Alphabetical by work title
1968 – 10,000 Go-Go Boots (from Jeannette Rankin: Fierce Grace)
The fight for peace was perhaps (Jeannette) Rankin’s defining purpose; she famously voted against U.S. involvement in both world wars. Kaminsky wrote the music for “1968 – 10,000 Go-Go Boots,” representing 87-year-old Rankin’s involvement in the anti-Vietnam movement. The slow melodies halted and meandered like an aging mind and spirit, a bit confused by her surroundings but pleased to still be relevant.” – Classical Voice America
A Dream Revisited
A Dream Revisited for amplified flute and percussion is delicate and imaginative.” – The New Yorker
And Trouble Came
And Trouble Came: An African AIDS Diary is a narrative and a meditation, skillfully combining words and a wide range of musical styles in a moving and uplifting experience.” – American Record Guide
In And Trouble Came: An African AIDS Diary, Kaminsky has fashioned a text that interweaves three poems and some brief Biblical fragments (from Job and the Psalms) with words of her own, the latter reflecting her experience living for a time in Ghana, where she had the occasion to meet a number of AIDS patients. The words are compellingly, simply, and movingly delivered by the actor/stage director Mark Lamos. The lesson this piece teaches is both simple and profound: to love the dying. This disc is crucial listening for anyone who values life and its meaning.” — Fanfare
And Trouble Came: An African AIDS Diary comes slowly and fully ornamented with dramatic effectiveness and quiet boldness. Narrated by Mark Lamos (nothing is sung), the journal entries light places in the heart and later in the mind that resemble the humanness we seek and sometimes stumble on the way. Classical in its simplicity and texture, neither too dark and never audacious in effect, Kaminsky’s selection of poetry and scription set to her long smooth cello deserves mass attention.” — 4Front Magazine
As One Press
Deception
Laura Kaminsky‘s strikingly intense diptych, Deception (with clarinetist Moran) Katz’s moody, richly burnished low register in tandem with the cello built an air of mystery and foreboding, occasionally punctured by the piano. The second movement worked clever variations via individual voices in a very Debussy-esque arrangement that also offered a nod to Shostakovich and possibly Penderecki as well.” — Lucid Culture
Fantasy
recalls Copland’s Fantasy in ambition and achievement, though its fluidity echoes Elliott Carter’s Night Fantasies.” — International Piano
… an extensive Fantasy for solo piano by Laura Kaminsky (N.Y. premiere) explored, in episodic fashion, piano sonorities from Debussyesque gongs and watery burbles to jazzy dialogue between the hands … with its moderation of expression and close attention to nuance and detail, [the piece] often had one imagining an atonal Amy Beach composing A Hermit Thrush at Eve in 2017. Oppens’s insight into the score, communicated through a varied tonal palette and keen-eared voicing, was a reminder of why composers from John Adams to Elliott Carter have queued up to write pieces for her.” – New York Classical Review
highly improvisatory … the overall tone is joyful.” – ClevelandClassical.com
Exciting sense of rhythm and expressive harmonic language” – ClevelandClassical.com
February
If you need a one word: ‘Masterful…’ or if you need a phrase: ‘Masterful … the music is the spine.
Based on Lisa Moore’s novel of the same title, February tells tender tales (and) houses a mix of emotions, including the struggles of grief-stricken families coming to terms with their loss, the feelings of void in everyday lives, and the steady accrual of resilience to begin anew, all packed into a two-hour show. February strings together nostalgia, life experiences, and hope into a cohesive structure, allowing the overarching narrative to dictate the flow.
February is an evocative composition of sound, light textures, costumes, and blocking brings years of pent-up emotions to the fore … It is cathartic.
