YOU ARE POETRYYOU ARE POETRY

For one year, every day, a poet wrote a love poem.
During the year his partner, Beth Morrison, underwent treatment for a life-threatening illness, André de Quadros wrote a poem each day. Every evening, they read the poem aloud together in bed, a quiet ritual that became a way of meeting uncertainty with love.
Those poems, alongside Beth's journals from the same year, became the foundation for You Are Poetry, a new multimedia song cycle by composer Kamala Sankaram with immersive projection design by S. Katy Tucker. Blending music, poetry, image, and memory, the work traces the fragile terrain between fear and hope, transforming private acts of creation into a shared human experience. At its heart, You Are Poetry is a testimony to love's remarkable capacity to sustain us, to heal in ways both seen and unseen, and to reveal beauty even in our most vulnerable moments.
CREATIVE TEAM
DIRECTOR — BETH MORRISON
MUSIC — KAMALA SANKARAM
POETRY AND MUSIC DIRECTION — ANDRÉ DE QUADROS
ADDITIONAL TEXT — BETH MORRISON
IMMERSIVE PROJECTION DESIGN — S. KATY TUCKER
CREATIVE TEAM
BETH MORRISON
CURATOR & DIRECTOR
A Grammy-nominated producer, recipient of the Musical America Award for Artist of the Year/Agent of Change and a Kennedy Center NEXT50 Honoree, Beth Morrison is an opera-theatre producer and the President and Creative Producer of Beth Morrison Projects and the co-Founding Director of PROTOTYPE: Opera/ Theatre/ Now Festival. Morrison is noted as a “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) and “a powerhouse leading the industry to new heights” (WQXR). Beth created Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) in 2006 to identify and support the work of emerging and established living composers, and to change the opera industry by cultivating a new generation of talent and telling the stories of our time. BMP has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 65 works in 19 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone (Du Yun/Royce Vavrek) and p r i s m (Ellen Reid/Roxie Perkins). Opera News has noted, “More than any other figure in the opera industry, Beth Morrison has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century."
In 2013, Beth co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival for which she serves as Artist Director, which has become “essential to the evolution of American opera” (New Yorker). Morrison is also in demand as a speaker both nationally and internationally and has delivered key note speeches for Classical: Next, Opera America, Opera Europa, Mannes School of Music/ The New School, among others. Morrison holds a Bachelor of Music from Boston University, a Master of Music from Arizona State University, and an MFA from Yale School of Drama. Beth is also a Lecturer at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.

KAMALA SANKARAM
COMPOSER
Praised as “strikingly original” (NY Times) and “new voice from whom we will surely be hearing more” (LA Times), Kamala Sankaram writes highly theatrical music that defies categorization. Recent commissions include the Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Opera on Tap, among others. Awards, grants and residencies include: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Known for her work with emerging technologies, her recent genre-defying hit Looking at You (with collaborators Rob Handel and Kristin Marting) featured live data mining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers. Sankaram, Handel, and Marting also created all decicions will be made by consensus, a short absurdist opera performed live over Zoom and featured on NBC and the BBC3. With librettist Jerre Dye and Opera on Tap, she created The Parksville Murders, the world’s first virtual reality opera (Samsung VR, Jaunt VR, Kennedy Center Reach Festival, “Best Virtual Reality Video” NY Independent Film Festival, Future of Storytelling, Salem Horror Festival and the Topanga Film Festival.) Also a performer (hailed as "an impassioned soprano with blazing high notes" (Wall Street Journal)), Kamala moves freely between the worlds of experimental music, creative music, and contemporary opera. Kamala recently sang the role of Gwen St. Clair in the revival of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A frequent collaborator with Anthony Braxton, she has premiered his operas Trillium E and Trillium J, as well as appearing on his 12-hour recording GTM (Syntax) 2017. Other notable collaborations include The Wooster Group’s LA DIDONE (Kaaitheater, Brussels, Edinburgh International Festival, Rotterdam Schouberg, Grand Théâtre de la Ville, Luxembourg, St. Anne’s Warehouse, NY, REDCAT, Los Angeles), the PROTOTYPE Festival’s THUMBPRINT (Baruch Performing Arts, NY, REDCAT, Los Angeles), and appearances with John Zorn, the Philip Glass Ensemble, and Petr Kotik, among others. Kamala is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble whose accolades include two awards for Best Eclectic Album from the Independent Music Awards, the 2018 Mid-Atlantic touring grant, and appearances on WFMU and NPR. Bombay Rickey’s opera-cabaret on the life of Yma Sumac premiered in the 2016 PROTOTYPE Festival and was presented in London at Tête-à-Tête Opera’s Cubitt Sessions. Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase.

ANDRÉ DE QUADROS
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
One of the thought-leaders at the forefront of music and justice, Dr André de Quadros is a professor of music at Boston University, where he holds affiliations in African, Asian, and Muslim studies, and in prison education. For the past fifteen years, Dr. de Quadros has devoted the majority of his professional life to projects in social justice and peace building. He directs the following choirs: Common Ground Voices (IsraeliPalestinian-international), the Manado State Uniiversity Choir (Indonesia), the Muslim Choral Ensemble (Sri Lanka), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Countries Youth Choir, and VOICES 21C. He co-directs Common Ground Voices / La Frontera (US-Mexico) and The Choral Commons a media initiative. As a scholar, conductor, educator, and human rights activist, his professional work has taken him to the most diverse ensembles and settings in more than forty countries, spanning professional ensembles, and including projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees and asylum-seekers, victims of torture and trauma, and peacebuilding work in the Arab world and Israel. He is the artistic director of the London International Music Festival, and Conducting 21C: Musical Leadership for a New Century at the Eric Ericson International Choral Centre in Sweden. He is the editor of the following series: Cantemus (earthsongs), Music of Asia and the Pacific (earthsongs) Salamu Aleikum – Choral Music of the Muslim World (earthsongs), and Songs of the World (Hinshaw). Among his many publications is his 2019 book, Focus: Choral Music in Global Perspective, published by Routledge.

S. KATY TUCKER
VIDEO & PROJECTION DESIGNER
Katy Tucker is a New York based video and projection designer. Katy began her career as a painter and installation artist, exhibiting her work at a variety of galleries, such as The Corcoran Museum, Dupont Underground, The Dillon Gallery and Artist’s Space in New York City. She has collaborated with musicians like: Paul McCartney, Helga Davis, Pamela Z, Paola Prestini, Amanda Gookin and Jeffrey Ziegler.
Her work in live performance has been seen around the world including Broadway, Off-Broadway, The Metropolitan Opera, The New York City Ballet, Carnegie Hall, The Park Avenue Armory, BAM, Kennedy Center, San Francisco Opera, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Dutch National Opera, The Sydney Opera House, The Houston Grand Opera, and more.
Upcoming: Smash: A Comedy about a Musical at the Imperial Theater on Broadway opening April 10, Tannhauser at Houston Grand Opera with Francesca Zambello, Lunar Eclipse, directed by Kate Whoriskey at 2nd Stage, The (Re)volution of Steve Jobs at WNO, and Siegfried, at Teatro alla Scala.
Recent: Die Walkure and Das Rheingold at Teatro La Scala directed by Sir David McVicar, MacBeth at WNO/Kennedy Center, Turandot at Washington National Opera, directed by Francesca Zambello with a new ending composed by Christopher Tin, Medea at the Canadian Opera Company,The Pianist written and directed by Emily Mann, Florencia en el Amazonas at The Metropolitan Opera, and Klangewolke 23: Odyssey at Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria.
