Spotlight on Librettist Jarrod Lee and
Composers B.E. Boykin and Timothy Amukele
by Casey Robards
The 2024 NOA National Conference held special meaning for many, with its spotlight on several composers and librettists who attended the conference in person. Through future SIO conference sessions and newsletter articles, we seek to feature living composers and librettists who are bringing opera to new audiences, exploring new forms of sung theatrical works, and who embody a commitment to collaboration, storytelling and community building. This interview with Jarrod, B.E. and Timothy will showcase how they are involved in these facets of making opera often utilizing sacred themes and contexts.
The quotations below are taken from conversations held via zoom and have been lightly edited for concision and clarity.
“We like telling stories that can incorporate multigenerational experiences. I want to see life reflected and expressed onstage. The core of what we are doing is telling stories that are FOR and ABOUT the audience. Not just telling stories TO an audience.” - Jarrod Lee
Jarrod Lee and Timothy Amukele personify personal gratitude, mutual respect, and a strong desire to promote community. Through their works, they enter into existing communities, holding up a mirror to tell the stories that already exist within the generations. Whether past, present or futuristic, the stories celebrate humanity, love, connection. We will introduce you to their operatic collaborations: Spirit Moves, Kandake, What is Love? An AI Story, Two Corners, and Oshun.
Spirit Moves
A 30-minute long community opera telling a story of how our ancestors watch and guide us from beyond. It is a fun, family-oriented, portable and modern production. In it, a grandmother transitions to the after-life and her multi-generational story is told through ballet, spoken word, operatic solo and ensemble singing, a child/youth singer, and community sing-along. In English.
Commissioned by IN Series, Washington D.C.
Premiered: 2022, remounted in 2023
*presently, this work can be seen publicly on INvision, a free streaming platform for IN Series and their uploaded operas. The piece was shown to over 300 children (grades 3rd-6th) and their families in the Washington D.C. area in partnership with the DC Department of Parks and Recreation, to enthusiastic and interested reception.
Production needs:
Mezzo soprano soloist, baritone soloist, treble soloist
Dancers (2)
Piano, bassoon, djembe
(Amukele and Lee wish to expand the work to add a choral partnership and additional dancers.)
The piece intentionally breaks the 4th wall, with a mother directly addressing the audience in the opening. This piece is ideal for companies and organizations seeking to establish a stronger bond with the communities in their cities, beyond asking the residents to come to the opera house– this work provides an avenue to enter the community spaces (Farmer’s Markets, community centers, churches, schools). It would also be ready to go for outreach and educational use, as it attracts an audience of young people and those interested in youth.
View a teaser trailer for Spirit Moves on YouTube.
Discover more about Spirit Moves on INvision.
Watch Spirit Moves on INvision.
Kandake
/kandake/
A 20-minute, 3 scene opera, Kandake is based on the true story of Amanirenas, the one-eyed queen who ruled the kingdom of Kush (modern-day Sudan) for decades. During her reign, Amanirenas did what few other rulers could: she resisted a Roman invasion, fending off Caesar Augustus, fought alongside her 30,000 troops, and successfully preserved the independence of her nation. The piece can be expanded to two full acts.
Timothy Amukele, composer
Jarrod Lee, librettist
Commissioned by Opera Theatre of St. Louis (OTSL)
Premiere: February 2025
This opera is part of the third year of the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis New Works Collective in which a community-led panel selects six composers and librettists to produce new works for premiere in February 2025.
What is Love? An AI Story
In a post-apocalyptic future after the great war, human embryos were preserved in secure development chambers to be cared for by Andy the android. Andy must transmit all that has been lost to the new humans. Andy learns lessons via a hologram, from its creator who lived over 100 years ago. After thousands of lessons, Andy’s last and most important lesson is “love.” How do you teach love to an android?
