Chronological / Works in Progress / ​Musical Documentary / Solo / Small Ensemble / Large Ensemble / Opera, Voice, Chorus / Orchestra / Theater and Dance / Fixed Media / Film / Video Library 

Expand on the right of each work for available listening, viewing, and program notes.
Published scores are available through Schott's PSNY. For unpublished scores, email [email protected]

ADORATION (2019-WIP) 
Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects & Opera AMERICA
Opera: ensemble cast, amplified string quartet, audio playback / Evening Length

An adaptation of Atom Egoyan’s film of the same name, ADORATION follows Simon, an orphaned high school student. As part of a dramatic writing exercise, Simon’s teacher encourages him to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as an event perpetrated by his parents. When his story goes viral, Simon uses the hysteria within his community and on the internet to highlight the challenges of intolerance and racism in our society. The fictional and actual circumstances of the loss of Simon’s family are revealed in fragments, only fitting together with the final revelation that the prejudices of Simon’s maternal grandfather led to his parents’ deaths.​ Hate is too often portrayed as binary. We either hate or we don’t. We hate someone for something they did or some perceived slight, or we hate “the other.” Yet we are not born with hate—it is learned, nurtured, and developed over the course of a lifetime. ADORATION tells two simultaneous stories—a fictional story of terrorism and betrayal juxtaposed with a real story of family strife and rejection of something foreign.
​
Adoration is supported, in part, by an OPERA America Opera Grants for Female Composers Award, funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, and an OPERA America Project Repertoire Development Grant. ​

AND THERE WAS (2021) 
Commissioned by BANG ON A CAN FOR CELLIST ARLEN HLUSKO
SOLO CELLO DOUBLING ON VOICE/ 4'30"

Written for cellist Arlen Hlusko, and there was pulls its text from playwright Dominic Finocchiaro's play Found Dog Ribbon Dance.

and there was this space
where that something used to be

Mustard Sweatshirts Are Forever (2019)
Commissioned by American Composers Forum for Roomful of Teeth's 10th Anniversary at Mass MoCA
acapella voice octet and Narrator / 10'

In this past year, I have made a promise to myself to really get to know the performers I collaborate with – not just as extraordinary musicians, but also as extraordinary human beings. Let the record show, that the members of Roomful of Teeth are in fact extraordinary. The libretto is comprised of interviews with each of the members of Teeth. Conversations included everything from individual backgrounds, to thoughtful sentiments for their colleagues, and personal reflections. It’s my humble hope that this piece is not only an exercise for the members of Teeth to internalize their bandmates’ words, but for the audience to get to know these beautiful people as well.
​

Mary Kouyoumdjian · Mustard Sweatshirts Are Forever (Perf. by Roomful of Teeth)

"Pleasures of Plenty" from Words on the Street (2018)
Commissioned by HERE Arts
soprano, piano/ 4'

A hybrid-musical theater work of music by composer Matt Marks and poet Anna Robinowitz, in which several composers were asked to come together to complete the score that had been left unfinished after Matt's passing. Words on the Street is a mystery show in which all of humanity is complicit. 

I Can Barely Look (2016)
Commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus and WQXR with support of the MAP Fund
chorus (soprano/alto), flute, clarinet, baritone saxophone, bassoon, percussion, piano, violin, cello, contrabass / 10'

An exploration of how we, particularly youth, sympathize with the Syrian refugee crisis. Members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus were presented with a collection of media-circulated photos of Syrian refugees. They were asked to respond to a series of questions about the photos, and their responses were then used to create the libretto for this work.
​

"Where Once" from Gorky (2016)
Libretto by Royce Vavrek / written for loadbang
​baritone voice, bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, electronic playback / 10'

An imagined monologue for Arshile Gorky as he is painting his mother’s likeness in “The Artist and his Mother.”  The lyrics are constructed from imagined memories, and contain a sense of poetic revisionism, functioning like a eulogy for the greatest loss of Gorky’s young life.  Through the aria we get to see Gorky’s psychological process as he symbolically returns his mother to the familiar landscape of Lake Van.
​

Become Who I Am (2015)
Commission by Brooklyn Youth Chorus for BYC and Kronos Quartet
chorus (soprano/alto), string quartet, audio playback / 10'

There are many factors that can contribute to gender inequality in the workplace, from historical views to culturally imposed biases. I’m particularly interested in the idea that an individual’s level of confidence in their identity and abilities – or lack of confidence – can affect how they deal with gender barriers. Become Who I Am is comprised of interviews I recorded with members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who ranged from 13 to 17 years of age. Volunteers were asked to share what they were passionate about, when they felt most confident and/or insecure, to respond to a series of gender inequality statistics, and to brainstorm solutions to the disparity in numbers. Out of their responses, I constructed the libretto and prerecorded backing track.

"Everlastingness" from Gorky (2015)
Libretto by Royce Vavrek / Written for Hotel Elefant and Jeffrey Gavett
baritone voice, viola, piano / 10' 

An aria written for a new operatic fantasia on the live and death of abstract expressionist painter Arshile Gorky. Using specific lyrical images and extrapolating from quotations attributed to the artist, this song functions like a fever dream as Gorky's memories consume him. - Royce Vavrek, Librettist
​

I Am a Fish [A One-Act Opera] (2012)
Commissioned by Experiments in Opera, libretto by Hannis Brown
countertenor, piano, electric guitar, violin, contrabass, audio playback / 9'30"

A one-act opera that explores the possibilities and confines of what we perceive as reality. John Herrington has an epiphany one afternoon, while verbalizing the sounds of words, that he may or not be what he has always taken himself to be. He realizes that words are square pegs that fit in round holes. Is he a man because he calls himself a man? Or is he actually a woman? Perhaps he is a fish. - Hannis Brown (librettist)
​

Gantsreveh D'ghas [It is Raining My Son] (2010)
Commissioned by The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble
mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin, cello, piano / 10'

Based off of the poem "Gantsreveh d'ghas" by Vahan Tekeyan, in which a mother consoles her son in his moment of heartbreak.

Ciel Brouillé [Cloudy Sky] (2010)
Commissioned by The Los Angeles New Music Ensemble
soprano, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, piano, turntable, audio playback / 6'

Based off of Charles Baudelaire's poem "Ciel Brouillé"

Odaraganeen Sharagan [Stranger's Song] (2004)
soprano, flute, alto flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, percussion, audio playback / 14'30"

A self-examination as an Armenian detached from her ethnicity's culture as a product of being raised in the United States. A study of the Armenian People's alienation from their heritage and homeland as a product of genocide.
​

---

Header photo by Dominica Eriksen; Gillian Gallagher and Jeffrey Gavett