LORI LAITMAN
UPDATED NOVEMBER 2022
Described by Fanfare Magazine as “one of the most talented and intriguing of living composers,” LORI LAITMAN has composed operas, choral works, and hundreds of songs setting texts by classical and contemporary poets, including those who perished in the Holocaust. Her music is widely performed throughout the world and has generated substantial critical acclaim. The Journal of Singing wrote “One cannot help but be astounded by the endless reserves of Laitman's musical imagination as well as her unerring instincts for setting texts with sensitivity and grace.”
In May 2016, Opera Colorado presented the World Premiere of Laitman’s opera The Scarlet Letter, with a libretto by David Mason. Gramophone Magazine wrote of the 2017 release: “The first thing that leaps into one’s ears is the sheer beauty of the music. Laitman has devoted much of her career to the art song, and her ability to meld words with lyrical, often soaring lines is on abundant display in her…impressive and fervent opera.” Of its Naxos release, Gramophone Magazine wrote: “The first thing that leaps into one’s ears is the sheer beauty of the music…and her ability to meld words with lyrical, often soaring lines is on abundant display in her…impressive and fervent opera.” The CD was named a Critic's Choice by Opera News and one of the top 5 CDs of 2018 by Fanfare Magazine. Laitman and Mason also collaborated on Vedem, a Holocaust-themed oratorio commissioned and premiered by Music of Remembrance. A staged production of this work, alongside Hans Krasa's Brundibar, premiered with Indianapolis Opera in March 2022. Laitman and Mason continue their collaboration with Ludlow, an opera that examines the U.S. immigrant experience through the lens of the 1914 Colorado mining town disaster. The Wind Sighs, the Poet's aria from the opera, opens Stephen Powell's 2021 Grammy-nominated CD American Composers at Play.
The Three Feathers, Laitman’s children’s opera with librettist Dana Gioia (based on a Grimm’s fairy tale) was commissioned by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech, where it premiered in October 2014. Seattle Opera commissioned an abridged version of the work, which toured Washington State in 2018. The orchestral abridged version premiered at The Hartt School in January 2019, and L'arietta Productions in Singapore presented the international premiere in November 2019. Opera Steamboat's full production took place in August 2022 and the next full production will be September 2023 with Solo Opera in California.
Uncovered, Laitman’s one-act chamber opera with librettist Leah Lax (based on her memoir), has been commissioned by Utah State University, City Lyric Opera and The New York Opera Society. The premiere took place in March 2022 at The Caine Lyric Theatre in Logan, UT in a production directed by Beth Greenberg, who also directed City Lyric Opera's NYC premiere in November 2022. The work was a finalist for the 2018 Pellicciotti Opera Prize.
Laitman's music is praised for its uniqueness, craft and beauty: “unmistakable…masterful” (Opera News); “artistry of the highest order” (Textura.org); “gripping and thought-provoking” (American Record Guide). She's received commissions from the BBC, The Royal Philharmonic Society, Opera America, Opera Colorado, Seattle Opera, Grant Park Music Festival, Music of Remembrance and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Her discography is extensive, with releases on Acis, Albany, Naxos and other labels. Her works have been featured on Thomas Hampson’s Song of America radio, Internet series and website, and in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. She is a frequent guest composer at universities across the country.
A magna cum laude Yale College graduate, she received her MM from Yale School of Music, which awarded her the Ian Mininberg Alumni Award for Distinguished Service in May 2018. For more information, please visit www.artsongs.com.
photo: Anne Lenox
DAVID MASON
David Mason’s books of poems include The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. His verse novel, Ludlow, was published in 2007, and named best poetry book of the year by the Contemporary Poetry Review and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. It was also featured on the PBS News Hour. Author of a collection of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry, his memoir, News from the Village, appeared in 2010. A new collection of essays, Two Minds of a Western Poet, followed in 2011. Mason has also co-edited several textbooks and anthologies, including Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism, Twentieth Century American Poetry, and Twentieth Century American Poetics: Poets on the Art of Poetry. His poetry, prose and translations have appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, Agenda, Modern Poetry in Translation, The New Criterion, The Yale Review, The Hudson Review, The American Scholar, The Irish Times, and The Southern Review. Anthologies include Best American Poetry and others. He has also written the libretti for composer Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter and her oratorio, Vedem. He recently won the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize for the development of a new libretto based upon Ludlow. His one-act opera with composer Tom Cipullo, After Life, premiered in Seattle and San Francisco in 2015. A former Fulbright Fellow to Greece, he served as Poet Laureate of Colorado from 2010 to 2014, and teaches at Colorado College.
In 2014-15 Mason published two new poetry collections: Sea Salt: Poems of a Decade and Davey McGravy: Tales to Be Read Aloud to Children and Adult Children. In 2018 he published Voices, Places: Essays and The Sound: New and Selected Poems. He is married to Tasmanian poet Cally Conan-Davies.
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