A new Digital Short in three acts
Directed by the celebrated filmmaker Nadia Hallgren, this short film gives us a peak into composer Tyshawn Sorey's creative process. Using simple and spare musical forces—a solo voice and piano—Sorey crafts a ravishing, reflective setting for a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).
LA Opera's newest Digital Short unites Hallgren's striking visuals and Sorey's intriguing harmonies, as the verses of the most influential Black poet of a past generation take on newfound resonance for the present day.
Tyshawn Sorey "transcends the borders of jazz, classical and experimental music."
Creative Team
- Composer
- Tyshawn Sorey
- Director
- Nadia Hallgren
- Original Text
- Paul Laurence Dunbar
Tyshawn Sorey
Composer

From: Newark, New Jersey. LA Opera: the Digital Short Death (2021).
A multi-instrumentalist and composer, Tyshawn Sorey is celebrated for his incomparable virtuosity, effortless mastery and memorization of highly complex scores, and an extraordinary ability to blend composition and improvisation in his work. He has performed nationally and internationally with his own ensembles, as well as artists such as John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, Marilyn Crispell, George Lewis, Claire Chase, Steve Lehman, Jason Moran, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, and Myra Melford, among many others.
The New York Times has praised Sorey for his instrumental facility and aplomb, “he plays not only with gale-force physicality, but also a sense of scale and equipoise”; The Wall Street Journal notes Sorey is, “a composer of radical and seemingly boundless ideas.” The New Yorker recently noted that Sorey is “among the most formidable denizens of the in-between zone…An extraordinary talent who can see across the entire musical landscape.”
Sorey has composed works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the International Contemporary Ensemble, soprano Julia Bullock, PRISM Quartet, JACK Quartet, TAK Ensemble, the McGill-McHale Trio, bass-baritone Davóne Tines, Alarm Will Sound, the Louisville Orchestra, and tenor Lawrence Brownlee with Opera Philadelphia in partnership with Carnegie Hall, as well as for countless collaborative performers. His music has been performed in notable venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Village Vanguard, the Ojai Music Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Kimmel Center, and the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. Sorey has received support for his creative projects from The Jerome Foundation, The Shifting Foundation, Van Lier Fellowship, and was named a 2017 MacArthur fellow and a 2018 United States Artists Fellow.
Sorey has released twelve critically acclaimed recordings that feature his work as a composer, co-composer, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and conceptualist. His latest release, Pillars (Firehouse 12 Records, 2018), has been praised by Rolling Stone as “an immersive soundworld… sprawling, mysterious… thrilling” and has been named as one of BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction 2018 albums of the year.
In 2012, he was selected as one of nine composers for the Other Minds Festival, where he exchanged ideas with such like-minded peers as Ikue Mori, Ken Ueno, and Harold Budd. In 2013, Jazz Danmark invited him to serve as the Danish International Visiting Artist. He was also a 2015 recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Award. Sorey has taught and lectured on composition and improvisation at Columbia University, The New England Conservatory, The Banff Centre, University of Michigan, International Realtime Music Symposium, Harvard University, Hochschule für Musik Köln, Berklee College of Music, University of Chicago, and The Danish Rhythmic Conservatory.
Sorey received a B.Music in Jazz Studies and Performance from William Paterson University, an M.A. in Music Composition from Wesleyan University, and a D.M.A. in Music Composition from Columbia University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies at Wesleyan University.
Learn more at TyshawnSorey.com.
Nadia Hallgren
Director