February never lives in just the sum of its parts. The ensemble is immaculate. The scenery transports you. In one moment, the stage is bathed in blue, echoing the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, and in the next, it emanates amber, radiating the warmth of the family as they grieve and heal together. What holds these striking visuals and splendid performance together is Laura Kaminsky’s masterful music. As in most operas, the music here is the spine. It is a portal to that world. It mirrors what transpires between the characters: moments of joy, melancholy, and hope.” – St. John’s arts and culture journal Riddlefence
Finding Wright
An exceptional new work.” – OperaNews.com
Kaminsky’s score made the emotions of the characters and situations palpable … the music was at times shimmering or brooding. – OperaNews.com
Beneath the voices, the orchestration was sumptuous and enveloping.” – OperaNews.com
Homage to Havel
The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly Laura Kaminsky’s “Homage to Havel,” a tribute to the Czech Republic’s first president, Václav Havel. Kaminsky is a skilled composer who fully understands the capabilities and strengths of each instrument, combining sounds in a way that is both intriguing and unique. Her thought-provoking piece was electrifying throughout and Cygnus performed it with energetic confidence. – Feast of Music
Hometown to the World
… a critical piece of contemporary opera that seeks to create greater awareness, thoughtful dialogue, and insightful responses, as the many issues surrounding immigration, economic viability and cultural cohesion are at the center of national discourse.” – Broadway World
“Kaminsky’s beautifully modulated and distinctive music and Reed’s keen observation and storytelling skills (bring the story to life).” – Broadway World
Interpolations on Utopia Parkway
Ms. Kaminsky’s substantial duo, Interpolations on Utopia Parkway, reflected her contact with life in Africa, where the sense of how events move through time is so different from ours, and her piece engaged the listener in an unusual manner.” – New Music Connoisseur
Lucidity
This is one of the great chamber operas… its depth both of score and of libretto is simply amazing.” – British Theatre Guide
…intellectually satisfying and emotionally resonant… Together, Cote’s libretto and Kaminsky’s music create a seamless tapestry elevating Lucidity into an extraordinary modern opera experience.” – Opening Night Reviews
Cote’s libretto is pitch perfect in its depiction of each character. And Kaminsky’s wondrous music captures the ideas in the libretto and creates a sound world that is at once specific to character and event and, simultaneously, universal and inclusive.” — Fred Plotkin (IDAGIO)
[Lucidity offers] a sense of catharsis…” – Oberon’s Grove
David Cote’s libretto demarcates each character with distinctive language, which reveals their inner journey as much as the thoughts they express….[T]here were moments that must have resonated for almost any viewer.” – Classical Voice North America
Kaminsky’s score is colorful and expressive. Her writing for the voice shows careful attention to text and emotion. The ability to write an aria is an increasingly rare skill in a contemporary opera composer’s toolbox, but Kaminsky can do it.” – New York Classical Review
Laura Kaminsky’s stunning score exemplified music’s duality as an emotional and scientific force. Complementing Kaminsky’s exceptional music is David Cote’s poetic and evocative libretto, which effortlessly ties together loss, healing, and memory themes. Moreover, Cote’s text authentically gives the characters a voice that resonates deeply with audiences through its thoughtful and emotional dialogue.” – Opening Night Reviews
[Lucidity has a] tightly written, non-repetitive and clear-as-crystal libretto [and] many lyrically beautiful passages and arias. This production will be widely adopted by other companies. Artistically sound, a manageable ensemble and cast, infinitely flexible in staging.” – Reaction
Marriage Equality
Almost painful in its beauty.” – Classical Voice America
Piano Concerto
orchestrated with gorgeous delicacy.” – International Piano
Kaminsky demonstrates her facility with instrumental colors which she uses to great effect in this grand concerto … as grand as a Brahms concerto with the orchestra given a great deal to do and for the listener to enjoy. In addition to the nearly athletic, fingerbusting piano part, there are delightful passages in the orchestral playing that sort of sneak up on and charm the listener.” – newmusicbuff
