PART I: THE RED THREAD
Work-in-Development Presentation
Music by Wang Lu
Libretto by Deborah Brevoort
Conducted by Anthony Cheung 

The Red Thread, presented as a 30-minute piano-only work-in-development, follows an adopted Chinese-American woman who travels to rural China searching for the birth mother who left her in a market basket eighteen years earlier, a red thread tied around her ankle. Spare, intimate, and rooted in Chinese mythology, it asks what binds us across lifetimes.

‍

ABOUT WANG LU

Wang Lu writes music that reflects urban environmental sounds, linguistic intonation and contours, traditional Chinese music, and freely improvised practices. Her works have been performed internationally, by ensembles including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, and others. She received the Berlin Prize in Music Composition, Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award in Music from American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow. Wang Lu’s portrait albums Urban Inventory (2018), and An Atlas of Time (2020) were released to critical acclaim. Lu was the Vanguard Opera Composer in Residence at the Chicago Opera Theater where she wrote her first chamber opera The Beekeeper. She wrote an episode for desert in, a TV opera produced by Boston Lyric Opera; At Which Point for the Crossing Ensemble of 24 singers and electronics; and a Noh performer in Tokyo. In 2022-23 season her projects include a new orchestra work Surge commissioned by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation for the New York Philharmonic (2023) with following performances by the Cincinnati Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, Des Moines Symphony and Pensacola Symphony Orchestra; A large ensemble work commissioned by the Barlow Foundation for the Seattle Modern Orchestra (2023), a large ensemble work commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts for Chicago based Ensemble Dal Niente, and a new string quartet Motion for the Parker Quartet and a piano quintet for the Danish Quartet and pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar. Other international ensembles performing her compositions this season also include: Ensemble Villages in France, Phoenix Ensemble in Basel Switzerland, Tapiola Sinfonietta, in Finland, Jennifer Koh at Phoenix Symphony’s new music festival REVERB. She is currently Associate Professor of Music at Brown University, received her doctorate from Columbia University and graduated from the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music. Website: https://wanglucomposer.com

‍

ABOUT ANTHONY CHEUNG

Composer/pianist Anthony Cheung writes music that explores the senses, a wide palette of instrumental play and affect, improvisational traditions, reimagined musical artifacts, and multiple layers of textual meaning. His music has been commissioned and performed by leading groups such as the Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, the LA andNew York Philharmonics, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Yarn/Wire, AMOC*, ScharounEnsemble Berlin, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and many others.From 2015-17, he was the Daniel R. LewisComposer Fellow with the Cleveland Orchestra. He is the recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as a 2012Rome Prize, and received First Prize at the 2008 Dutilleux Competition. As a co-founder of New York’s Talea Ensemble, he served as pianist and artistic director of the group. Recordings include five portrait discs: All Roads (New Focus, 2022),Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions (Kairos, 2022), Cycles and Arrows (New Focus), Dystemporal (Wergo), and Roundabouts (Ensemble Modern Medien). He studied at Harvard and Columbia, and was a Junior Fellow at the HarvardSociety of Fellows. He previously taught at the University of Chicago and is an Associate Professor of Music at Brown University.

‍

ABOUT DEBORAH BREVOORT

Deborah Brevoort writes plays, musicals and opera librettos. In 2023, she was awarded the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize from Opera America. She’s best known for her play The Women of Lockerbie, produced internationally. Her Noh Drama about Elvis Presley, Blue Moon Over Memphis, toured Japan in 2024 & 2025. She is an alum of ALT’s Composer Librettist Development Program, and has written nine opera librettos: The Knock, with Aleksandra Vrebalov, co-commissioned by Glimmerglass & Cincinnati Opera, was made into a live action film on YouTube & premiered on stage at Cincinnati Opera; Murasaki’s Moon, with Michi Wiancko, for On-Site Opera, Metropolitan Museum of Art & ALT; Quamino’s Map with Errollyn Wallen, for Chicago Opera Theatre; Embedded, with Patrick Soluri, for ALT, Ft. Worth and Fargo Moorhead Operas; Dinner 4 3, with Michael Ching, for the Decameron Opera Coalition; and new adaptations of Mozart’s The Impresario and Die Fledermaus for Anchorage Opera. Albert Nobbs, with Patrick Soluri, was a Dominic Pelliciotti Prize finalist. Steal a Pencil for Me, with Gerald Cohen, premiered at Opera Colorado; a recording was released by Sono Luminus in 2024. She’s a two-time winner of the Frederick Loewe award for her musicals Coyote Goes Salmon Fishing, with Scott Davenport Richards, and King Island Christmas, with David Friedman. She teaches in the NYU Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and serves as the Librettist Mentor for Seattle Opera & ALT’s CLDP program. She was the 2024 Librettist Mentor for WNO’s AOI project and a mentor to NBO Musical Theatre Initiative in Nairobi, Kenya. She is a Fulbright Specialist for theatre, musical theatre and opera with the US State Dept. and led an opera writing workshop at the Seoul Institute of the Arts in 2025. Website: www.Deborahbrevoort.com

This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.

