News

Theatre for a New Audience will present THE TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS by William Shakespeare, directed by Ash K. Tata, with an original score by DTL, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, TFANA’s home venue in Brooklyn. Tata’s production places Shakespeare’s tragedy…

What Belongs to You, with libretto and music by David T. Little, is the winner of the 2025 Award for Best New Opera, conferred by the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA). The award, which recognizes both musical and theatrical…

Black Lodge, the Grammy-nominated opera by David T. Little and Anne Waldman, and produced by Beth Morrison Projects, has been making waves since its premiere at Opera Philadelphia in 2023. This seasons it made its West Coast and New York…

Available on all digital platforms, Dark Hymnal is a series of electronic meditations derived from Little’s opera film Black Lodge. Including samples from the opera’s original soundtrack, performed by Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet and featuring…

DTL’s new opera What Belongs to You, after the novel by Garth Greenwell, starring Karim Sulayman, directed by Mark Morris, and featuring Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson, was the subject of a recent NYTimes profile. Read it here.…

BLACK LODGE was chosen as one of six laureates in the international Music Theatre NOW competition. It will receive its European premiere in May 2024 as part of the O. Festival in Rotterdam.

Black Lodge has been nominated for a GRAMMY® Award in the Best Opera Recording category. The 66^th annual GRAMMY Awards will take place on February 4th in Los Angeles.

Boosey & Hawkes has released the piano-vocal score for David T. Little and Royce Vavrek’s opera JFK in honor of the 60th anniversary of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy—a historical moment that has inspired numerous musical tributes…

“The theatricality of Mr. Little’s music, coupled with his original and adapted text, is so intense that it hardly needed the visual cues to have a shattering impact…The chilling relationship between eating and power is clear.” The Wall Street Journal…

DTL’s Black Lodge is out now from Cantaloupe Music on all digital services. Featuring libretto by celebrated poet Anne Waldman and performances by Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet, Black Lodge is set in a nightmarish Bardo,…

SOLDIER SONGS has been awarded OPERA America’s inaugural Award for Digital Excellence in Opera, recognizing the best work created for digital platforms by individual producers and organizations in the U.S. and Canada

Opera Philadelphia gave the world premiere of BLACK LODGE, a hybrid opera-film with libretto by Anne Waldman, screenplay/direction by Michael Joseph McQuilken, and developed with Beth Morrison Projects.

SOLDIER SONGS (watch on Amazon) has been nominated for a 2022 GRAMMY® in the Best Opera Recording category. The 64^th annual GRAMMY Awards will take place on April 3 in Las Vegas.

With a libretto by the composer, What Belongs to You will feature Grammy-winning tenor Karim Sulayman as the narrator, and the intrepid chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound. Literary Hub has more here.

Opera Philadelphia and Houston Grand Opera lead the charge for opera in the COVID-era, with new made-for-screen productions, including David T. Little’s Soldier Songs and Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera.

The debut recording of Elegy (monsters are real) is now available as part of New Amsterdam Records’ July 3, 2020: A Benefit Compilation. Performed by Newspeak’s James Johnston, 100% of proceeds will be donated to The Okra Project and VOCAL-NY.

hold my tongue was composed for the Dutch performer/composer Bec Plexus as part of her debut album STICKLIP, responding to the prompt “something you don’t dare say out loud.” Out now on New Amsterdam Records.

AGENCY, now available on New Amsterdam: “forthright, visceral, bloody, with the intimacy and polish of a classical chamber ensemble but bulging with the loud, reverberant sweatiness of rock.” (NYTimes)

The German premiere of SOLDIER SONGS is now running in Saarbrücken, starring Salomón Zulic Del Canto, directed by Jochen Strauch, and conducted of Justus Thorau.

Excerpts from Book of Dreams: Chapter Sand, a collaboration with GLMMR, from the world premiere at National Sawdust, now live.

New chamber version of Little and Vavrek’s one-act comedy, Vinkensport, or The Finch Opera, has been commissioned by Opera Saratoga. It receives its world premiere on June 30 as part of the company’s 2018 Summer Festival.

The fine print edition of the Dog Days piano/vocal score is now available from Boosey & Hawkes / Hal Leonard. For more information or to purchase a copy, visit Boosey & Hawkes here, Hal Leonard here, or Amazon here.

The Conjured Life is a new orchestral work commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival as a tribute to the centennial of Lou Harrison.

In new productions in San Diego, Des Moines and Atlanta, Soldier Songs continues to build bridges with military and veteran communities.

Dog Days has garnered mentions on 2 of NPR’s end-of-year round up lists, sharing space next to Bowie and Beyoncé on their Best 50 Albums of 2016 and also landing on the 10 Classical Albums That Saved 2016 list.

VIA Records released Dog Days original cast recording: “a fine document…pristine” says Q2 Music

The world premiere of JFK, was “ravishing”, a “triumphant work”, “absorbing,” “soul-shattering.”  At the Canadian premiere at Opéra de Montréal it was called “magnificent,” and Deutschlandfunk called the European premiere in Germany “dazzling.”