From: The Bronx, New York. LA Opera: director of Tyshawn Sorey's Digital Short Death (2021).
Nadia Hallgren is an award-winning filmmaker and director of photography. Most recently, Nadia directed Becoming, a documentary about former First Lady Michelle Obama, which was released on Netflix and nominated for four Emmys including Best Director, Best Cinematographer and Best Documentary Feature. Her film After Maria, a documentary short, tells the story of three mothers displaced by Hurricane Maria. It was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2019. Nadia won the special jury prize at SXSW 2018 for She’s the Ticket, an independent episodic series about women running for office in response to Trump’s election.
Her film Gavin Grimm Vs., about a transgender teen from Virginia headed to the Supreme Court, was awarded a Webby for Public Service and Activism. With a focus on the craft of vérité storytelling, Nadia is regarded as one of the leading cinematographers in documentary filmmaking. Her cinematography credits include the Sundance award-winner Motherland, Academy Award-nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner Trouble the Water, and Sundance award-winner Trapped. Nadia is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and an alum of the International Center of Photography.
To learn more, click here.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Original Text

From: Dayton, Ohio. LA Opera: His poetry is featured in the Digital Shorts Death (2021) and We Hold These Truths (2022).
Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in Dayton, Ohio, on June 27, 1872, the son of two former slaves. His short and miraculous life ended at age 33, after a painful battle with tuberculosis.
In that time, he wrote a dozen books of poetry, four collections of short stories, five novels, and a play, providing both a history and a celebration of Black life at the turn of the century. But it was “dialect” poems—employing the form and cadence of Black speech—that made him famous and when placed alongside his works of "literary” English, suggested the duality of the Black experience.
As the nation's preeminent Black poet, Dunbar was part of the first generation of African Americans to grow up after Emancipation and corresponded regularly with W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, who described him as “the most promising young colored man in America.” He traveled the world, attending both of President Theodore Roosevelt's inaugurations and Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, but to his frustration, Dunbar struggled to be recognized as a writer belonging to the same tradition as John Keats and William Shakespeare and rejected his own manner of speech.
Decades later, his work would inspire a new generation of Black writers, most notably, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou, who borrowed a line from Dunbar’s poem "Sympathy" for the title of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
As Dunbar lay dying in his study on February 9, 1906, he read the 23rd Psalm aloud to his mother. His final words were “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
Soloists
- Mezzo-Soprano
- Amanda Lynn Bottoms
- Piano
- Howard Watkins
Amanda Lynn Bottoms
Mezzo-Soprano

From: Cheektowaga, New York. LA Opera: Omar's Mother in Omar (2022, mainstage debut); soloist in Tyshawn Sorey's Digital Short Death (2021).
Heralded for her “superb vocal and dramatic chops” by Opera News, with “stunning vocal beauty and absolute sincerity of expression” in Chicago Classical Review, mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms will return to the Santa Fe Opera this summer to cover the title role of Carmen followed by performances with the Akron Symphony and Buffalo Philharmonic. Previously in the 2021/22 season, she starred as Charlie Tyler in the Dayton Opera world premiere of Laura Kaminsky's Finding Wright and debuted as Leocasta in Giustino with Long Beach Opera. An advocate for innovative new works, she also starred in the first opera commissioned for a planetarium: Galaxies in Her Eyes, directed by Kristyne McIntyre and written by Mark Lanz Weiser and Amy S. Pun.
Praised by the New York Times as “commanding with captivating texture” and Opera News for “luxurious full tone and interpretive intensity”, Amanda Lynn Bottoms was a featured Apprentice Artist in 2021 with Santa Fe Opera covering Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Fillipyevna in Eugene Onegin, Ino in The Lord of Cries, and singing Carmen in the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Showcase. To much acclaim, she headlined the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago Fall 2021 recital series; the opening performance, Songs of the New World, was named one of Chicago Classical Review’s 'Best of 2021' alongside the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the final recital, The Songs We Carried, received honorable mention. A beloved guest artist of the New York Festival of Song led by Steven Blier, she collaborated with the institution for several performances this season, including their return to live performance “And…We’re Back”
Amanda Lynn Bottoms is an alumna of the Cafritz Young Artist Program at the Washington National Opera where her mainstage work included roles in the Maurice Sendak production of The Magic Flute, Menotti’s The Consul, and the world premiere of Michael Lanci's Admissions in the Washington National Opera AOI program. Bottoms had a “dramatically and vocally glamorous” debut (Parterre Box) in the Opera Philadelphia O19 Festival, as Smeraldina in Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges, and continued featured work with the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago, New York Festival of Song, and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society Emerging Voices recital series.
Prominent debuts include Paquette in Candide with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mahler's Symphony No. 2 with the UCLA Symphony, Mercédès in Carmen with the Buffalo Philharmonic, Songfest with the Juilliard Symphony Orchestra, Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua, Strauss’s Four Last Songs with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, the Brothers Balliett’s Fifty Trillion Molecular Geniuses at Carnegie Hall, originating the role of Frances in the world premiere of Korine Fujiwara's The Flood with Opera Columbus, Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo with Lansing Symphony Orchestra and Anita in West Side Story with the NHK Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo under the baton of Paavo Järvi.
She has received recognition and awards from prestigious international competitions including the George London Foundation, Loren L. Zachary Society, Operalia, Gerda Lissner, Opera Index, and the Metropolitan Opera National Council Regionals. She holds a certificate of professional studies in opera from the Curtis Institute of Music, a master of music degree from the Juilliard School where she was a coveted Kovner Fellow, and a bachelor of music degree from SUNY Fredonia.
Learn more at AmandaLynnBottoms.com.
Howard Watkins
Piano

