World premiere workshops of We’ve Got Our Eye on You celebrate Women’s History Month

The Department of Music at SUNY New Paltz is pleased to announce the world premiere workshop performances of a new comic opera by composer and faculty member, Nkeiru Okoye, titled We’ve Got Our Eye on You.

Performances will take place March 1 and 5 at 8:00 p.m. at the Julien J. Studley Theatre. A talk-back session with the creative team will follow each performance.

This opera is set in Ancient Greece and is loosely based on the myth of the Stygian Witches made infamous in the 1980 camp classic Clash of the Titans. Set in and around a cave inhabited by these Graeae, or “Gray Sisters,” who share a single external eyeball, the story opens on the siblings cooking a man in their cauldron as they prepare for a visit from Pythia, the Oracle at Delphi. Pythia arrives and soon has a vision that the gals will be “known” by the hero Perseus, who is searching for Medusa. Inflamed by the idea of a strange man, the sisters vow not to divulge Medusa’s secrets. But will romantic impetuosity ruin all? Is Perseus hunter or prey?

Taking inspiration from Gilbert & Sullivan, Monty Python, Stephen Sondheim and Aretha Franklin, and combining the sensitivities of classical mythology with those of contemporary “hook up” culture, Okoye’s latest work is a hilarious and touching exploration of the conflict between dignity and unchained desire in the lives of three unusual sisters.

The opera features a student cast, an orchestra of students and faculty and the New Paltz Chamber Singers. The full creative team includes Nkeiru Okoye (composer), David Cote (librettist), Susan Einhorn (director), Edward Lundergan (choir director/conductor), Kent Smith (vocal director/coach) and Angela Perez (stage manager). The cast includes Krista Miller ‘16 (Music – Classical Performance & Contemporary), Jillian Gawricki ‘16 (Music – Classical Performance & Contemporary) , Amber Neilson ‘16 (Theatre Arts), Daniel Chiu ‘17 (Music – Classical Performance), Joshua Tobias ‘16 (Music – Contemporary) and Guest Artist Patrice P. Eaton (www.patricepeaton.com/) as Pythia.

We’ve Got Our Eye on You is sponsored by the SUNY New Paltz Department of Music, the Department of English and the Office of the Dean of Fine & Performing Arts.

Tickets for We’ve Got Our Eye on You are $10 general public; $6 seniors (62+) and faculty/staff; $3 students. Tickets can be purchased at the door beginning one hour prior to the performance or online at www.newpaltz.edu/music. For additional information call (845) 257-2700. The Julien J. Studley Theatre has an accessible entrance.

About the Composer
With compositions hailed as “achingly beautiful,” by The Baltimore Sun, Nkeiru Okoye has seen her work performed by a number of major national orchestras including the Philadelphia, Detroit, Virginia, Indianapolis and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras. Okoye’s music has also been presented at the International Consortium for Music of Africa and its Diaspora at (Oxford University, UK), Dialogue Between China and Africa in Music and Halim el-Dabh Symposium (Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing, People’s Republic of China), and conferences of the College Music Society, National Association of Schools of Music, The African American Art Song Alliance, and National Association of Teachers of Singing.

Okoye’s opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom received a 2013 Arts Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has earned additional awards, commissions and commendations from Meet the Composer, MetLife Creative Connections, the Women’s Philharmonic, Composer’s Collaborative, Inc., the Walt Whitman Project, Yvar Mikhashov Trust for New Music, the Beneva Foundation, the NAACP, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

Okoye’s best known works include Brooklyn Cinderella (2011, commissioned by American Opera Projects), Songs of Harriet Tubman (2007-08, recorded by the Dvorak Symphony Orchestra), Phillis Wheatley (2005 recorded by the Moscow Symphony), Voices Shouting Out (2002, commissioned by the Virginia Symphony) and African Sketches (2007-08, published in the Oxford University Press Anthology of Piano Music of the African Diaspora).

Okoye currently is director of Music Theory and Composition at SUNY New Paltz.