Outreach and Community Engagement
I Am My Future Opera Project
Project Goal: Over the course of four months, work with a group of young women at Harris County Youth Village, a youth detention center in Houston, to develop a fifteen-minute opera, culminating in a performance for the other residents at Harris County Youth Village
Partner Organizations: Da Camera Young Artist Program, Houston Grand Opera Teaching Artist Program, Harris County Youth Village
Co-led workshops weekly from January to April 2019, gathering material created by participants
Synthesized the compositional ideas of the group into an opera
Performed the opera with Harris County Youth Village participants and other Young Artist Fellows
I Am My Future was a 2018 project in collaboration with Harris County Youth Village, the Da Camera Young Artist Program and the Houston Grand Opera Teaching Artist program. Harris County Youth Village is a youth detention center in Houston, Texas, offering special rehabilitation programs to its residents. The goal of the I Am My Future program was to foster healing through creation; the young women in the program worked together to create an opera that honored their experiences and visualized a future in which they had more freedom and empowerment. As the composer fellow for Da Camera, I organized weekly workshops for four months, gradually gathering and synthesizing the material that the participants created. The result was one of the most uplifting experiences I have ever had; I have never seen a more energized connection between a group of performers and their audience. I was most moved by the empowerment and pride the young women felt from their creative contributions – after the performance they all referred to the piece as “our opera.”
Arts and Culture Texas published a glowing writeup about the project, which can be found at the following link (artsandculturetx.com/texas-lens-the-most-important-work-we-do-scenes-from-i-am-my-future/)
Create an Opera Camp
Project Goal: Compose a ten-minute opera with elementary and middle school students
in one week, culminating in a premiere performance
Partner Organization: Houston Grand Opera
o Presented fun demonstrations on text painting and basic compositional techniques
o Led sessions to gather material for songs, then synthesized material into a complete narrative
o Performed the piano accompaniment with the students
WITS Collaborative Project
Project Goal: Connect high school poets with musicians, culminating in a concert of vocal
works setting participants’ poetry to music
Partner Organizations: Da Camera Young Artist Program, Writers in the Schools, Chavez High School
o Gave a group lesson demonstrating text painting in art songs
o Consulted with participants in the program to understand the context for their poetry
o Set students’ poems to music and created backing tracks for students to recite their poetry over
o Helped organize a final performance via zoom, performing piano and giving feedback about
how the poetry inspired the music
Lighthouse Choir Theme Song
Project Goal: Develop a “theme song” for the Lighthouse Choir, culminating in a premiere
Partner Organizations: Da Camera Young Artist Program, Lighthouse Choir
performance of the song. The Lighthouse Choir is a community choir in Houston comprised
of musicians with visual impairment
o Led three songwriting workshops, progressing from brainstorming, to composing, to rehearsing
o Premiere performance with full choir and director at fundraiser event
Sonic Postcards
Project Goal: Create electronic music pieces with students in the TREK Program at Travis
Partner Organizations: Da Camera Young Artist Program, Travis Elementary School TREK Program
Elementary School, culminating in a presentation of the pieces at a school event. The TREK program
is a small group of neurodiverse students within the student body of Travis Elementary School
o Attended a field trip, helped students make field recordings with handheld recording devices
o Led weekly workshops showing how to add effects to digital audio and form recordings into a piece
o Gave a brief presentation at the school event, giving context for the three new fixed media pieces
School News Report Project
Project Goal: Create music for Piney Point Elementary’s school news broadcast
Partner Organizations: Da Camera Young Artist Program, Piney Point Elementary
o Talked with students at Piney Point Elementary to figure out what musical character they wanted
o Composed music matching their requests and delivered music as audio files
School Song Project
Project Goal: Work with students at Crossroads Elementary to compose a new school song,
culminating in a premiere performance at a school event. Crossroads Elementary is a small
community of neurodiverse students.
Partner Organizations: Da Camera Young Artist Program, Crossroads Elementary
o Led four workshops, working together to create lyrics, create melodies, and rehearse the song
o Performed with the students at the school event