From: Dayton, Ohio. LA Opera: soloist in Tyshawn Sorey's Digital Short Death (2021).
American pianist Howard Watkins is a frequent associate of some of the world’s leading musicians on the concert stage; he’s also an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. His appearances throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Russia, and Israel have included collaborations with Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry, Mariusz Kwiecień, Anna Netrebko, and Matthew Polenzani as well as violinists Xiang Gao and Sarah Chang at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Spivey Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the United States Supreme Court, Alice Tully Hall with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the three stages of Carnegie Hall, and the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
He has accompanied the classes of legendary artists Renata Scotto, Frederica von Stade, Régine Crespin, Birgit Nilsson, Sherrill Milnes, and George Shirley. Watkins has served on the faculties of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Aspen Music Festival, the Mannes School of Music, the North Carolina School of the Arts, the International Vocal Arts Institute (Israel, Japan, and China), IIVA in Italy, the Brancaleoni Music Festival in Italy, the Tokyo International Vocal Arts Academy (TIVAA), and VOICExperience in Orlando, Tampa, and Savannah. He has also worked on the music staffs of Palm Beach Opera, the Washington National Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera.
A native of Dayton, Ohio, Watkins completed his Doctor of Musical Arts in accompanying and chamber Music at the University of Michigan. In 2004, he received the Paul C. Boylan award from the University of Michigan for his outstanding contributions to the field of music, and a special achievement award from the National Alumni Association of the University of Dayton. He is a resident of New York City.

Notes and Text

Notes and Text
A Note from the Creators
Our film explores "Death," a poem originally featured in Paul Laurence Dunbar's 1903 verse collection, Lyrics of Love and Laughter. The text details its speaker’s seeming dread of each new day. Even as night feels like a daunting wilderness of “tangled deeps,” the speaker is haunted again by each new daybreak—a heart-wrenching realization. Matched with and inspired by Dr. Tyshawn Sorey's beautiful and transcendent score, a setting for piano and mezzo-soprano, the film works to capture the poem’s spirit and propel it further: sorrow, in the ascendant.
Death
By Paul Laurence Dunbar
Storm and strife and stress,
Lost in a wilderness,
Groping to find a way,
Forth to the haunts of day
Sudden a vista peeps,
Out of the tangled deeps,
Only a point—the ray
But at the end is day.
Dark is the dawn and chill,
Daylight is on the hill,
Night is the flitting breath,
Day rides the hills of death.
This project is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and from a consortium of donors to LA Opera’s Contemporary Opera Initiative, chaired by Barry and Nancy Sanders.