The triple-themed works of Georgia Shreve -- Triptych, Trio, and Oratorio: Portraits of the 20th Century sing texts from James Agee, Sun Tzu, and Hildegard of Bingen. Using chamber chorus and instruments, Shreve reflects on some of the dark moments of our last century. Triptych is a work for cello and piano. Trio, for violin, cello, and piano, works within a traditional form to explore contemporary musical elements.

Georgia Shreve’s music has been performed at Weill Hall, CAMI Hall, Steinway Hall, Florence Gould Hall, American Opera Projects, Merkin Concert Hall, Daryl Roth 2, Heckscher Theater, Theatre Row Kirk Theatre and Theatre Row Studio Theatre. Her Piano Quartet was awarded first prize in the Contemporary Recording Society’s Composition Competition and was later issued by them on CD. Her music has been performed by the Ahn Trio, Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and the Universalist Church Choir. Shreve studied Creative Writing at Stanford, Brown, and Columbia. Her fiction and poetry have been published in the New Yorker, New Republic, and New Criterion magazines, among others, and recently she won the Stanford University Fiction Award.

The Music of Alvin Singleton
Brooklyn Bones: Requiem for the Revolutionary War Prison Ship Martyrs
Text by Patricia Hampl

Commissioned by the Fort Greene Park Conservancy for the 100th anniversary and re-dedication of the Park's Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, Alvin Singleton's Brooklyn Bones is a eulogy for the 11,000 men and boys who died in horrid conditions on British Prison Ships harbored in New York City’s East River during the Revolutionary War. The work will be performed by choral group Cantori New York and orchestra, tenor Cameron Smith, and conducted by Mark Shapiro. AOP was awarded a Meet the Composer Creative Connections grant for Singleton's master classes in local Brooklyn schools in coordination with the works premiere.

Alvin Singleton melds improvisatory techniques and rhythmic inventiveness with classical structures in his music which often deals with a wide range of contemporary issues of topical importance. Sing to the Sun, a collection of selected chamber works released in February 2007, was named Album of the Year by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In 1989 the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra released a recording of Singleton’s orchestral music on Nonesuch records which included his After Fallen Crumbs, A Yellow Rose Petal and Shadows.

After living and working in Europe for fourteen years, Singleton returned to the United States to become Composer-in-Residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He is the recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship and was commissioned by The Serge Koussevitsky Music Foundation and American Composers Orchestra for the orchestral work When Given a Choice, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in April 2004. Other recent compositions include the string orchestral work After Choice which was premiered by the Orchestra of the League of Composers under conductor Louis Karchin in June, 2009 in New York City and Almost a Boogie which saw its debut by the Walden Chamber Players in Brookline, Massachusetts in March, 2010.

LISTEN TO AN EXCERPT FROM BROOKYLN BONES

Read an essay by novelist and librettist Patricia Hampl about writing the text for Brooklyn Bones.

Brooklyn Bones was commissioned by The Fort Greene Park Conservancy to celebrate the Centennial and Re-dedication of the Fort Greene Park Prison Ship Martyrs Monument.

Gilda Lyons' song cycle Songs From the F Train, a setting of poems by three Brooklyn schoolgirls - Samori Covington (age 9), Alexis Cummings, and Najaya Royal (both age 12), a  2009 co-commission from AOP, Fort Greene Park Conservancy and The Walt Whitman Project will be performed by Nicole Mitchell, mezzo and Thomas Bagwell, piano.