Piano Quintet
a comment on the chaos and brutality of what passes for political discourse in Trump-era America.” – Allan Kozinn in the Portland Press Herald
Kaminsky’s new quintet proved a concise work of considerable substance and atmosphere.” – New York Classical Review
In three big movements, each with unusual titles, the quintet had a variety of styles that were challenging for the performers and always interesting for the audience. Opening with anthem, the group had to deal with a changing rhythmic groove in 13/8 that was a mix of West African drumming and Eastern European dances. Next was lamentation; coming into light, where the title describes the music quite well. Same for the finale, maelstrom, and… which was quite powerful and eventually led to a calm and peaceful ending that faded away beautifully.” – American Record Guide
Reckoning
Stately, self-assured and hopeful musical passages dissolve into a chaotic jumble of notes … giving evidence of Kaminsky’s omnipotent grasp of form” – ClevelandClassical.com
Rising Tide Press
River Music
In a gesture of typical good will, Laura Kaminsky (the driving force behind Musicians Accord) presented this free concert while inviting attendees to make contributions toward the 9/11 Relief Effort via the Accord’s charitable status. Suitably enough she programmed the concert as a reflection of her own and surely others’ concern for humanity. Her own River Music could not have been more pertinent, as it suggests her wide travels and love for music rooted in the soil and in the heart, as the program title conveys to us. The 17-minute work for flute, percussion and piano is made up of five movements, with a traditional balance of tempo, dynamics, and general musical character throughout; it closed the first part of the program in a rousing fashion. – from a review in the New Music Connoisseur of Music of Earth and Spirit, a concert produced by Musicians Accord a month after 9/11
Ruminations
“Ruminations” (2022) explores the contrast between calm introspection and restless mental activity with wonderfully idiomatic writing for the guitar. – San Francisco Classical Voice
Some Light Emerges
Through the personal stories of its characters, both moving and humorous, Some Light Emerges reveals how political and spiritual conflicts can be better understood and ultimately resolved through art while honoring the people who create and support such art.” – Broadway World Opera
Some Light Emerges, the new opera commissioned by Houston Grand Opera through its community collaborative initiative, dives right into Rothko and de Menil’s shared spiritual vision with plaintive, purposefully meandering music by Laura Kaminsky and an audacious libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed. The 75-minute chamber piece — written for seven singers and seven instruments — just might be the best articulation of the Rothko Chapel’s purpose in modern times … it’s nothing short of a pronunciation of American ideals. The piece remained sublime, a testament to both the performers and the writing.” – Houston Chronicle
The Great Unconformity
The Great Unconformity begins with double stopping and continues with runs and percussion. Her music leaps from rock to rock and, like the voracious river, conforms to few man-made rules … The music is interesting and the sound crystal clear.” – Fanfare
The Post Office
PHOTO CREDIT: Julieta Cervantes
Through-composed in a rich tonal language recalling the Parisian schools of the early 20th century, The Post Office reveals Kaminsky as a composer of fluency and skill. She sets the text deftly, with finely shaped lyricism in the vocal writing, and when those voices combine in ensemble, their harmonies are unexpected but satisfying.
– Musical America Worldwide
It is easy to imagine a bright future for this piece. It is highly portable: the score requires only a pianist, five singers, and one set. – Musical America Worldwide
With conciliatory social awareness…The Post Office (was presented) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fisher Space with a Kafka-esque wall of mail crates, an impressive cast of singers, and well-crafted music…Kaminsky created intriguingly unstable cross rhythms in a high-momentum frame for the long-breathed vocal lines.
