Love Songs from Women to their Work
passion project
a new song cycle by angela sclafani
PASSION PROJECT is a song cycle where 12 brilliant women sing to their great loves: the object of their careers. An aviator sings to her airplane, an acrobat to her tightrope, an astronomer to her comet.
Angela Sclafani creates a diverse sonic landscape in 12 moving anthems to her unsung female heroes.
press
"PASSION PROJECT Featuring Tonya Pinkins, Desi Oakley, Arielle Jacobs & More to Stream on Facebook Live..."
- Broadway World [read the full article]
"Desi Oakley And Hannah Elless Join The Cast Of Angela Sclafani's PASSION PROJECT..."
- Broadway World [read the full article]
"Tonya Pinkins, Arielle Jacobs, Lexi Lawson, and Grace McLean Will Lead Angela Sclafani's PASSION PROJECT at The Green Room 42..."
- Broadway World [read the full article]
"Tonya Pinkins, Arielle Jacobs and More to Appear in Angela Sclafani's Passion Project at Green Room 42..."
- Broadway.com [read the full article]
photos
PASSION PROJECT concert premiere on September 23rd, 2019 at The Green Room 42
media
in concert
creative team
angela sclafani Composer
Angela Sclafani is a New York City-based composer and performer. As a creative and multi-hyphenate artist, she is often synchronously performing, writing, and co-producing her projects. Because of her versatile work in both the theater and music worlds, Angela has had the opportunity to perform with renowned artists such as Todd Almond, Courtney Love, Shaina Taub, Heidi Rodewald, & Years and Years. Her work has been performed in venues such as The Beacon Theater, The Theater at Madison Square Garden, 54 Below, Ars Nova, and Rockwood Music Hall.
In September 2019, Angela's new song cycle, PASSION PROJECT (vol.1), premiered at The Green Room 42 under the direction of Mary Birnbaum. The cycle contains love songs from incredible unheard women to the objects of their careers. The first volume of the continuing series featured performances by Tonya Pinkins, Desi Oakley, Grace McLean, Katie Thompson, Arielle Jacobs, Lexi Lawson, and more. Angela's first musical, THE OTHER SIDE OF PARADISE, premiered in Ars Nova's ANT Fest in 2017 under the direction of Hunter Bird and is still in development.
When not busy with her theatrical projects and acting gigs, Angela writes, performs, and records her original music. She has independently released two EP’s, Your Ghost and Blossom, and frequently performs live at the notable singer-songwriter venue, Rockwood Music Hall. Angela's music combines confessional lyrics with passionate and emotional vocals, often echoing the work of singers like Fiona Apple, Tori Amos and Bonnie Raitt. This year, her original song, Your Ghost, received first place in the Great American Song Contest's Adult Contemporary category and was praised by judges for its “engagingly original lyrical story, inventively appealing imagery and smartly crafted melodic design.”
Angela is the 2019 Fred Ebb Award Winner, a 2018 Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist, and a 2017 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award Semifinalist. She has developed work at The Orchard Project Greenhouse Residency, Fresh Ground Pepper's BRB Artist Retreat, and Musical Theatre Factory's 4x15. Angela was also featured in Rattlestick Playwright Theater's NEW SONGS NOW series as well as NYMF's INTERSECTING CHORDS concert. In support of her creative endeavors, Angela was named a 2018 Richie Jackson Artist Fellow and was awarded the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust Grant. She graduated from NYU Tisch with a BFA in Drama.
mary birnbaum director
In the summer of 2019, Mary Birnbaum’s new production of La Bohème opened the season at the Santa Fe Opera and was the first new female-led production since 1997.
Mary Birnbaum, whose stage direction of opera and theatre New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini called “viscerally overwhelming” (Rape of Lucretia at Juilliard) and “genuinely insightful ... vibrant” (The Classical Style at Carnegie Hall), works both internationally, from Taiwan (Otello) to Central America (L’Elisir and bohème at the National Theatre of Costa Rica and Querido Arte in Guatemala), Australia and Israel, and across the U.S. (Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Opera Columbus, Virginia Arts Festival (Kept), Ojai Festival, Boston Baroque). This summer, her production of Dido and Aeneas played Opera Holland Park in London and Opera de Versailles. In Opera Magazine George Loomis wrote that Mary Birnbaum’s “thoughtful direction [of Eugene Onegin at Juilliard] was rich with imaginative touches” and the Houston Press termed her Hansel and Gretel a “stunner, perhaps the company’s most perfect realization. [The Company] has found a director of real quality in Mary Birnbaum.” Currently Associate Director of the post-graduate Artist Diploma in Opera Studies program at Juilliard, Mary has taught acting for singers at Bard College and in the Lindemann Young Artists Program at the Metropolitan Opera. A graduate of Harvard College, Mary trained professionally in physical theater at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
macy schmidt orchestrator/arranger
Macy Schmidt is a New York City-based Music Director, Orchestrator, & Copyist. She got her start in the city working under Theatre Historian & Producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper at Broadway cabaret venue Feinstein’s/54 Below, and began working as a resident pianist for various Broadway masterclass companies, where she’s accompanied accomplished Broadway artists including Alice Ripley, Kate Rockwell, Laura Benanti, Carrie St. Louis, Michael Campayno, Wilson Heredia, and more. She has collaborated with esteemed Tony and Oscar-winning lyricist David Zippel (Hercules, Mulan, City of Angels) on a one-night revival of Marvin Hamlisch’s The Goodbye Girl, starring Kate Baldwin and Santino Fontana. Recently, Macy has also collaborated with contemporary musical theatre writers including Grace McLean, Rob Rokicki, Zoe Sarnak, and beloved writing duo Kait Kerrigan & Brian Lowdermilk. Macy recently led a production of Carner & Gregor’s Island Song at the Davenport Theatre, as well as various projects with the New York Musical Festival, where she also served as Orchestrator for Interstate: A New Musical, by Melissa Li & Kit Yan. As a Music Director, she has led numerous Broadway benefits & galas, collaborating with esteemed Broadway performers such as Ariana DeBose, Brandon Victor Dixon, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Alex Newell, and Colman Domingo. She will be serving as the Music Assistant on the Broadway production of TINA: The Tina Turner Musical, opening in the Fall of 2019. Macy has taken her work across the globe as well, and recently returned from China, where she MD’ed for Shanghai Starz, an international musical theatre camp in Shanghai, as well as India, where she worked on the music team for the Broadway-bound stage adaptation of Monsoon Wedding.
She currently serves on faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and Cap21 Conservatory as a pianist, and at Pace University as a professor of Music Theory.Macy is a proud graduate of the University of Florida, holding a B.A. in Music Theory, and a passionate advocate for women in music.