It's Already March! Or Alternatively: UGH Daylight Savings.

 

Ugh Daylight Savings. Most people lost an hour, and so did Melissa, but she's still embodying the popular TikTok sound "while you were sitting around, waiting, doing nish - I was out, making moves." I still don't fully understand what "nish" means, but you get the gist. Just a couple days ago, Melissa and her neighbor, Andrew Ross, filed a petition to get on the Democratic Ward Executive Committee ballot representing Ward 5 Division 30! Why? In her own words: "I want more art and less dumped trash on the streets of my beloved Philadelphia neighborhood... regardless of the result, I'll be doing everything I can as a citizen to promote more art/clean up more trash, but my hope is that working together is even more effective than working individually... Because here's the thing: I LOVE our neighborhood. I don't think everyone could spend as much time as I have digging shit out of holes to learn about our block's former occupants without falling in love with this community and wanting everyone else to take just as much pride in it". Ah weird magic theatre, what lovely journeys and paths you continue to open! Additionally, Young Women's Composers Camp, for which Melissa is a board member, is now Wildflower Composers to better represent the young composers the organization has promised to support and their varied experiences, backgrounds, and identities! Personally, as a non-binary person, I'm thrilled to hear this, and I'm excited to continue to see young composers flourish with the support of Melissa and Wildflower Composers! MELISSA IN THE PRESS In case you missed it: in February, Melissa was profiled by the Philadelphia Inquirer for their column, "We The People." Reporter Stephanie Farr told Melissa it's the longest phone interview for this series that she's ever done because Melissa has so much fascinating stuff going on! The article discusses how she came to live in Philly and become an amateur archaeologist and composer. "In many ways, especially with the swearing thing, Philadelphia is the most Australian of U.S. cities. It’s the only city in America where my potty mouth doesn’t raise any eyebrows. They will match me F for F here.” Read the whole profile at the Inquirer website! NEW RELEASE: I AM THE WORLD Probably the biggest news of the month is that Melissa was recently commissioned by the BBC Singers! On March 8th, Melissa's new piece I am the World was premiered by the BBC Singers for International Women's Day. You can listen to the whole concert for the next 3 weeks here—it's a terrific program, and the new song was extra well-received! Listened and want to perform it? Sheet music for I am the World is now available here for you to download! As is usual for Melissa's self-published scores, you can download it for free on the condition that you let her know if you want to program it—if you're charging admission to your performance, it's $1.50 per score, just e-mail Melissa or her managerial assistant Dina and they'll send you an invoice. UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AND PROJECTS     TONIGHT (Thursday March 17th) and Saturday March 20th, the Mendelssohn Chorus here in Philadelphia is giving the live premiere of A Slice of Pie, which Melissa wrote during the pandemic, setting poetry from Feminista Jones. Get your tickets to the concerts at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre here.     On March 19th at 8PM, Cantus will sing N-400 Erasure Songs at the Goodrich Chapel in Albion, MI. Find more information here and a video of a previous performance below!       On April 9th at 8PM, the National Masterwork Chorus and Orchestra will be giving the live world premiere of Eight of Swords at Carnegie Hall. Find tickets here! PREVIOUS PERFORMANCES AND PROJECTS A previous Cantus performance of N-400 Erasure Songs     Last month, Melissa was in residence at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee! The residency culminated in the "Living Voices, Living Songs" choral performance and featured several of Melissa's pieces including It's strange about stars... and a new TTBB arrangement of Waves of Gallipoliwhich will hopefully be available via ECS soon (you can hear the premiere of that arrangement by the amazing Vancouver choir Chor Leoni here.       From February 11th-24th, selections composed by Melissa from Maren Montalbano's one-woman show, The Bodice Ripper Project, were featured in Love Notes 2.0... Sour Notes. The virtual and live concert by the East Passyunk Opera Project was the second iteration of their Love Notes concert and focused, not on the lovely parts of love, but on breaking up, fighting, and being single. Maybe Love Notes 3.0 will be about getting back together? We'll have to wait and see!       On March 11th, "From the Ashes She Became" and "Me Too" from Four Poems of Nikita Gill were performed as part of the "Girls of Yellow Diamonds" concert. This concert was presented by Wear Yellow Proudly to raise awareness and present pieces composed by female Asian and Asian-American composers in light of the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Atlanta shooting and International Women's Day. MELISSA TALKING Melissa was also interviewed by soprano and host Elizabeth Gentner on her podcast Opera Uprising. In the two-part no-holds-barred interview, they discuss various topics including what Melissa is working on, music composition as activism, the state of opera today, and the non-linear insanity of time. Check out part 1 and part 2 here! BOGHOUSE NEW EPISODE! There are two new episodes of The Boghouse!! In the first episode, Melissa and Matt updated folks on the last couple years and spoke about the 103 South Privy in the next! You can listen to both on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or Google Podcasts now! The Boghouse Gift Shop is also still open for all your privy merch needs. That's it from me folks! Have a great rest of your month - stay cozy, stay safe, and dont' forget to take all! —Claris

