THE CREATORS OF FELLOW TRAVELERS
Fellow Travelers is composer Gregory Spears’ fifth opera. With degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Yale, and Princeton, he currently teaches composition at SUNY Purchase. His canon of work includes operas, vocal, and instrumental works mainly for chamber ensembles. Spears has expressed his love for opera through his relationship to the singer; describing the human voice as the best bridge to the audience. Since his first opera, Paul’s Case, Spears has continued to grow the genre, even writing operas for youth including his most recent opera, Jason and the Argonauts. At present, he is working on a new opera, Castor and Patience, collaborating with the current U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. Commissioned by Cincinnati Opera, it will premiere in 2020. Many prestigious institutions including the American Academy for the Arts and OPERA America have lauded his work. Influenced by Romanticism, Minimalism, and early music, the Boston Globe called his music “beautifully unsettling.” Adapting Thomas Mallon’s book, librettist Greg Pierce had a key role in creating the opera Fellow Travelers. Pierce has nine plays under his belt to date, including commissions from the Lincoln Center Claire Tow Theatre, Albee Foundation, Public Theatre Under the Radar Festival, and the New York Public Library. No stranger to music collaborators, however, many of Pierce’s plays are scored including The Quarry and The Landing by composers Randal Pierce and John Kander, respectively. Unlike Mallon, Pierce does not often write historic realism, rather surreal fictional works, so collaborating on Fellow Travelers represented a new challenge for him. Fellow Travelers is his first opera. In addition to his playwriting career, Greg Pierce has published several
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THE CREATORS OF FELLOW TRAVELERS
Gregory Spears. Gregoryspears.com
Greg Pierce. Photo by Ben Esner. Gregpierce.com
