Opera

List of Works

Mud Girl (2025)

Chamber opera in 1 act. 20 minutes. Libretto: Christine Evans

In the flooded aftermath of a collapsed civilization, River and Maude live out a subsistence life under the ruins of a once massive bridge. Maude - an ex-scientist - is wary of the “poisons from the the past” - bioengineered drone birds, smart bombs, and - most pervasively - intelligent plastics. River, her found daughter, is searching for meaning and companionship in their lonely world, and she secretly builds herself a friend, Poly: a girl made of mud, sticks, and the forbidden plastics. As Poly gains sentience, Maude determines that she must be destroyed or she poses a dire threat to their way of life - but River has brought something into being that cannot be unmade.

Jo Dooba So Paar (2023)

Chamber opera in 1 act. 20 minutes. Libretto: Omar Najmi

Friends and former lovers Rohail and Farraz meet on Eid-al-Fitr after their first semesters at separate colleges. Rohail admits that he still has feelings for Farraz, Farraz admits that he is engaged to a woman through a family arrangement. When they part ways after a bitter argument, Rohail’s cousin Zainab encourages him to find harmony in his conflicting identities through the words of Queer Sufi poet Amir Khusro.

This Is Not That Dawn (2022)

Opera in 2 acts. 80 minutes. Libretto: Omar Najmi

Set partially during the 1947 Partition of India, This Is Not That Dawn follows two parallel stories: the story of Meera, a Hindu Kathak dancer in Punjab who falls in love with her Muslim neighbor on the brink of partition, and the story of Anitha - their daughter - raised in England by her aunt and uncle, unaware of her true identity, but connected to her mother across time and space through a shared passion for dance.

The Portrait (2023)

Chamber opera in 1 scene. 10 minutes. Libretto: Catherine Yu

An imagined vignette in the life of prominent Black photographer Thomas Askew, as he takes one of his most famous portraits. Askew and Mamie Westmoreland (the subject of the portrait) discuss the future of Atlanta’s burgeoning Black middle-class. While they have differing perspectives about what will best serve their community, they ultimately agree that a diversity of ideas is critical to a healthy and functioning democracy.

En la ardiente oscuridad (2019)

Opera in 3 acts. 120 minutes. Libretto: Omar Najmi, from Antonio Buero Vallejo

An operatic adaptation of Antonio Buero Vallejo’s classic anti-fascist play, En la ardietne oscuridad is a political allegory set in a school for the blind. Ignacio, a new student turned demagogue, seeks to upend the social order of the school, while star student Carlos resists him at every turn even as Ignacio gains a loyal following. Driven and determined to protect the school at all cost, Carlos murders Ignacio and successfully passes it off as an “accident”, realizing only in the end that in so doing, he has become just like Ignacio.

Art Song

The Comet at Yell’ham (2024)

Song for high voice and string quartet. Text by Thomas Hardy

La Fin de Pierrot (2024)

Song for soprano Pierrot Ensemble. Text by Katy Early

The Light Remained (2023)

Song cycle for tenor and piano. Text by Omar Najmi

  1. He told me that he loves me

  2. Requited love

  3. The light remained

  4. We clasped hands

  5. A wedding

  6. Kiss me under the high Sierra

More Than Our Own Caves (2022)

Song cycle for high voice and piano. Text by Marlanda Dekine

  1. “We’ve shared freckles…”

  2. “We were in crisis…”

  3. “In the dream…”

  4. “I need to know it’s okay…”

  5. “I want to return…”

At Last (2022)

Song cycle for soprano, trumpet, and piano. Text by Geraldine Anello

  1. Edge

  2. Who

  3. Without daring

  4. Letters

  5. This is it

  6. Intermezzo

  7. Happiest day

  8. Land

  9. Missing

  10. Much better men

  11. At last

Three Poems of Angelina Weld Grimke (2021)

Song cycle for soprano, viola, and piano. Text by Angelina Weld Grimke

  1. Tenebris

  2. Trees

  3. The Black Finger

my name is Alondra (2021)

Song cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano. Text by Alondra Bobadilla

  1. “tell me about yourself”

  2. “the family, not of blood…”

  3. “the shower head knows…”

  4. “somewhere in the barrio of Alma Rosa…”

Choral

The Last Invocation (2022)

Motet for unaccompanied voices, SAATTB. Text by Walt Whitman

Grace Darling (2018)

For SATB choir and piano. Text by William Wordsworth