Lori Laitman

Lori Laitman has composed multiple operas and choral works, and hundreds of songs setting texts by classical and contemporary poets, including those who perished in the Holocaust. Her music is widely performed throughout the world and has generated substantial critical acclaim. The Journal of Singing wrote “It is difficult to think of anyone before the public today who equals her exceptional gifts for embracing a poetic text and giving it new and deeper life through music.”

In May 2016, Opera Colorado presented the World Premiere of Laitman’s opera The Scarlet Letter, to a libretto by David Mason. Laitman and Mason also collaborated on Vedem, a Holocaust-themed oratorio commissioned and premiered by Music of Remembrance, with a new production by Indianapolis Opera now scheduled for the Spring of 2021 (delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic).

The Three Feathers, Laitman’s children’s opera with librettist Dana Gioia, based on a Grimm’s fairy tale, was commissioned by the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech. The abridged version toured schools in Florida, New York and Washington states, and L’arietta Singapore presented the international premiere in November 2019. Due to the pandemic, Opera Steamboat’s full production has been postponed to August 2022.  Laitman is currently finishing a chamber opera, Uncovered, based on Leah Lax’s memoir, commissioned by a consortium of universities, scheduled to premiere at Utah State University in the spring of 2022.

Other prestigious commissions have come from the BBC and The Royal Philharmonic Society, Opera America, Opera Colorado, Seattle Opera, Grant Park Music Festival, Washington Master Chorale, Music of Remembrance, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Her works have been featured on Thomas Hampson’s Song of America radio series and website and in The Grove Dictionary of American Music.

She is a magna cum laude Yale graduate and received her MM from The Yale School of Music. In May 2018, Laitman was the recipient of The Yale School of Music’s Ian Mininberg Alumni Award for Distinguished Service. For more information, please visit her official website www.artsongs.com.

The composer in her own words:

Since childhood, I have loved to listen to sung stories. Some of my earliest memories are of listening to “kiddie” records — including Bongo the Bear and PeeWee the Piccolo.  I began formal music training at age 5 with piano lessons, and at age 7, I started flute lessons. Until college, my musical life was focused on becoming a professional flutist.

Going to Yale at age 16, I was surrounded by friends who were composers. This was a revelation, and wishing to emulate them, I started composition lessons my sophomore year with Jonathan Kramer. I remained at Yale for graduate school, and took Frank Lewin’s course in composing music for film and theater. This class taught me techniques for writing dramatic music to fit words or images.

After graduating with a masters in music in flute performance, I freelanced as a flutist and composed music for film and theater, but it wasn’t until 1991 that I discovered my true compositional voice — when, at the behest of my dear friend, soprano Lauren Wagner, I composed my first art song, a setting of Sara Teasdale’s The Metropolitan Tower. I realized that I instinctively drew on the techniques for writing dramatic music I had learned decades ago. And in fact, I often respond to poetry as if it were film — and feel as if I am still composing dramatic music to illuminate the text.

My compositional process is remarkably similar whether I am composing an art song, a choral work or an opera. I compose the vocal line first, aiming to create a singable line, which in turn allows the singer to effectively communicate the words to an audience. I use melody and rhythm to emphasize the most important words in a line. I use harmonies to color the emotions of the subtext. Other musical aspects add additional layers of textural interpretation. And in opera, I aim to create distinct music for the different characters, music that reveals each character’s psychological traits.

The final composition is an aural representation of how I view the poem or libretto.