So as good news goes, this will be hard to top. And it’s only January! I’ve been invited back to the Virginia Arts Festival as a Composer Fellow with the John Duffy Composers Institute. This year, I’ll be a Returning Fellow which is a new program funded by a Mellon Foundation grant that enables the VAF to bring back two Fellows from previous sessions. As a Returning Fellow (Re-Fellow?), I’ll get the chance to have scenes from my opera performed with chamber orchestra accompaniment, which is a magnificent opportunity and a real privilege!

Once again I’ll be presenting scenes from The Final Battle for Love, this time in their fully orchestrated glory. There are some minor revisions I want to make to existing scenes and I have a new scene in mind that I’ve been wanting to write, The Penultimate Battle for Love that will put most of the main characters on stage earlier in the opera, but we’ll see. Regardless of whether I do revised scenes or new material, it will be a blast. Can’t wait!