– Classical Voice North America
Post offices in the United States are typically a scene of long lines and online return drop-offs. But in an opera that opened at BAM Fisher last weekend, it became an arena of political debate between co-workers, with topics like gay marriage, free speech, racism, economic hardship and the ability to trust in government institutions. Also, the ghost of Benjamin Franklin was there, and he would like everyone to stop fighting. – The New York Times
Co-produced by American Opera Projects and BAM and originally debuting at Spruce Peak Arts, composer Laura Kaminsky (As One) and poet/librettist Elaine Sexton’s (Site Specific) surreal new opera chronicles the ideological conflicts — namely as it relates to gay marriage, political party alignment, and free speech — between workers at a post office. As a sort of arbiter of the disagreements, the ghost of Benjamin Franklin (!) — the first US Postmaster General — occasionally pops in to give his two cents. As such, Kaminsky and Sexton establish the post office as a sort of microcosm for our divided country, while at the same time suggesting our democracy’s fizzling relevancy and impending shelf life (e.g., are post offices long for this world?). For a compact one act opera with a running time of less than 90 minutes, the work impressively takes on hefty themes. Instrumentally accompanied solely by piano, Kaminsky’s score is thoughtful and introspective, a composition that’s at once deeply felt and accessibly conversational. To boot, the production is never less than fascinating to look at, creatively staged by Kevin Newbury and designed by (Charles Renfro of) the notable architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (which has worked on high profile projects in New York like The High Line and The Shed). – Interludes
The ghost of Benjamin Franklin, the first US Postmaster General, is an unwilling witness to a civic unravelling. As Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein understood when they conjured Susan B. Anthony’s ghost in The Mother of Us All, the founding figure returned to the present is not a comfort but a confrontation. This founding figure, Franklin, stands as a historical marker designed to measure the irreconcilable distance between the republic’s founding language and its current condition. – R. Sarkissian (White Hot Magazine)
The tensions of class, gender, and ethnicity reveal themselves as the crux of The Post Office. The social cartography of this operatic drama is inherently heterochronic: Franklin’s Enlightenment civics and the post office’s contemporary conflicts inhabit the same space. Where Greek tragedy aimed for catharsis, The Post Office calls for resolution. – R. Sarkissian (White Hot Magazine)
Kaminsky’s music turns repeatedly turbulent as the pristine, rational founding language of the republic is audibly crushed under the accumulated weight of its own administrative machinery. – R. Sarkissian (White Hot Magazine)
In the crossing of music and text, imagery and language, sound and discourse, each becoming the other, Kaminsky’s piano writing—classical in its rigor, masterful in its formal control—holds its composure above a vocal landscape that has retreated into something primal and somewhat elusive…The Post Office exceeds the taxonomy of opera as an established form: in the gap between the piano’s Enlightenment order and the voice’s primordial unravelling…(with) voices that refuse to be sorted. – R. Sarkissian (White Hot Magazine)
Threnody…October 2024
Threnody…October 2024 is “first-rate. Kaminsky examine(
s) grief and sorrow and the ways one can move beyond those feelings to a place of peace. (It “succeed(s) brilliantly in taking listeners on that journey.” – culturalattache.co
Kaminsky’s Threnody…October 2024 places the Lisztian rhetoric (Funerailles) of mourning in a contemporary context of unending global conflict; the date functions less as a specific memorial than as a marker of historical grief. The subtitle also echoes Liszt’s own (“October 1848”). Elegant and highly original—rich (though contemporary) harmonies, gestures that traverse a wide pitch range, and a feeling for sonority…stunning. – American Record Guide
Threnody…October 2024 is “first-rate. Kaminsky examine(s) grief and sorrow and the ways one can move beyond those feelings to a place of peace. (It) succeeds brilliantly in taking listenerson that journey.” – Cultural Attaché
Introspective and dramatic, Threnody…October 2024 by Laura Kaminsky traces a journey through grief. Transcendent…(the work is) a masterpiece. – Front Row Reviewers
Time to Act
PHOTO CREDIT: David Bachman
..the instrumental music had color, character, and a great vibe…especially when dispensing its grooves in a lively Afro-jazz club mode. – Boston Music Intelligencer
Time to Act radiated quality and engagement across the technical and artistic sides.
