Adoration

From: San Francisco, California. LA Opera: Adoration (2025).

Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family ​directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.

Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for such organizations as the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Beth Morrison Projects/OPERA America, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the American Composers Forum, Roomful of Teeth, WQXR, REDSHIFT, Experiments in Opera, Helen Simoneau Danse, the Nouveau Classical Project, Music of Remembrance, Friction Quartet, Ensemble Oktoplus, and the Los Angeles New Music Ensemble among others. Her work has been performed internationally at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, the Barbican Centre, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Millennium Park, Benaroya Hall, Prototype Festival, the New York Philharmonic Biennial, Cabrillo Festival, Big Ears Festival, 21C Music Festival, and Cal Performances. Her residencies include those with EMPAC, Buffalo String Works, Alarm Will Sound/The Mizzou International Composers Festival, Roulette/The Jerome Foundation, Montalvo Arts Center, and Exploring the Metropolis.

Her music has been described as “eloquently scripted" and "emotionally wracking” by The New York Times and as "politically fearless" and "the most harrowing moments on stage at any New York performance" by New York Music Daily. In her work as a composer, orchestrator, and music editor for film, she has collaborated on a diverse array of motion pictures including writing the original score for documentary An Act of Worship (Capital K Pictures and PBS’s POV Docs) and orchestrating on the soundtracks to The Place Beyond the Pines (Focus Features) and Demonic (Dimension Films).

Kouyoumdjian holds a D.M.A and M.A. in composition from Columbia University, where she studied primarily with Zosha Di Castri, Georg Friedrich Haas, Fred Lerdahl, and George Lewis; an M.A. in Scoring for Film & Multimedia from New York University; and a B.A. in Music Composition from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Kazuo Takasugi, Anthony Davis, Steven Schick, and Chinary Ung. Dedicated to new music advocacy, Kouyoumdjian is a co-founder of the annual new music conference New Music Gathering, served as the founding Executive Director of contemporary music ensemble Hotel Elefant, and served as Co-Artistic Director of Alaska's new music festival Wild Shore New Music. As an avid educator, Kouyoumdjian is on composition faculty at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University and The New School; she has previously been on faculty at Columbia University, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, Brooklyn College's Feirstein School of Cinema, Mannes Prep, and the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program. Kouyoumdjian is proud to have her music published by Schott's PSNY and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Learn more at MaryKouyoumdjian.com.

From: Grande Prairie, Canada. LA Opera: Dog Days (2015), Song from the Uproar (2015), The Hubble Cantata (2017), Adoration (2025).

Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based librettist and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a “Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought after librettists in the world” (CBC Radio). His opera Angel’s Bone with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

With composer Missy Mazzoli he wrote Song from the Uproar, premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in 2012, and subsequently seen in multiple presentations around the country. Their second opera, an adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, premiered at Opera Philadelphia, co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, and directed by James Darrah to critical acclaim in September of 2016. The work won the 2017 Music Critics Association of North America award for Best New Opera and was nominated for Best World Premiere at the 2017 International Opera Awards. A new production premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in the summer of 2019, produced by Scottish Opera and Opera Ventures, helmed by Tony Award-winning director Tom Morris and earned star Sydney Mancasola a coveted Herald Angel Award for her performance. Their next opera, an adaptation of Karen Russell’s short story Proving Up, was commissioned and presented by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and the Miller Theatre in 2018, was a finalist for the MCANA Best New Opera Award of that year. They are currently developing a grand opera for Opera Philadelphia and the Norwegian National Opera based on an original story by two-time Governor General’s Award-winning playwright Jordan Tannahill, as well as an adaptation of George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo for the Metropolitan Opera.

Teaming up with Swedish composer Mikael Karlsson, Royce wrote the story and text for two dance projects, Crypto, choreographed by Guillaume Côté for Côté Dance and Evidence of It All, choreographed by Drew Jacoby for SFDanceworks, featuring narration by the Academy Award-nominated actress Rosamund Pike. They are currently developing two grand operas: an adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia to premiere at the Royal Swedish Opera in 2023, and Fanny and Alexander, working alongside creative partner Ingmar Bergman, Jr., to musicalize his late father’s classic film for La Monnaie de Munt in 2024, in a production to be directed by Ivo van Hove. Both operas are to feature renowned mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, for whom Mikael and Royce wrote the song cycle So We Will Vanish, premiered by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra in 2021 to critical acclaim.