ABOUT PROTOTYPE

PROTOTYPE is produced by Beth Morrison Projects, a trailblazer in the creation and presentation of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works. The visionary festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking.

PROTOTYPE is committed to surprising our audiences and confounding their expectations through content, form, and relevance. The festival gives voice to a diverse group of composers, librettists, performers and musicians across all genres, backgrounds, and cultures. In providing a recurring showcase of visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre pieces, the touring life of the work extends around the world. The festival also presents groundbreaking new works by international artists and has become a global reference of artistic excellence in the field of opera and music-theatre.

PROTOTYPE was co-founded in 2013 by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE under the leadership of Beth Morrison, Kristin Marting, and Kim Whitener.

PART II: HILMA
Fully Staged Chamber Opera | WORLD PREMIERE
Music and Libretto by Daniel Zlatkin
Directed by Juliana Morales Carreño
Hilma: Catherine Martin, mezzo-soprano

Following an intermission, Hilma is presented as a fully staged production of approximately 45 minutes. The opera is a portrait of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who channeled abstract visions from unseen spirits decades before the art world was ready to receive them. Haunting and luminous, the production brings Hilma’s visionary canvases to life through light, projection, and movement, performed by the National Sawdust Ensemble under the musical direction of Jeffrey Zeigler.

‍

ABOUT DANIEL ZLATKIN

Daniel Zlatkin is a professional classical composer and educator. His music focuses on creating intense, meditative spaces and is increasingly informed by Judaism.

Daniel has received numerous commissions and awards for his work. Institutions which have featured his music include the Tanglewood Music Center, Moody Center for the Arts (Houston), National Sawdust (Brooklyn), Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (Hudson Valley), June in Buffalo, Prismatic Congruency (Boston), Citadelle Art Museum (Canadian, Texas), the National Flute Association, and Unerhörte Music (Berlin). Other collaborators include the Da Capo Chamber Players, The Orchestra Now, The Brass Project, Vanguard Reed Quintet, Choral Chameleon, Khorikos, Ensemble Modern, Talea Ensemble, Switch~ Ensemble, Nunc, and Ensemble du Bout du Monde.

Daniel holds degrees from Bard College (BM, BA '16), the University of Michigan (MM '18), and Rice University (DMA '24). He currently lives in Jerusalem, where he is studying to become a cantor at Hebrew Union College.

‍

ABOUT JULIANA MORALES CARREÑO

Juliana Morales Carreño is a Colombian theater artist in search of spaces of communion through multilingual theatrical language, ensemble work and creación colectiva. She is co-founder of Anfibia Teatro, a theater company based in Bogotá. She has worked in theater and opera as a director, actor, producer, adapter and playwright. Some of her directing credits include Dos Mundos de la Ópera: Mozart Britten at Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo: Kilele (bilingual premiere) at Yale School of Drama; Makanaky at UNATC “I.L. Caragiale” in Bucharest, Romania; Solo Mia at Teatro la Maldita Vanidad (winner of the New Creators Cycle); As One (2022), winner of the Ópera al Parque 2021 Grant; Los empeños de una casa at Teatro Milagro. She studied the M.F.A in Theater Directing at Yale School of Drama where she was awarded the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize in directing. She is a Drama League Fellow and a Jerome Foundation Resident Artist at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club where she is developing her play Solitaria.

‍

ABOUT CATHERINE MARTIN

Praised by The Washington Post for her “gorgeous, warm voice that you want to keep listening to,” American mezzo-soprano Catherine Martin continues to make an impact in repertoire ranging from Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, and Bellini to contemporary opera. A compelling singing actress with notable vocal warmth and dramatic authority, Martin is a frequent presence with many of North America’s leading opera companies.

Highlights of Martin’s 2025–2026 season include a return to Lyric Opera of Chicago to sing the Page and cover Herodias in Salome. She also returns to The Metropolitan Opera to cover the Countess de Coigny in Andrea Chénier and Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde. Recent engagements include returns to The Metropolitan Opera to cover Giulietta in Les contes d’Hoffmann and to The Atlanta Opera as Juno in Semele, as well as appearances with Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera as Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana and Detroit Opera as the District Attorney in The Central Park Five.