The 2020 Songbook UnGala: Long Beach Opera commissions new classical music to fundraise for 2021

A typical annual fundraising gala for Long Beach Opera goes something like this: there’s a big swanky party, with donors shelling out big bucks to eat, drink, enjoy performance, and hear about the upcoming season their generosity is making possible.

As you may have heard, 2020 is not a typical year. But in the spirit of “the show must go on,” after being forced to cancel most of its 2020 season, Long Beach Opera is moving forward with plans for 2021, finding (to quote Executive Director Jennifer Rivera) “creative ways to bring the incredible collaborative art form of opera to audiences once again.”

LBO has also come up with a creative way for those generous big donors to help create a new kind of gala: the 2020 Songbook, an “UnGala” featuring world premieres of 20 short vocal works — commissioned by the donors themselves and created by emerging composers — reflecting on some aspect of the 2020 experience. 

“The resulting ‘2020 Songbook’ will serve as an artistic time capsule of this very unusual time, as well as contributing to the creative economy by encouraging the creation of new works,” says LBO.

The commissioned composers were selected and mentored by a quintet of heavy hitters in the opera universe, including Anthony Davis, who won a Pulitzer Prize last year for The Central Park Five, which Long Beach Opera world premiered in June 2019 at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro. Annie Gosfield, David Lang, George Lewis, and Du Yun round out the group, adding another two Pulitzers, two Guggenheims, and a MacArthur Genius Grant to their collective trophy case.

The range of themes in the 20 works (each three to five minutes in length) includes the silence brought on by the pandemic; what breathing means to sick, oppressed, and climate-affected citizens; missing indigenous women and girls; a recent Brigham Young University decision to rescind a decree allowing same-sex relationships; and meditation and dating during lockdown. 

While some of the composers (who hail not just from the U.S. but also Canada, New Zealand, Iran, and various European countries) fashioned their compositions into traditional performances, others employed a variety of videographic techniques, including stop-motion animation, shadow puppetry, mobile projection, and iconographic storytelling. 

“The video productions are as diverse as the compositional voices and will tell their own story about how opera and classical music can move towards more digital forms of art creation, illuminating perhaps a silver lining of the pandemic for creative artists,” says LBO. “[…] Another important component of the 2020 Songbook is the emphasis on new classical music creation in the digital era. Because all of these new pieces were created during the pandemic, they were all created specifically for a digital medium, a frontier opera and classical music has previously shied away from.”

The evening will be hosted live by Metropolitan Opera star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, along with the above-mentioned quintet of mentor composers. Unlike your typical LBO gala, the 2020 Songbook UnGala can be attended (virtually, of course) by people who lack the donors’ deep pockets, with tickets going for $75 or only $25 “for artists, students, or anyone experiencing financial hardship (honor system — no proof required).” Two-thirds of all full-price ticket sales goes directly to the artists themselves.

“[T]he idea that we could actually contribute to the ailing artists economy and also fundraise and also support new works seemed like a wonderful place to start [our 2021 season],” says Rivera. “[…] We felt that the artistic lens these composers could provide would offer us all an important way to process what we’ve all been going through.”