SANCTUARIES receives Creative Heights Grant

I am thrilled to share that my chamber opera on gentrification in Portland has been awarded a $90,000 Creative Heights grant from The Oregon Community Foundation. Slated for the spring of Third Angle New Music's 2019-2020 season, SANCTUARIES will use the rhythms of jazz and slam poetry to explore gentrification and the displacement of residents of color in Portland's historically African-America Albina district. It is exhilarating to be partnering with Third Angle on this ambitious project that addresses Portland's complicated racial history both past and present, and I am very much looking forward to working more with slam-poet-come-librettist Anis Mojgani.

I have been collecting information for months now, but I am just starting to really sink my teeth into the mountain of research I need to do to do this topic justice. Days spent in the stacks at Oregon Historical Society are my idea of a strong sabbatical start.

-DG