Since November 2022, I have been the Community Director for White Snake Projects (WSP). Upcoming programs with WSP include:

•Fractured Mosaics (Mar-Apr ‘22): A virtual opera that asks what it means to be Asian American.

•Show Out Boston (Apr ‘22): A community showcasing arts organizations around the city.

•Indigenous Directory for Musical Storytelling (ongoing): A new reference for the performing arts industry in casting, hiring and commissioning Indigenous creators and artists.

Overview

In 2021, I was selected to join a 2-year residency with the Victory Players at the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts (MIFA). I am in the process of writing a multi-movement piece for chamber ensemble based on the Aztec myth of Coyolxauhqui and Gloria Anzaldúa’s writings connected to that myth. The piece is currently structured to have 4 movements with a duration of approximately 15 minutes, written for flute, clarinet, violin, piano, cello, and percussion (Pierrot + percussion).

Get involved

The piece is in progress and is slated to be premiered in June 2023 in Holyoke, MA. If you are interested in learning more or joining the premier performance, please email me at jabcomposer@gmail.com.

Overview

In December 2019, Eureka Ensemble presented a special performance of Part I and the “Hallelujah Chorus” of Handel’s Messiah in a Spanish translation, alongside traditional Latin American carols (a.k.a., villancicos) performed by youth from Chelsea, MA.

Our virtual performances in 2020 and 2021 saw us join forces with the Boston Children’s Chorus and a virtual choir with singers from across North America. These performances have been seen nearly 40,000 times across over a dozen countries (as of Oct ‘22) and now, we want to share this translation with the world.

This year, I have been leading an effort to redo, refine, and clean up the translation. Part I and the Hallelujah Chorus will tentatively be available for purchase in late 2022, including both vocal and orchestra scores.

Get involved

If you are interested in purchasing the translation or learning more, please email me at jabcomposer@gmail.com.

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel project: In collaboration with Ballets Russes Arts Initiative, Congregation Kehillath Israel, composer Patricia Wallinga, and pianist Sharon Su. More information coming soon!

Greensboro Concert Band project: With gratitude to Kiyoshi Carter. More information coming soon!

Northwest Guilford project: In collaboration with Beth Cox and the ensembles of the Northwest Guilford schools. More information coming soon!

In the 2021-22 academic year, my partner Jordan and I made it our mission to visit every neighborhood of Boston and spend a day there as a tourist. We wanted to get to know the city better, looking for hidden gems and getting a sense of the many communities that we share the city with. From September to June, we visited every one of Boston’s 23 neighborhoods and discovered so much! You can see Jordan’s posts on Instagram with the hashtag #bostonneighborhoodtour.

In fall 2020, Jordan and I came up with the Ready, Stamp, Vote! project. We hired a young local artist (my former Boston Arts Academy student Genna Medina-Cook) to create a postcard design, while Jordan and I searched for state-specific voting information to include on the back.

We invited friends and family to send to people they knew, encouraging them to vote. Ultimately, over 260 postcards made their way to 16 states around the country!

Jordan and I organized a virtual trivia, with a range of categories that included Black GOATs, Black writers, and the history of Black Lives Matter. We asked participants to donate money to the pool, with the winning teams each night selecting a BLM-related organization to donate the proceeds to.

A total of 80 people participated over 2 nights of trivia, and with a match from Netflix, we were able to donate $5190 to Restoring Justice, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, the National Black Child Development Institute, and Know Your Rights Camp.

Voces was co-created with youth from La Colaborativa (formerly the Chelsea Collaborative). Eureka Ensemble worked with middle school girls who recently immigrated to the US (most of them unaccompanied minors) to learn how to play recorders, sing, and create their own musical ideas. Those ideas became the basis of this piece, which also quotes traditional songs from the students' countries of origin. The girls were central not only to the creation of the piece but to its performance, singing and playing percussion with the orchestra in the latter part of the piece, including the final notes.

The piece opens with texts gathered from the youth at the Collaborative and other immigrants around the country, responding to the question "What does it mean to you to be an immigrant?" The form and the responses were available in Spanish and English (form available below if you would like to add your voice).

If you would like your own words to become part of this piece in the future, you can submit in English here or in Spanish here.

Si quiere que sus respuestas sean parte de futuras versiones de esta pieza, puede llenar la forma en español aquí o en inglés aquí.

In 2017, I wrote an open letter to the Boston Symphony Orchestra asking them to reconsider their programming choices, which were not inclusive or reflective of the City of Boston. Over 70 musicians, professors, and others around Greater Boston co-signed the letter. The orchestra responded, and we engaged in constructive dialogue, leading to changes in their programming. In 2017-18, only 1 of 74 pieces at Symphony Hall was not written by a white man. The following season, 30% of the composers were women and/or BIPOC composers.

In spring 2018 I was invite to speak at the League of American Orchestras national conference, alongside a representative from the BSO and members of 2 other orchestras. This has become another strand in the ongoing dialogue around inclusion, equity, and representation in the world of classical music.

Click here to see the original letter and here to see the orchestra’s original response.

The Boston Globe wrote an article about this letter and the Orchestra's response on 20 Dec '17.