Copyright © 2022 Mormolyke Press, All rights reserved.  You are receiving this e-mail because you opted in at kickstarter.com, bandcamp.com, mormolyke.com, or melissadunphy.com  Our mailing address is:  Mormolyke Press 103 Callowhill Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  19123

Happy New Year!!!!

 

Happy New Year!!!! Melissa is starting 2022 off strong, with no punches held and no quips unsaid! This month has already had Melissa all over this place, working on experiments in opera and film, podcast appearances, performances, and amassing a larger Twitter following by telling historians where to stick it! It's led to some fun moments, as pictured above - is she telling a privy story or is she warning (threatening?) the interviewer? You'll have to watch Melissa and Matt's interview with the Museum of American Revolution and find out for yourself! UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AND PROJECTS In February, beloved Philadelphia mezzo Maren Montalbano will be performing selections from The Bodice Ripper Project, her one-woman show with songs by Melissa, for East Passyunk Opera Project—both live at Society Hill Dance Academy, and streaming online! The $35 ticket to the live show includes two complimentary cocktails for guests over 21—what a steal!  The Singers will be performing American DREAMERS as part of their AT HOME concert on January 23rd at 2PM. If you're in Minneapolis that day, swing by the American Swedish Institute to check it out! On February 13th (on the other side of the pond), the BBC Singers conducted by Howard Goodall will be singing Mourning into Dancing. Find tickets and venue information here! This month, Melissa is also back at Theater Exile to sound design The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis. The show opens for previews on February 3rd with an awesome director and an awesome cast, so don't miss out!! ADDITIONALLY! Melissa is working on new songs for a host of upcoming commissioners, including Skylark Ensemble, Lyric Fest, Washington and Lee University, and the BBC Singers! Stay tuned! Be on the lookout: Lara St. John will also be releasing a studio recording of kommós soon—here's a previous video recording of the piece! PREVIOUS PERFORMANCES AND PROJECTS La Caccina performed the world premier of New Dreams, the piece based on the life and work of Grace Lee Boggs mentioned in last month's newsletter! Chicago Classical Review called this and Wild Embers the "compositional standouts of the night." Voices of Concinnity performed Halcyon Days last month! The Young New Yorkers' Chorus also performed Halcyon Days! Grace and St. Peter's Choir performed O Oriens last month in Baltimore! Production still from filming of Everything for Dawn. Experiments in Opera and Film!! Experiments in Opera began shooting the film project Everything for Dawn. The project consists of nine episodes written by different composer-librettist teams, and Krista Knight and Melissa were the team for episode 6! Omicron shut down the shoot before they were finished, but not before they got some great production shots! They will resume shooting when the surge has calmed down and release later this year.  Meanwhile, check out this snippet of video from the shoot to get you excited! SHEET MUSIC and ALBUM RELEASE Melissa just released a piano-vocal version of her baritone art song Black Thunder, a setting of Luke Stromberg's poem. Download this score here!   #UnitedWeDream from American DREAMers appears on Tonality's newly released album America Will Be featuring pieces which speak "directly to the injustices that have yet to be labeled." Buy/stream on Bandcamp, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, and Tidal! MELISSA TALKING On top of the MoAR interview, Melissa was also interviewed for The Composer Chronicles podcast! She talks about her process and how, if you want to be a composer, you need to write what you're passionate about and that music and composing are both political in nature. Listen to the episode wherever you get podcasts—here's the Apple Podcasts link. I'D LIKE TO ASK YOU AGAIN: DO YOU LIKE BONES? The Boghouse Gift Shop is still open! And Melissa and Matt are selling mostly animal bones from the 1700s found in their privies! Bone earrings! Bone necklaces! Loose bones for crafts! Buy one to tide you over till the next (rumored to be soon) episode of The Boghouse! That's it from me folks! Have a great rest of your month - stay cozy, stay safe all! —Claris

Copyright © 2022 Mormolyke Press, All rights reserved.