– Boston Music Intelligencer
Kaminsky writes effectively for the voice, whether in searing, soul-baring arias and duets or the recitative-like passages that propel the narrative. Beautiful, evocative instrumental solos amplify the emotions expressed in the soliloquies. – Classical Voice America
Time to Act will find its audience, undoubtedly in student productions and regional opera companies, where its message of compassion and power will resonate and inspire. – Classical Voice America
Kaminsky’s score blends modern classical writing with a strong jazz component, leaning heavily into syncopated and jazzinflected rhythms…(Her) jazzy, minimalist style provided an effective atmosphere for the drama. – Parterre Box
Time to Act is “a strong, innovative endeavor. See this production, and don’t forget to bring your kids. You’ll get to introduce them to opera in a form simultaneously ancient and modern. And you can learn from each other. How often do we get to explore the abyss and joy of human experience in such a synergistic and compelling manner?” – Pittsburgh Quarterly
Time to Act‘s music can be described as contemporary jazz fusion, melodic, tonal, and dissonant. The ensemble coordinated well with the action on stage, led by conductor Michael Sakir. The music was highly varied to support different characters and scenes, with a frequent and strong use of percussion to accentuate emotions. The music had a raw, elemental nature, serving well an opera where characters are pushed to their limits. – Opera Gene
Time to Act is good opera and spellbinding theater, highly compelling in reflecting what is happening today, allowing us to briefly walk in the shoes of those most directly affected. Performances bring us together and help us see and feel what others are experiencing, especially needed in divisive times and tragic times. Kudos to composer Kaminsky, librettist/director Manich, and the Pittsburgh Opera for bravely going there. – Opera Gene
Today It Rains
It all takes place on the train, and the well-constructed libretto, by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, ingeniously smooths the transitions. Reed’s video and still photographs, projected behind the stage, are an essential component in defining time, location and movement. The effect is musically engaging and often dramatically engrossing … Kaminsky’s score, for eleven players, is compact and vibrant, alternating between expansive lyricism, driving minimalism and snappy evocations of the Jazz Age … The opera achieved its greatest potency in solo scenes — a luminous aria for O’Keeffe, sung to her beloved box of paints, and a shimmering, light-filled finale, as she disembarks in New Mexico at the end of the journey.” – Opera News
Rather than O’Keeffe, the real heroine of the evening was composer Laura Kaminsky. Her writing for the eleven-piece instrumental ensemble was nothing short of masterful. She’s achieved a fluidity of pacing that is so idiomatically theatrical that it’s hard to believe she’s a relative newcomer to opera. Kaminsky’s contrapuntal writing is particularly strong — her ability to juggle several simultaneous lines is reminiscent of the textural clarity in Schoenberg’s chamber symphonies. Minimalism was also at play in the score (which) displayed a sophisticated integration of leitmotivs…(her) system of musical signs is fully integrated into her rich compositional palette. In fact, her personal style is somewhat reminiscent of O’Keeffe’s. There is the same balance of contrasts found in the painter’s canvases — the interplay of dynamism and stillness, for example, or the co-existence of finely drawn details and hazy ambiguity. And like O’Keeffe, Kaminsky finds beauty in both the natural world and the man-made” – San Francisco Classical Voice
The inventive charm of Kaminsky’s music keeps finding new sonic possibilities with economical resources. (She) shows a blessed willingness to write dramatic music with a strong rhythmic backbone. Today treads with suave assurance through the fields of both sexual and artistic politics … Today It Rains comes as a welcome bestowal from a team of artists plowing new and interesting terrain, just as its subject did. It seems ripe for adoption by opera companies nationwide. – San Francisco Chronicle
Triftmusik
“a colorful and sharp-edged evocation of an Alpine climb.” – The New York Times
Twilight Settings
Not only a tone poem of nature at day’s end, Twilight Settings also depicts a world where twilight, and the inevitable darkness which follows, are harbingers of death. The music is very spare and evocative; traces of gamelan flicker in the percussion ostinatos, and some folkish triads — especially in the opening and closing songs — warm the soprano lines. The work ends effectively and beautifully.” – American Music
Undercurrent
Laura Kaminsky’s Undercurrent (2015) scans the subconscious depths of the human psyche with mesmerizing colors hued in quarter tone malaise and propelled by pitch slides and ominous low chords on the piano. The piece occasionally reaches the bright surface but like the Gulf Stream, ultimately runs silent, swift and deep. An important if harrowing addition to the violin/piano duo pantheon.” – performingartsreview.net
Until A Name
I was strongly drawn to [a] more serious work that uses dialogue as [its] main dramatic structure. In Laura Kaminsky’s Until A Name, based on Conversation by Elizabeth Bishop, the exchange is between rapid passage work and evocative long tones. Fascinated by the awareness of the breath within the sustained tones, I became a participant in the drama rather than an onlooker. Terri Sundberg’s playing is especially expressive at the climactic moment of stillness when a series of repeated notes begins the work’s denouement into a dissonant silence.” – New Music Connoisseur