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JASMINE BARNES
COMPOSER
BIOGRAPHY
Jasmine Arielle Barnes is a promising young composer and vocalist whose work has been performed all over the world. She is a multifaceted composer who embraces a variety of genres, formats, and instrumentations with a specialty of writing for the voice. A full-time composer, Barnes is currently a composer-in-residence for American Lyric Theater. Barnes previously held residencies as a composer fellow at Chautauqua Opera, and composer-in-residence with All Classical Portland. Her work is in high demand, with recent commissions from respected institutions throughout the country including: The Washington National Opera (in celebration of the Kennedy Center’s 50th year anniversary), Bare Opera, Resonance Ensemble, Tapestry Choir, City Works Cleveland, LyricFest Philadelphia, Baltimore Choral Arts, Burleigh Music Festival, Symphony Number One, Baltimore Musicales, The Voic(ed) Project, amongst others.
Upcoming engagements includes the world premiere of Plumshuga at STAGES Houston, an arrangement of spirituals commissioned by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to debut at Carnegie Hall performed by Karen Slack and Will Liverman, and a new song cycle commissioned by world-renowned tenor Russell Thomas to be performed at Los Angeles Opera. Other recent commissions include Might Call You Art for CityMusic Cleveland, Portraits: Douglass & Tubman for Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Maternità for Takesha Meshé Kizart and Anima Mundi Productions, and I Will Follow You into the Dark with American Lyric Theatre. [read more...]
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"...comfortably tonal..." – By Tim Smith
Portraits: Douglass & Tubman – "The composer writes in a very direct, comfortably tonal manner that serves the texts well."
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"... precisely imagined antiquity..." – The Washington Post
The Burning Bush – "The night closed with “The Burning Bush,” an opera from the Baltimore-based team of composer Jasmine Barnes and Joshua Banbury — and set in a surrealist version of that city’s long-ago vaudeville scene. While pianist Roderick Demmings Jr. stayed onstage to coax out the score’s precisely imagined antiquity, soprano Suzannah Waddington (as an allegorical MC) and baritone Daniel J. Smith (as a vaudevillian “invisible man”) carried the opera’s miniature acts right into the audience. It was a clever way of reflecting the spectacle made of violence against Black people (in this case, Freddie Gray), and inviting revision of the stories (and histories) too often consumed as entertainment."