World Premiere

January 12-14, 7:30pm, 14 2:30pm

Eve Beglarian – Composer/Writer
Karen Kandel – Writer/Performer
Mallory Catlett – Director
Lauren Genevieve – Performer
Red — Performer
Megan Schubert – Performer/Arranger
Melanie Dyer – Viola
Gwen Laster – Violin
Christina Morris – Bass
Janice Lowe — Music Director
Peiyi Wong – Set Design
Kate McGee – Lighting Design
Dianne Smith – Costume Design
Wyatt Moniz – Video Design
M. Florian Staab – Sound Design
Leslie Cuyjet — Choreographer
Eric Dyer – Production Manager
Jason Kaiser — Production Stage Manager
Autumn Angelettie – Associate Director
Louis Brown – Associate Costume Design
Alex Brock — Associate Sound Design/Audio Engineer
Francisco J. Rivera Rodriguez — First Assistant Stage Manager
Yuchen Lin — Second Assistant Stage Manager
Sara vanden Huevel — Wardrobe & Props Supervisor
Carl Hancock Rux – Creative Advisor

The texts of The Vicksburg Project are constructed from historical diary entries, letters home, newspaper accounts, live interviews, and original writing by Karen Kandel as well as poetry by June Jordan, Thylias Moss, and Lucille Clifton. These materials are spun into intimate songs and confessions inspired by everything from parlor music of the 1860s to traditional blues of the 1920s to freedom songs of the 1960s, and from Wagnerian lushness to solo uke strumming to a capella chant.

The opera premiered in October at Penn State!
Conducted by David Bloom
with Now Ensemble

Megan Schubert, Jane Jacobs
Rinde Eckert, Robert Moses
Melisa Bonetti, Ensemble
Kelvin Chan, Bob Jacobs/Ensemble
Tomás Cruz, Ensemble
Blythe Gaissert, The Displaced Woman/Ensemble
Christopher Dylan Herbert, Ensemble
Tesia Kwarteng, Ensemble
Kamala Sankaram, Ensemble
Hai-Ting Chinn, Swing

Patrick McCollum, Choreographer
Andrea Lauer, Production Designer
Robert Bloom, Lighting Designer
Greg Allen, Sound Designer

Further dates around the world TBD in 2023. 

Review in The Wall Street Journal (click link for full article)
"Megan Schubert's vivid high soprano colored Jacobs's obsessiveness and obstinate determination..."

Interview with Judd Greenstein and Joshua Frankel for Urban Omnibus (click link for full interview)
Composer Judd Greenstein: A lot of the writing for Megan Schubert in Act I exists in her beautiful, classically trained, soprano range. But she also has this unbelievable belt voice that you only hear, really for the first time, in its full power, at the very, very end of Act I when she answers Bob Jacobs's question: 'Jane, what are we going to do?' And that winds up being the gateway to what is to come in Act II, where that becomes much more where she lives vocally.