About the Creators

Smart, transcendent, and immersive, Kirsten Volness’ emotive soundscapes integrate electronics and modern composition techniques with jazz and pop influences to create intimate and  “irresistible” (San Francisco Chronicle) listening that is “nothing short of gorgeous.” (New York Arts). Each of her compositions reveals “an exquisite sound world” (New Classic LA) with disparate, suggestive musical elements woven together to create sublime atmospheres inspired by nature, myth, spirituality, and environmental and sociopolitical issues.

 

Volness’ music has featured at L’Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, Illuminus Boston, Tribeca New Music, and the Montréal and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals. Her rich commission history includes projects with the World Future Council Foundation, BMI Foundation, Metropolis Ensemble, American Opera Project, NOW Ensemble, Transient Canvas, Cambridge Philharmonic, and Ann Arbor Symphony. Volness received grants from OPERA America/Toulmin Foundation and New Music USA, the 2017 MacColl Johnson Fellowship, three Fellowships in Music Composition from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts(2018, 2014, 2010), and was 2017 Composer-in-Residence at the Music Mansion.

 

Also a sought-after performer, producer, and a passionate promoter of multimedia, Volness is the Co-Founder, Co-Director and pianist for Verdant Vibes (Providence/PDX); multi-instrumentalist for Hotel Elefant (NYC); and Co-Director of homeless advocacy group Tenderloin Opera Company (Providence). A graduate of the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota, her teaching history includes positions at Reed College and the University of Rhode Island.   www.kirstenvolness.com

 

 

Germaine Shames, a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellow, Kilroys List playwright, and recipient of her state’s Literary Fellowship in Fiction, is author of the award-winning novels, Between Two Deserts and You, Fascinating You. Writing under the pen name Casper Silk (Hotel Noir, Echo Year), she has been compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene and P.D. James “on steroids”. 

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As a librettist and lyricist, Shames collaborates with world-class composers in musical theatre, opera, choral and popular music. Her eco-opera The Bird Lady (with composer Timothy Miller) previewed in 2021 at the National Opera Center. Two of Shames' one-act social justice operas, "Bomb Squad Rhapsody" (with Jane K) and "An Open Letter to Samuel Alito" (with Marissa Simmons) premiered in 2022-23. Her immigration musical, Capri (with composer Paul Scherer), won Skyline Theatre Company’s new musical search and was their singular offering at the 2022 NJ Theatre Alliance Stages Festival. Naked (with Tareq Abuissa) is this year’s Musicals NOW and Florida Festival of New Musicals selection.

 

Over the past five years, Shames has celebrated premieres in such cities as New York, London, Paris, LA and Chicago. Artistic Director Claire Beckman has written, "Germaine advocates for social justice with refreshing maturity, structural elegance, and gut punching dichotomies." It's all about love.  https://germainewrites.wix.com/buzz