The music of American composer Ben Moore has been performed by many leading singers including soprano Deborah Voigt; mezzo-sopranos Susan Graham, Frederica von Stade, and Isabel Leonard; tenors Lawrence Brownlee and Robert White; baritone Nathan Gunn; and Audra McDonald. His work has been called “brilliant” and “gorgeously lyrical” by the New York Times while Opera News has praised the “easy tunefulness” and “romantic sweep” of his songs.
Moore is the composer of three operas. “Enemies, a Love Story,” based on the novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer with a libretto by Nahma Sandrow, premiered at Palm Beach Opera in 2015. Fred Plotkin of WQXR said it's “an important new work that will find its place among those works that audiences will be moved by...” “Odyssey” and “Robin Hood” are youth operas commissioned by the Glimmerglass Festival with librettos by Kelley Rourke. Odyssey premiered at Glimmerglass in 2015 and will soon be seen at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Minnesota Opera and again at Glimmerglass in 2018. “Robin Hood” premiered at Glimmerglass in August 2017 and will be presented at Seattle Opera in 2018.
Ben's songs can be heard on Deborah Voigt’s recital CD entitled All My Heart (EMI) with eight Moore works, Nathan Gunn’s Just Before Sunrise (SonyBMG), Lawrence Brownlee’s This Heart that Flutters (Opus Arte) and Susan Graham at Carnegie Hall (Warner Classics). Dear Theo (Delos records) features three of Ben's song cycles. These include Dear Theo, based on the letters of Vincent van Gogh; So Free Am I, on poems by women; and Ode to a Nightingale, a setting of John Keats’ great poem. Read the Opera News review here.
Besides art song and opera Moore’s works include musical theatre, cabaret, chamber music, choral music and comedy material. In 2006 the Metropolitan Opera featured two of his comedy songs, one for Deborah Voigt and one for Susan Graham, in a gala broadcast nationally. 2006 also saw the release of the volume “Ben Moore: 14 Songs” published by G. Schirmer. Reviewing the album, Classical Singer Magazine wrote: “...you can find a breath of fresh air in the settings included in this volume...This composer is not afraid of the past, but rather embraces many of the most beautiful aspects of his artistic heritage while imbuing his work with its own personal colors and tones.”
Born on January 2, 1960, in Syracuse, New York, Moore grew up in Clinton, New York and graduated from Hamilton College. With an MFA from The Parsons School of Design, Ben also pursues a career as a painter, and is currently an educator at the Guggenheim Museum and the Morgan Library in New York City.
Kelley Rourke is a librettist, translator and dramaturg. She has collaborated with composer John Glover on projects including Lucy, Natural Systems, and Guns n’ Rosenkavalier, among others. Kelley has written libretti for three youth operas at The Glimmerglass Festival: Odyssey and Robin Hood (both with Ben Moore) and Wilde Tales (with Laura Karpman). Kelley's modern English adaptations of numerous standard and not-so-standard operas have been hailed as “crackingly witty” (The Independent, London) and “remarkably well wedded to the music and versification in arias” (New York Times).
Her work been commissioned and performed by companies including Washington National Opera, English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Boston Lyric Opera, Young People’s Chorus of NYC, Seattle Opera, Minnesota Opera, Carnegie Hall, Urban Arias (Washington, DC), San Francisco Conservatory, Milwaukee Opera Theatre, American Opera Projects, Atlanta Opera and Nautilus Music-Theater, among others.
Kelley has served as guest lecturer at Boston University, Carnegie Mellon University and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and was founding editor of Opera America magazine and a contributor to the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. She is resident dramaturg for both Washington National Opera and The Glimmerglass Festival.
Kelley has worked with young people throughout her career. She began her teaching career in 1992 as a piano teacher and choral conductor in Washington, DC, where she taught for nearly a decade. She holds a B.M. in piano, with an emphasis in pedagogy, and has worked as an Artist in Residence in DC public schools under the auspices of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Kelley's work as a collaborative artist is informed by nearly two decades of studying yoga and mindfulness, including two extended trips to Mysore, India. Since 2010 Kelley has worked with organizations including Bent on Learning, Sonima Foundation and Teach Wellness to bring movement and mindfulness practices into schools New York, El Paso, Indianapolis, Houston and Columbia, South Carolina.
Upcoming projects include a compact English adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades for The Glimmerglass Festival, productions of Odyssey (with composer Ben Moore) in Seattle and Boston, and a new immersive opera, written with composer John Glover, for On Site Opera (NYC).