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Sharing the Process: A Conversation with the Composer and the Poet

Bykbrody

Artistic Director Tom Morgan had a chance to catch up with Christopher Theofanidis and Melissa Studdard, the creators of Door Out of the Fire, which Ars Nova Singers will premiere this weekend, featuring Nicolò Spera, guitar, and Abigail Nims, mezzo-soprano.

Tom Morgan I just want to say up front that I personally really love this piece; I’ve now had the opportunity to sit with it for more than a year. Nicolò shared some of the poetry with me in January of 2021, and I got to see a draft of the score a month later, in February. So, a question for both of you, could you share with us a little about your timeline with the piece? I assume it started with Melissa writing the poetry.

Melissa Studdard Yes. One of the poems I had already written and it was already published. Then when Chris and Nicolò started talking about the kinds of themes they wanted to have, I realized that I already had a poem that was going to be a perfect fit, so then I could build the rest of the piece around that. That poem was “Migration Patterns.” After that, I wrote “The Book of Rahul,” which was written right after the incident, when Rahul Dubey brought the protesters into his home (June 1, 2020; the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington DC after the murder of George Floyd).

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