer. A fully arranged demo tape is available.
Awards: Frederick Loewe Award. (more…)
King Island Christmas
An oratorio for the musical stage
Music by David Friedman
Based on a true story from the Bering Sea of Alaska. The North Star freighter, carrying the village priest, is anchored in the Bering Sea on Christmas eve, on it’s last arctic voyage before the winter ice closes in around King Island. The waves are too high for the villagers to go out and fetch the priest in their walrus skin boats; without him, there will be no Christmas celebration. In a communal effort, the villagers triumphantly carry their oomiak over a mountain to the calmer waters of the lee, and bring the priest ashore. Christmas is celebrated on King Island. King Island Christmas is a heartwarming story about the power of community and the ability of the human spirit to overcome adversity.
Winner of the Frederick Loewe Award. (more…)
Goodbye My Island
Music by David Friedman
Goodbye My Island tells the story of the forced removal of the King Islanders from their home in the Bering Sea of Alaska by the US Government in 1963. This true story, which was fictionalized by Alaskan author Jean Rogers in her book of the same title, is told through the eyes of different community members who experienced the loss of their home, community and culture. Many of the characters in Goodbye My Island are also in King Island Christmas. Although inspired by a historical event, Goodbye My Island is a work of fiction. Currently scored for piano.
Two developmental workshops at New Dramatists, with grants from Cameron MacIntosh, and the Yip Harburg Foundation.
NEW - Embedded
Music by Patrick Soluri.
If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, what kinds of stories would he write? And what kinds of horrors would he devise to scare contemporary New Yorkers who have seen it all? Embedded re-imagines Poe’s Cask of the Amontillado for the year 2010 in New York City. It is part of a trilogy of operas called The Poe Project, commissioned by the American Lyric Theatre.
Steal a Pencil for Me
Music by Gerald Cohen
Steal a Pencil for Me is a full-length opera about one the Holocaust’s most unusual love stories—between Jaap Polak, a Dutch accountant and Ina Soep, the daughter of a wealthy diamond manufacturer—who fell in love in the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Based on their love letters, which were published in a book of the same title, Steal a Pencil for Me is about the indestructibility of the life spirit and the power of humankind to survive adversity. The opera dramatizes intimate concerns and private dramas alongside the epic horrors of the Holocaust.
