COT’s Music Director Lidiya Yankovskaya charged our Vanguard Emerging Opera Composers and Young Artists with a quarantine project: develop a short piece for the unaccompanied human voice. Beyond a time constraint of 1 to 3 minutes, all other components of composition and performance have been left to the creativity of these artists. Tune in via social media every day the week of October 26 to see these micro-jams premiere!

Mezzo Morgan Middleton is a creative powerhouse with interests in filmmaking, producing, and libretto-writing – she also created and toured Remember When, a one-woman show that raised funds for the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund

Avid vocal composer Matthew Recio is thrilled to be joining the Chicago Opera Theater as their Vanguard Emerging Opera Composer for the 2020-21 season. Recio was recently named the 2017 American Prize winner in choral composition and was a featured composer with Beth Morrison Projects as an operatic composer at the National Sawdust theatre in Brooklyn, New York. The New Voices Opera Company commissioned him for his one-act opera, “In Memoriam” in 2017 (Libretto: Molly Korroch).