Composer: Timothy Amukele
Librettist: Jarrod Lee
Commissioned by The Atlanta Opera for the 96hr Opera Festival
Premiere: June 17th, 2024
Awarded: Audience Favorite and Runner Opera at the 96hr Festival
Android (Treble or Soprano or a higher Mezzo)
Teacher (Baritone)
Orchestration: Piano
Background Story: In an attempt to create life in the future, humans preserved embryos in secure development chambers and prerecorded life lessons via holograms to train androids to become caregivers and teachers for new humans until they are capable of taking care of themselves.
B.E. Boykin and Jarrod Lee describe their meeting as a literal experience with “sacred in opera.” Having been introduced through the American Opera Initiative in 2023, they discovered they shared a family reunion in common, leading them to the discovery that they are cousins.
Two Corners
Two Corners, the opera they wrote together, is also a family story loosely based on Boykin’s paternal grandmother, Florine, a Black woman, and her decades-long friendship with Sarah, a white woman. Source material for the opera included interviews with B.E.’s father, who was 13 when Florine passed away. Lee described meeting Sarah in person and spending time in her residence, drinking tea made with leaves picked fresh from the garden, surrounded by “plant life and your thoughts, prayers, the goodness of God.” B.E. said it was a very ‘spiritual experience” getting to know her own grandmother via the writing of the opera. Upon first hearing in a workshop with Finger Lakes Opera, the audience related the ways in which the work made them think of their own relationships and families.
B.E. Boykin, composer
Jarrod Lee, librettist
Commissioned by Finger Lakes Opera
Premiere: June 28th 2024
One Act, in English
Florine (soprano)
Sarah (soprano)
Hollis (baritone)
Ken/Hobard/JFK (tenor)
Julia (mezzo soprano)
Winnie (soprano)
Young Florine and Young Sarah (dancers)
Radio Announcer/Store Clerk/Doctor (tenor)
Florine’s Children (one baby prop and two actors)
Orchestration: Winds, Horns, Percussion, Strings
“It’s a beautiful feast for the ears. It will soothe all musical appetites…It’s a move, it’s a bop, it’s a feeling, it’s a vibe. It allows the text to breath and land.” - Jarrod Lee on the overall musical style of the opera and his reaction to the final aria.
Boykin shared about her compositional journey, from her love for composition and song writing as a child, then training as a pianist while majoring in music at Spelman, where she arranged a Negro spiritual for the Glee Club for a class assignment. Composition remained a hobby and Boykin experienced many personal rejections and obstacles from established programs and individuals. Being told “it just wasn’t possible” as a young person, caused her to feel that she is just now starting to “accept the fact that I am a composer.”
We in the larger musical community can be reminded of the power and possibility we hold if we do have access to producing venues, funding, donors, granting organizations, and career-promoting helping hands. In this spirit, I am hopeful that Boykin and Lee will find partners to see their work Oshun through workshop, development and premiere. They both speak of their work as a labor of dedication and love, and gratitude for the invitations they have received. Boykin notes that “if they hadn’t asked me [Finger Lakes Opera], I would never have entertained the idea of writing opera.” Let’s continue to spur one another on to good works and well-doing, and have the boldness to encourage new voices and stories into being.
Oshun
This 20-minute opera is rooted in belief in the religion of Ifa, a religion from the continent of Africa that is practiced around the world. Praise of the Orishas (deities) may have been cloaked or mistaken for praise of Catholic Saints in systems of European colonization. English, Yoruba. B.E. and Jarrod plan to expand Oshun and include Spanish as a third language while highlighting additional Orishas.
Oshun (dramatic soprano)
Shango (baritone)
Esu (tenor)
Olodumare (bass)
Orchestration: Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Strings
Composer
Tim Amukele
Tim is a medical doctor, in addition to a composer and arranger of vocal music. His commissions include “I Will Rise” by the New York Chapter of the National Association of Negro Musicians; “What Sweeter Music,” a Christmas cantata by the Queen Anne Methodist Church; “Stand the Storm” for the American Spiritual Ensemble; and Spirit Moves, a community opera for the IN Series opera company in Washington, D.C. In 2023 he wrote Madman, a song cycle based on the parables of Khalil Gibran.