His collaboration with composer David T. Little led Heidi Waleson of the Wall Street Journal to proclaim them “one of the most exciting composer-librettist teams working in opera today.” In April of 2016 they premiered their first grand opera, JFK, at Fort Worth Opera, a co-commission with American Lyric Theater and Opéra de Montréal that was called “ravishing” (Opera News), earning a ten-star review in Opera Now Magazine. This followed the success of their first opera, Dog Days, which received its world premiere in September of 2012 at Peak Performances @ Montclair, in a production co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects and directed by American maverick Robert Woodruff. The work was celebrated as the Classical Music Event of the year by Time Out New York and a standout opera of recent decades by The New York Times. They are currently developing an original work for the Metropolitan Opera through the Met/LCT commissioning program.

Royce has also worked extensively with composer Paola Prestini, first on the song cycle Yoani, inspired by the blog posts of Yoani Sanchez, and then on The Hubble Cantata, a virtual reality oratorio produced by VisionIntoArt/National Sawdust in association with Beth Morrison Projects. They recently presented the workshop premiere of Silent Light, an opera based on the Cannes Jury Prize-winning film by Carlos Reygadas at the Banff Centre for Creativity, a collaboration with the director Thaddeus Strassberger, and are currently working on a new opera inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. They are also developing Film Stills, a project for mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti that dramatizes four of Cindy Sherman's iconic photographs through musical monologues composed by Paola, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly and Ellen Reid, and directed by R.B. Schlather. Royce and Paola's collaboration can be further heard on the AIDS Quilt Songbook: Sing for Hope recording, where their song "Union," as sung by Isabel Leonard, is featured.

In 2014 Royce premiered 27, his first collaboration with composer Ricky Ian Gordon, at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Created for renowned mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, the work brought to life Gertrude Stein’s famous salon at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. Mark Ray Rinaldi of the Denver Post wrote that the opera “tells a great American story, about Gertrude Stein, as well as opera in the 21st century.” The opera was subsequently presented by Pittsburgh Opera, MasterVoices at New York City Center, Michigan Opera Theater, Opéra de Montréal and Opera Las Vegas. In 2017 their adaptation of Gail Rock’s Christmas classic The House Without a Christmas Tree for Houston Grand Opera was premiered to critical acclaim.

Other recent and upcoming projects include Strip Mall with Matt Marks for the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Epistle Mass with Julian Wachner for Trinity Wall Street, Midwestern Gothic with Josh Schmidt for Signature Theatre, Virginia; Naamah’s Ark with Marisa Michelson for MasterVoices; O Columbia with Gregory Spears for HGOco; Knoxville: Summer of 2015 with Ellen Reid for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and National Sawdust; The Wild Beast of the Bungalow with Rachel Peters for Oberlin Conservatory; Jacqueline with Luna Pearl Woolf for Tapestry New Opera; Adoration (based on the film by Atom Egoyan) with Mary Kouyoumdjian for Beth Morrison Projects; The Cremation of Sam McGee with Matthew Ricketts, supported by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts; and Agnes with Daníel Bjarnason for the Icelandic Opera.

Royce is co-artistic director of The Coterie, an opera-theater company founded with Tony-nominee Lauren Worsham. He holds a BFA in filmmaking and creative writing from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at New York University. He is an alum of American Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist Development Program.

Learn more at RoyceVavrek.com.

From: Brooklyn, New York. LA Opera: Adoration (2025).

Laine Rettmer is a North American visual artist and opera director based in Brooklyn. Their work explores performance, gender, desire and methods of social control. Rettmer’s work has been presented nationally and internationally at the Vizcaya Museum; Manifesta; MoMA Public, curated by Mel Logan and Jakob Boeskov; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; CreaTures Festival, Seville, Spain; MassArt, Brant Gallery, Boston, MA; Silvermine Gallery, Connecticut, CT; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum for the exhibition, Hot Steam; the Illuminus Festival; the Boston Independent Film Festival; the Yuan Art Museum; Yve Yang Gallery; Perkins and Ping; Present Company; NADA NY, NADA Presents; and AREA gallery, among others.

