Selected Curated Projects
FROM SPAIN TO THE AMERICAS
For up to 5 singers, 2 pianists and narrator
From Spain to the Americas is a musical journey through the expressive richness of the Spanish language across centuries. Combining music, words, and history, the program travels from the Sephardic traditions of the fifteenth century and the Spanish Renaissance through the vibrant colors of Spanish nationalism, before crossing the Atlantic to explore the diverse musical landscapes of Hispanic America. The journey concludes with tangos and milongas from Chile and Argentina, a reflection on memory, shared history, and cultural heritage.
SONGS OF UNITY & HOPE
Songs of Unity & Hope is a 15-hour global online celebration of the human spirit, bringing together more than 200 musicians, poets, and speakers from 64 countries in 40 languages through performances, readings, and conversation. The project emerged during the pandemic as an artistic response to collective uncertainty, and stands as a testament to the power of art to foster connection, resilience, and hope — illuminating what sustains and inspires us even in the most challenging times.
This project also exists in a concert stage version, combining live performances and readings with multimedia contributions from around the world.
LORCA: VOICE & DUENDE
Co-curated with mezzo-soprano Nancy Herrera
For 6 singer-pianist duos and narrator
Lorca: Voice & Duende travels through the life and works of Federico García Lorca in song, from the folk melodies of his native Granada to the deep cante jondo of Andalucía, and onward to New York, Cuba, and the theater of La Barraca. Woven throughout with narration, it is a journey in search of duende: that dark, elusive force Lorca believed gave art its soul.
CORRESPONDENCES
For 1–2 sopranos, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, string quartet, piano, and reciter. Includes a simultaneous visual projection of paintings by Whistler, Turner, Redon, Moréas, Watteau, and other artists directly or indirectly associated with the Symbolist movement.
Correspondences invites audiences into the world of Symbolism, where music, poetry, and painting enter into dialogue: a sensory, transcendent journey in which the visible and invisible intertwine, and art illuminates deeper realities, mystery, and the sublime.
MENTORS & CATALYSTS
For 2 sopranos, 1 mezzo, 1 baritone, 1 tenor, 1-3 pianists, narrator and visual presentation
Mentors & Catalysts explores the many forms artistic mentorship can take: personal, literary, visual, and pedagogical. Through musical works shaped by guiding relationships and creative influence, the program traces the invisible threads that form an artist: how inspiration passes through friendship, collaboration, and teaching, and how these encounters quietly shape who an artist becomes.
CELEBRATIONS
Renée Fleming Next Gen Recital
Hosted by Renée Fleming and curated by Javier Arrebola for Wolf Trap Opera
For soprano, tenor, baritone, and pianist.
Celebrations, created for Mother’s Day 2026, is a recital in three parts and six languages honoring motherhood and parenthood, celebrating a new generation of young recital artists, and reflecting on the everyday blessings that enrich our lives: from music and love to life itself.
YIN & YANG: THE HARMONY OF OPPOSITES
For 8 singers and 8 pianists
Yin & Yang: The Harmony of Opposites unfolds in two mirrored halves — Light in Darkness, then Darkness in Light — exploring how joy and sorrow, day and night, hope and despair live inside one another. Drawing on song repertoire spanning Schubert to Messiaen, Barber to Sarah Kirkland Snider, the program was built together with its performers, each contributing works of personal meaning to a shared whole, echoing the ancient idea that light and darkness complete each other.
21
SongFest’s “21” was a three-part series releasing October 21st, 2021 focusing on art song from the Western classical tradition in 1821, 1921, and 2021. Lectures by Graham Johnson and contributions by James Conlon, Jake Heggie, J’Nai Bridges, Alan Louis Smith, John Musto, Jamie Barton and many others.
Conceived, co-curated and video-edited by Javier Arrebola.
MIRRORS OF TIME (1776-2026)
For soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone,
flute, cello, percussion, two pianists, and narrator.
Mirrors of Time presents American song as living historical documents, tracing the nation's musical evolution from 1726 to 2026 and inviting the audience to experience the passage of time through the way history is imprinted on music. Along the way, the program highlights the differences, continuities, and cross-cultural influences between the United States and the wider world, showing how music can both reflect and connect the eras it moves through.
SCHUBERT IN 1826
For soprano & piano, with narrator.
2026 marks 200 years since 1826, a year in which Schubert, amid personal hardship, wrote music of extraordinary depth. Schubert in 1826 traces the composer's preoccupations that year through the songs he wrote and the poetry he chose to set, from Goethe to Seidl to Schulze, arriving finally at the quiet clarity of the Piano Sonata in G major. Through music, poetry, and narration, it offers an intimate portrait of an artist finding light in a difficult year.
HOMECOMING
Co-curated with soprano Martha Guth
For soprano and piano
Framed by a line by Rilke — "I come home from the soaring / in which I lost myself" — Homecoming traces a journey outward and back again, from ancient chant and sacred song through the towering voices of the classical tradition, into the "Old New World" of spirituals and folk song. Readings from Rilke, Angelou, Whitman, and Mary Oliver are woven throughout, asking, in many voices, what it truly means to come home.
TILL EARTH OUTWEARS
For 2 sopranos, 1 mezzo, 2 baritones and 1-5 pianists
Taking its title and spirit from Thomas Hardy’s poem A Spot, Till Earth Outwears is a meditation on love that endures, sung across five languages and reflecting the poem's quiet promise: that some things outlast even the earth itself.
UNTRODDEN PATHS
For 5 singers and piano
Untrodden Paths ventures beyond the familiar core of the recital repertoire, gathering songs from traditions too rarely heard side by side: Jewish, Romani, Nordic, Argentine, and African American spirituals. Each set opens a window onto a distinct musical world, tracing how song carries the memory, longing, and identity of a people across generations.
FEMALE PORTRAITS
For 5 singers and 5 pianists
Female Portraits gathers five imagined and real women — Bilitis, Veslemøy, Laura, Ophelia, and Clara Schumann — each drawn through the music and readings written about or by her. A kaleidoscope of longing, sorrow, love, and selfhood, the program invites the audience into five distinct inner worlds, one song at a time.
AN DIE MUSIK:
SCHUBERT’S COMPLETE PIANO SONATAS
Five concert series on modern and historical instruments
An die Musik traces the life and inner world of Franz Schubert through his complete finished piano sonatas, performed chronologically alongside chamber works and songs. Moving through the poetry and texts he chose to set, the series follows Schubert's artistic evolution from his earliest sonatas to his final masterpieces: a portrait of a composer in dialogue with himself across a lifetime.