Composer
B.E. Boykin
B.E. (Brittany Elizabeth) is a native of Alexandria, Virginia and comes from a musical family. At the age of 7, she began piano lessons and continued her studies through high school under the tutelage of Mrs. Alma Sanford. Mrs. Sanford guided her through various competitions, such as the NAACP’s ACT-SO competition where she garnered 1st place for 3 consecutive years in the local competition, as well as being awarded The Washington Post “Music and Dance Award” in the spring of 2007. Boykin then pursued her classical piano studies at Spelman College under the leadership of Dr. Rachel Chung. After graduating Spelman College in 2011 with a B.A. in Music, Boykin continued her studies at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. During her time at Westminster, she was awarded the R and R Young Composition Prize just a few months shy of graduating with her M.M. in Sacred Music with a concentration in choral studies in May, 2013. Boykin’s choral piece, “We Sing as One,” was commissioned to celebrate Spelman College’s 133rd Anniversary of its founding at the 2014 Founders Day Convocation. She has also been featured as the conductor/composer-in-residence for the 2017 Harry T. Burleigh Commemorative Spiritual Festival at Tennessee State University. Boykin has been commissioned and collaborated with several organizations, including a number of ACDA divisions, the Minnesota Opera and the Kennedy Center. She obtained her Ph.D. from Georgia State University with an emphasis in Music Education and is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Composer
Jarrod Lee
Librettist Jarrod Lee hails from Sylacauga, AL, and presently resides in Baltimore, MD. Lee’s collaborations include: Kandake, What is Love? An AI Story, a community opera called Spirit Moves and an art song cycle called Journey to You with composer Timothy Amukele, Oshun and Two Corners with composer B.E. Boykin, Voices of Zion, the art song See your Equal, which placed third in the composition category of the George Shirley Vocal Competition, with composer Ronald “Trey” Walton and a future collaboration called Delta King's Blues with composer Damien Geter. Lee has received commissions from the Alliance for New Music Theater, the Atlanta Opera, IN Series, Finger Lakes Opera, Opera Parallèle, Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Washington National Opera. In addition to original stories, he has worked in translating a deconstruction of Die Zauberflӧte called Black Flute with playwright Sybil Roberts. As an opera singer, Jarrod draws from his performance experiences when creating new stories. In concert with writing and performing, Lee works in Performing Arts Administration and Consulting as the Education Associate for Maryland Opera, Community Engagement Consultant for Finger Lakes Opera for Two Corners, a volunteer contractor of Project Managers for the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts (CAAPA), and a board member of Baltimore Musicales. Lee's work is influenced by his experience of being Black, Gay, and American, adding to the canon of stories written by Black Americans for the operatic stage. For more information: JarrodLee.com
Casey Richards
Korean American adoptee, Casey Robards is a music director, pianist and vocal coach known for her sensitive musicality, expert collaborative skill, stylistic versatility and operatic conducting. She has given recitals throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America and Asia. In 2023 she was appointed music director of Ensemble Concept 21, a Midwest chamber group that promotes new works. She currently tours with singer LaToya Lain in a “Narrative of a Slave Woman,” a dramatic and moving lecture-recital formatted program of Negro spirituals and Ollie Watts Davis in an art song recital “Toward Justice and Shared Humanity: Art Song of Black Composer as Lens, Language, Vision and Hope.” Robards has special interest in piano and vocal music by Black composers, having experience in Black sacred music genres and is the foremost expert on the life/music of John D. Carter. Interested in the intersection of music and social justice, Robards has created benefit recitals for MUSICAMBIA, a non-profit organization that creates music conservatories in prisons. She is currently on the faculty of the University of Illinois and has been on the faculty of the Bay View Music Festival since 2008.