Rettmer's opera productions have been praised as “wickedly smart” and “devastatingly funny” by the New York Times, and “not only profound but also shattering” by the Observer. Their Barber of Seville was named one of the top 10 classical music productions of 2014 by the New York Times and La Bohème one of the best operas of the decade by the Observer. For four years Rettmer was the resident stage director for the New York based company LoftOpera, with whom their last production, Macbeth, received a Freddie Award for best new production and was nominated for best director. Rettmer has also worked extensively on new opera with such companies as New York City Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, On Site Opera, White Snake Opera, Ecce Ensemble, Guerrilla Opera, and Rhymes with Opera. They are currently on the Artistic Advisory Board of On-Site Opera. In 2022, they directed a feature film version of the opera La Boheme which was a co-production between Opera Omaha, More than Musical, and Tri-Cities Opera, which is housed on Boston Lyric Opera's digital media site, operabox.tv, and will have a commercial run through Toho Cinemas in Japan. This season Rettmer is in post on their second feature, Oblivion, composed by John Alyward, and directing Let's Celebrate for White Snake, Adoration for Beth Morrison, and Lysistrata for the spring main stage at Mannes, Parsons.

Recent awards include two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Warhol Foundation grant, and multiple MAP Fund grants for the collaborative opera Standby Snow: Chronicles of a Heat Wave, and the multimedia opera Ellis, constructed from first-person accounts of immigration to the United States. They have also been awarded an Art Alliance fellowship from HFBK Hamburg, a research fellowship from the Center for Arts Design and Social Research, and been an invited artist in residence at MassArt in Boston, Vermont Studio Center, Skaftfell Center for Visual Arts in Iceland, Robert Wilson's Watermill Foundation on Long Island.

Rettmer is the graduate program director in the photography department at the Rhode Island School of Design. They serve at the rank of assistant professor in residence between the Photo and film/animation/video departments. Previously, they have served as a residential scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a post-graduate fellow at Tufts University in video and digital media. They hold a BFA in stage direction from New York University and an MFA in digital media from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts.

Learn more at LaineRettmer.com.

From: Chicago, Illinois. LA Opera: Dog Days (2015), Soldier Songs (2018), Adoration (2025).

Alan Pierson has been praised as "a young conductor of monstrous skill" by Newsday, "commanding" by the New York Times, and "gifted and electrifying" by the Boston Globe.

Alan Pierson has been praised as "a dynamic conductor and musical visionary" by the New York Times, "a young conductor of monstrous skill" by Newsday, "gifted and electrifying" by the Boston Globe, and "one of the most exciting figures in new music today" by Fanfare. He is the artistic director and conductor of the acclaimed ensemble Alarm Will Sound which has been called "the future of classical music" by the New York Times and "a sensational force" with "powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience" by the New Yorker.

Mr. Pierson served for three years as the Artistic Director and conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The New York Times called Pierson’s leadership at the Philharmonic "truly inspiring," and the New Yorker's Alex Ross described it as “remarkably innovative, perhaps even revolutionary.” Pierson has also appeared as a guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, LA Opera, the London Sinfonietta, the Steve Reich Ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Carnegie Hall's Ensemble ACJW, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and the Silk Road Project, among other ensembles.

He is principal conductor of the Dublin-based Crash Ensemble, co-director of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, and has been a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Eastman School of Music. He regularly collaborates with major composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Donnacha Dennehy, La Monte Young, Iarla Ó Lionáird, and choreographers Mark Morris, John Heginbotham, Akram Khan and Elliot Feld.

Mr. Pierson received bachelor degrees in physics and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in conducting from the Eastman School of Music. He has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, Sony Classical, and Sweetspot DVD.

Learn more at AlanPierson.com.

From: Tehran, Iran. LA Opera: Adoration (2025).

Afsoon Pajoufar is a New York City-based designer of stage and environment for play, opera, and live performances. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts-Painting from Azad Art and Architecture University in Tehran and an MFA in Scene Design from Boston University.

Afsoon’s work has been presented in venues and festivals including Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Berkeley Rep, EMPAC, New Ohio Theatre, Bard Fisher Center, HARVARD TDM, MIT, KITCHEN THEATRE, Bard Summerscape and Prototype festivals. Internationally, her work has taken her to Berlin, Alte Münze and Cologne, Schauspiel Köln. Her design for Cabaret was chosen for the 2019 American Exhibit at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space.

Learn more at AfsoonPajourfar.com.
 

Rachel Dainer-Best is an New York City-based costume designer for film, television, live performance and advertising.

Learn more at RachelDainerBest.com.