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The Stream

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PREMIERE: Feb. 18, 8:00p ET

The video premiere will go live here
TALKBACK
8:30p ET

A Talkback session will follow the premiere of this opera. 
Go behind the scenes, ask questions, give feedback, and learn about the process of bringing the new operas to life in unique and
challenging circumstances with the Creative Team and Artists.

ABOUT the OPERA

Jonah, was a DJ.  Since Darian left him he has felt lost.  Jonah was alone, then felt a sense of we when he was with Darian, but since Darian left to join The Stream, Jonah has been thrust back into a feeling of isolation.  Jonah longs to be part of something more and seeks to join The Stream himself.  The Stream warns Jonah that the process is irreversible and that the risk of death is significant.  Will Jonah be saved by becoming part of the stream?

COMPOSER & LIBRETTIST

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Michi Wiancko

MICHI WIANCKO is a composer, arranger and violinist whose work has been performed by ensembles, bands and orchestras around the world. She has collaborated with artists from across a wide musical spectrum and performed with some of the great musical artists of our time. 

She has been commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Lyric Theater, On Site Opera, Ecstatic Music Festival, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Camerata Bern, The SPCO’s Liquid Music series, Aizuri Quartet, Enso Quartet, Sybarite5, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, and Metropolis Ensemble. She also composes music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi. 

Michi’s first opera, Murasaki’s Moon premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in May of 2019. This work created in collaboration with librettist Deborah Brevoort and director Eric Einhorn from OnSite Opera. Michi is a 2018 recipient of an Opera America Commissioning Grant. 

Upcoming projects include new compositions for yMusic and NOW Ensemble, and arrangements and reimaginings for Camerata Bern, violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, soprano Anna Prohaska, and violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.

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Michi co-composed, performed, engineered, and mixed the original score of the film The Mend, profiled by Time Magazine as one of the Top 10 films at SXSW. She has worked closely with the indie rock band Wye Oak, re-imagining their songs for electro-acoustic ensemble. She has also arranged for the band EL VY (comprised of Brent Knopf and The National's Matt Berninger), whom she joined for an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Michi’s arrangements have been performed by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Arkansas Symphony, Spokane Symphony, Harvard Chamber Orchestra, Burlington Chamber Orchestra, Boston Conservatory Orchestra, and The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

A passionate collaborator and performer, Michi has been fortunate to work with artists across a vast musical spectrum: Missy Mazzoli, Steve Reich, Silkroad, Yo-Yo Ma, Wye Oak, Emily Wells, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Daniel Wohl, Emanuel Ax, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Judd Greenstein, David T. Little, Gabriela Lena Frank, Vijay Iyer, International Contemporary Ensemble, The Knights, A Far Cry, Alarm Will Sound, Mark Morris Dance Group, and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, among others.

Described by Gramophone Magazine as an "alluring soloist with heightened expressive and violinistic gifts,” Michi gave her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed her recital debut in Weill Hall, and released a solo album of works by Émile Sauret on Naxos. More recently, she recorded two different projects for Nonesuch Records: a new string quartet composed by Laurie Anderson, and a new work by Steve Reich entitled “Pulse” with the International Contemporary Ensemble, which they performed in Carnegie Hall as part of Steve Reich’s 80th birthday celebration.

Michi holds a Bachelor’s degree in music performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and a Master’s degree from Juilliard, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein and the late Robert Mann, respectively. Her early teachers include Sharon Holland and Haroutune Bedelian.

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A native of California, Michi shares her time between New York and Gill, a small farming community in western Massachusetts, where she and her husband, composer Judd Greenstein have created a music festival and artistic retreat at their home - 100 acre hilltop former dairy farm, Antenna Cloud Farm. www.michiwiancko.com

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Sarah LaBrie

Sarah LaBrie is a writer and librettist based in Los Angeles.  Sarah a co-producer on Blindspotting (Starz) and has a pilot in development with Working Title. She is also a writer for Disney+’s live action Beauty and the Beast Prequel. 

 

In 2018/2019 her oratorio, dreams of the new world, written with 2019 Pulitzer-Prize winner Ellen Reid, premiered at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Prototype Festival in NYC.  Her work in The Industry's opera Hopscotch was featured in The New Yorker as well as The New York Times, L.A. Times, and on NPR.  Her work appears in the Literary Review, Epoch, Joyland, the EEEL, Encyclopedia Journal, LA Weekly and The Verge. She is the editor of the California Prose Directory 2015 (Outpost19) an annual anthology featuring the best recently published prose about life in the Golden State.

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She was a writer on Made For Love, the TV adaptation of the novel by Alissa Nutting, created by Patrick Somerville (Maniac) premiered on HBO Max in 2020, and season two of Love, Victor (Hulu) and recently wrote Season 3 of Even the Rich (Wondery), a podcast about American billionaires. 

She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from Writers in the Schools, New York University, the Nebraska Art Farm and the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, Ucross, the Corporation of Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and is the editor of The California Prose Directory 2016: New Writing From the Golden State (Outpost19). Her writing also appears in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Review, The Literary Review, Epoch, Lucky Peach, the L.A. Weekly and elsewhere. 

She has taught creative writing and composition at USC, NYU and PS111 on New York's lower east side. She grew up in the Third Ward of Houston and holds a degree in comparative literature and literary arts from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from NYU.
 

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