November Had Lots of Notable News!

 

Hello December! Hello Winter!   Hi everyone! This is Claris - for those of you who may remember, I used to write Melissa's newsletters before I went off to law school last year! If you're new to the listserv, be ready for some terribly heavy-handed puns and outdated pop culture references unsuccessfully woven into the amazing news of what Melissa has been up to! As usual, she's been up to an incredible amount of incredible work! She's pictured above with librettist Jackie Goldfinger, director Chris Mirto, and dramaturg Julia Bumke (from left to right) at the Birenbaum at Oberlin College where she workshopped her commissioned work with undergraduate Obies! Check out this link for some more photos of her in action! UPCOMING PERFORMANCES So many opportunities to hear Melissa's music (and maybe see her in person??) Chanticleer is singing "The Elements of the Sun" as part of their  Christmas tour! There are upcoming performances in New York City (tonight at 8PM and 12/5), Chicago (12/7 + 12/8), Milwaukee (12/9), Los Angeles (12/14), and Palo Alto (12/16)! ALSO Melissa will be at the New York performance this Sunday (Dec. 5th) - go hear her music AND see her face! Get tickets here. The Choir of St. Paul's in Burlingame, CA is performing "Magnificat" on 12/5! Most of the upcoming performances or choral/ensemble, but not this one! Rhiannon Vaughn is performing "Four Poems of Nikita Gill" on 12/8 at the University of Maryland's Gildenhorn Recital Hall. Watch the livestream here! "O Oriens" has already been sung this advent season, including at the Washington National Cathedral last week, but will be sung even more! The William Ferris Chorale is performing it in Chicago today and 12/4 at the St. Vincent De Paul Church. On 12/5, it'll be performed multiple times! In Philadelphia, it'll be part of Saint Mark's A Service of Advent Lessons & Carolsat 4PM. It'll also be performed by the iCantanti Chamber Choirat the First English Lutheran Church in Cannon Falls, MN! The Harmonium Choral Society in Morristown, NJ is performing "O Oriens" on 12/11 and 12/12 at the Presbyterian Church in Morristown. It will be performed at the Church of the Good Shepherd's A Festival of Advent Lessons and Carols on Dec. 19th in Bryn Mawr, PA. For those in York, UK, the Ebor Singers are singing "O Oriens" at the National Centre for Early Music on Dec. 19th!  The Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh is performing "Halcyon Days" at various venues around Allegheny County on 12/10, 12/11, 12/12, 12/17, and 12/19! Check venue information and get tickets here! Halcyon Days is also being performed multiple times in the next week! The Voice of Concinnity is performing it on 12/4 and 12/5 at two different venues in CT. It's also being performed in Kansas City, MO by the UMKC Conservatory Singers on 12/4 and 12/5 at the Visitation Catholic Church! The Longwood Chorus is performing it at the All Saints Parish in Brookline, MA on 12/10. And last, but not least, the Young New Yorkers Chorus' Mixed Ensemble is performing "Halcyon Days" at St. Mary the Virgin Church in NYC on 12/11!  On Dec. 19th, in Burlingame, CA, "Nunc Dimittis" will premiere as part of the Choir St. Paul's Episcopal Church's Christmas Concert! More details here. A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF ART WAS MADE AND ENJOYED AND NOW, SO CAN YOU! A recording of the Trinity Wall Street Choir's performance of "If thou wilt be perfect"! This was presented by Amplify Female Composers in the Fall Female Composer Fridays series back in July 2021! The first 20 seconds or so alone are 😍 OCTOBER SAW MELISSA'S WORK ALL OVER THE COUNTRY! The organ preludes that Melissa wrote for Carson Cooman premiered, with the recital benefiting the maintenance of the organ at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston! It was also recently performed by Carson at the Memorial Church of Harvard University in Cambridge on November 15th! Please check out "Sehnsucht" and "Fruhling" here! Listening to "Fruhling" may help stave off those winter blues! Here's an excerpt of the Richmond Symphony's performance of "Overdrive" conducted by Chia-Hsuan Lin in Richmond, VA! Only the first two minutes of the piece, but the drama!! Willamette University Choir performed "Wild Embers" as part of their Fall Choral Concert in Salem, OR! There's something particularly poetic about singing "They should have checked the ashes / of the women they burned alive. / Because it takes a single wild ember / to bring a whole