|
Biography
Ashi Day is a composer and educator working in Washington, DC, interested in exploring unconventional intersections between music and theater, using the voice as a compositional tool, rethinking roles for women in opera, and creating meaningful works for all ability levels and ages. She also writes a lot of songs about animals.
Ashi creates vocally driven works written as much for the experience of the performers as the listeners. By frequently incorporating comedy and playing with familiar tonalities, she hopes to explore notions of “serious” new music and combine tools from classical music with those from other art forms—both thoughtfully and recklessly—to appeal to a variety of audiences. Ashi's 10-minute mono-opera, “For Whom the Dog Tolls,” for soprano, piano, duck call, and whistle, about a day in the life of a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, delighted audiences at Opera from Scratch in Halifax, NS, District New Music Coalition's New Music DC in Washington, DC, and New Music on the Bayou's virtual Summer Veiller, and will be performed at the International Alliance for Women in Music's 2020 Annual Concert (rescheduled to November, 2021). This piece was written to give sopranos a rare chance to play a character that is joyful and victorious at every turn. Her commissions for the adventurous clarinet and soprano duo, Whistling Hens, include a 15-minute mini-play, “The Green Child,” retelling a legend of a mysterious green girl found in the dark forest by featuring both the singer and the instrumentalist as characters. Her art song, “Open Your Mouth,” sets Proverbs 31:8-9, calling out the similarities in the language of social justice work and the bible. The piece won calls for scores for Juventas New Music Ensemble's “Freedom of Speech” and Calliope's Call's “Songs of Unity” concerts.
Ashi won prizes in the Sewanee Church Conference's FYFE Choral Composition Competition for “Even So, Lord, Quickly Come” and the New York Treble Singers Composition Competition for “The Dove Pursues the Griffin” for 8-part treble choir, improvised piano, and internal piano strings. She has also won additional calls for scores with Denison TUTTI, University of North Georgia's Research on Contemporary Composition conference, the Music by Women Festival, and the Women Composer's Festival of Hartford. Ashi was a festival composer with the inaugural NEO Voice Festival, co-creating a collaborative oratorio on the origins of creativity with eight other composers. She has been commissioned by Whistling Hens, PERI Trio, Connecticut Yankee Chorale, Anthology vocal quartet, and Cantate Chamber Singers, as well as by individual singers and church choirs. Additionally, her pieces have been performed by vocal ensembles such as Metropolitan Master Chorale of Los Angeles, Artifice, Ensemble Lyrae, and Senza Nome, as well as by church choirs and singers in private, student, and faculty recitals. In theater, she collaborated with artists of various disciplines to co-create “Narrative the Build We” for Cultural DC's Source Festival and “Being Moss” as part of “I Thought the Earth Remembered Me” with banished? productions for the Capital Fringe Festival.
Current projects include “Waking the Witch,” a one-act mono-opera or chamber piece for countertenor and Pierrot ensemble in which the audience is interrogated by a 17th-Century witch finder to admit to not only magically bewitching the town's cows, children, and unhelpful neighbors, but also entering into a widespread conspiracy with the devil himself. Composed for countertenor Min Sang Kim, the work examines the dangers of zealotry, how absurd beliefs can be used to justify atrocities, and the centuries-old quandary of women and vulnerable people coming into the crosshairs of more privileged folks who will not believe them under any circumstances. Additionally, she is working on an ongoing series of Shakespeare texts set out of context for unusual choral configurations, meant to be performable alone or in any combination. Currently, the set consists of “Thy Fair Large Ears,” a three-voice canonic lullaby saluting her dog using Titania's lines to Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream; “Boundless,” a setting of Juliet's lines exploiting the extreme ranges of the human voice and playing with timbre (dedicated to her fiancé and written nearly as lovingly as the one to the dog); and “Make A Heaven,” from a line from Helena in Midsummer, for live choir, together or via Zoom. Future texts include setting some of Cecilia's lines from As You Like It as a physical installation (“Herein I see thou lovest me not with the full weight that I love thee”), and Emilia's lines from Othello (“I will not charm my tongue, I am bound to speak”).
Ashi earned a B.M. and M.M. in Composition respectively from Bucknell University and Westminster Choir College. Composition teachers include William Duckworth, Jackson Hill, Stefan Young, and Joel Phillips. Equally dedicated to education, Ashi was a teacher in public and charter schools for half a decade, working in both music and general elementary education, all the while studying improv theater and classical voice. She then earned her Ed.M. in Arts in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she was named an Urban Scholars Fellow for her work in arts education. She now works in arts education administration, creating opportunities for people of all ages to experience, explore, learn through, and train in music and opera. As a soprano, she is a professional church musician and a member of DC's new composer/conductor collaborative ensemble, Artifice.
Ashi has been named a DC Arts and Humanities Fellow for 2021 alongside artists of all mediums “whose artistic excellence significantly contributes to the District of Columbia as a world class cultural capital.”
Ashi is readily available for all Christmas caroling and car-trip-round-singing needs.
OPERA America/Opera.ca Grants Awarded
Click here to learn more about OPERA America granting programs.
| GRANT NAME | YEAR | Opera Grants for Women Composers: Discovery Grants | 2022 |
There are no productions for this artist in the Season Schedule of Performances which currently only dates back to 1991.
|
Artist Information
All information is derived from OPERA America's Season Schedule of Performances and titles databases which date back to 1991. OPERA America is constantly updating this data. If you feel that a work or an artist has been omitted or that information is incorrect, please use the linked forms below. Title Information Form Artist Information Form
|