Atelier Faculty
Rachel J. Peters
Photo credit: Luke Redmond
About
Composer/librettist Rachel J. Peters writes operas that sound like musicals and musicals that sound like operas: Lesson Plan (Caramoor), Companionship (Fort Worth Opera), The Wild Beast of the Bungalow (Oberlin Conservatory), Three Amputators (Arctic Chamber Music Festival) with Royce Vavrek; Rootabaga Country (Sarasota Opera, Seattle Opera), Sketchbook for Ollie (Lyric Opera of Kansas City); Staggerwing (Opera Kansas), Men I’m Not Married To (Cleveland Opera Theater), No Ladies in the Lady’s Book (Utah Opera) with Lisa DeSpain; Welcome to the Madness (Opera Steamboat) with Leanna Kirchoff. Only Children with Michael R. Jackson (NYU Tisch), Tiny Feats of Cowardice with Susan Bernfield (NYC Fringe), Tomato Red (UC Irvine), Octopus Heart (NYU Steinhardt). Peters' concert works include: Ethel Smyth Plays Golf in Limbo (Semperoper Dresden), If You Can Prove That I Should Set You Free (Albany Symphony), Jack's Vocabulary (Hartt SPASM), I Live Here (Galapagos Art Space). Her scores for plays include Stretch (a fantasia) (New Georges), Tania in the Getaway Van (Flea Theater) by Susan Bernfield, Transatlantic by John Walch (Arkansas Rep). Peters' songs have been performed at Lincoln Center, Second Stage, National Opera Center, Symphony Space, National Sawdust, and at New York Festival of Song. A contributor to The AIDS Quilt Songbook and albums by Mr. Jackson and Zachary James, Peters is also a proud alumna of Kimmel Harding Nelson, Yaddo, Brush Creek Arts, Millay Arts, New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, American Opera Project, John Duffy Institute. Her works have garnered multiple OPERA America Female Composer Grants. Opera Committee, Dramatists Guild; Youth Opera Committee, National Opera Association. Peters earned a double B.A. summa cum laude from Brandeis University and an MFA from New York Univeristy.
Courses