wildfire to life." in Salem (albeit not Salem, MA)! The performers did an amazing job of performing with masks on, but feel free to check out the link to the program in the description for a copy of the lyrics! A picture of Cantus and Melissa from when they were working on the piece in September! Cantus Performances In October and November in various cities such as Bowling Green, OH and Harrogate, TN, Cantus performed "N-400 Erasure Songs," for which they previously commissioned Melissa! There aren't any recordings of the pieces setting poetry created by blacking out text from the U.S. naturalization form yet, but the StarTribune described "[each] of the three movements proved powerful, the first haunting and mournful, while the second pulsed with the anxious spirit of one sinking in the quicksand of bureaucracy. But reassurance arrived in the program's finale, a beautifully moving embrace upon arrival for which Dunphy created both music and text." NOVEMBER PERFORMANCES!  Also everywhere! Dr. Jennifer Piazza-Pick performed "Four Poems of Nikita Gill" on Nov. 1st, for a faculty recital for Georgia College and State University's Department of Music. Chor Leoni hosted an online concert, Breath in Hope, in which they performed "Waves of Gallipolli". On Nov. 18th, "Captain Samuels Speaks to the Sea" was performed at the Hamilton Mansion in the Woodlands - a beautifully haunting, narrated piece performed in the middle of a historic garden and cemetery! "Black Thunder" was performed by Aural Compass Projects' Chelsea Fingal DeSouza and CodyRay Caho for their "Before Body Meets Earth" performance on November 19th and 20th in Philadelphia and Wayne, PA. Check out the trailer on YouTube. The Esoterics performed "Together" as part of their THE REWAKING program on Nov. 20th. They performed it back in 2019 too! PREMIERES! "Witch-Wife" premiered on Nov. 14th and was performed by Choir Matrix and Women of Concinnity for their Claiming Space concert in New Britain, CT! It was also performed later in Williamsburg, VA by the Barksdale Treble Chorus and Botetourt Chamber Singers as part of Bruton Parish's Candlelight Concert series. "New Dreams" commissioned by La Caccina, premiered on Nov. 20th as part of their The Matriarchy performance series in Chicago. See below for a video of Melissa speaking about the inspiration for the piece, Grace Lee Boggs. MELISSA TALKING! REIMAGINE THE COMPOSER Melissa was part of a roundtable discussion with fellow composers and multi-hyphenates Erin Busch, Courtney Bryan, and Tanyaradzwa Tawengwa. They talked about their source of inspiration, processes, how they became composers, and more! You can view the full discussion on Opera Philadelphia's channel! Melissa joined Opera Philadelphia's Chorus Master Elizabeth Braden and organist Meghan Melow Ness for a panel discussion on the Future of the Organ! For those of you who were able to make it in person - I'm very jealous! Here's Melissa introducing "New Dreams," the commission for La Caccina inspired by Chinese-American civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs! Melissa talks about how she was particularly inspired by the questions in Grace Lee Boggs' autobiography: "How do we transform ourselves? How do we transform our world? What do we need? What do we want? What is the difference?" There is sadly no new Boghouse episode (YET), but Melissa was interviewed by Steve Danielson for his podcast, Moveable Do (like the solfege Do)! The episode also includes snippets of and reviews of a few of her pieces, including "What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?" SERIOUS QUESTION: DO YOU LIKE BONES? And no, I don't mean "Bones or No Bones" (may your days always be Bones days). The Boghouse Gift Shop is back open! And Melissa and Matt are selling literal bones (animal) (mostly cow) from the 1700s which they found in their esteemed privies! Bone earrings! Bone necklaces! Loose bones for crafts! I'm very superstitious so they aren't right for me, but they look very cool! So if you're a cool person who wants to show the world that you're cool or need to get a holiday gift for someone, check it out! That's it from me folks, but you'll hear from me again in the new year! Until then, hope you stay cozy! Copyright © 2021 Mormolyke Press, All rights reserved.  You are receiving this e-mail because you opted in at kickstarter.com, bandcamp.com, mormolyke.com, or melissadunphy.com  Our mailing address is:  Mormolyke Press 103 Callowhill Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  19123