Composer Diversity Spotlight
February - March 2026
GABRIELA LENA FRANK
Pacific Choirs’ concert on February 4, conducted by Dr. Brett Epperson, featured San Joaquin by Gabriela Lena Frank. An American composer of Lithuanian Jewish,
Peruvian, and Chinese descent, Frank often draws from her multicultural background for her compositions. San Joaquin, which was written “for the citizens of Modesto, California past and present,” sets text by northern Californian poet William Everson. Frank was featured in Pacific’s presidential speaker series several days after the choirs concert, where Pacific Singers reprised their performance of San Joaquin.
HENRY L. DORN
The Pacific Wind Bands’ most recent concert on February 12 featured soprano Lisa Williams on Henry L. Dorn’s I, Too, Am America. Dorn’s piece takes both its title and
sung text from the works of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Dorn, a composer who often writes music informed by his experience as an African American musician, is also assistant professor of conducting and composition at St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
SAMUEL BARBER AND GIAN CARLO MENOTTI
From March 19 through 22, Pacific Opera Theatre presented a production of The Medium by Gian Carlo Menotti, preceded by the shorter, one-act opera A Hand of Bridge by Samuel Barber. While the nine-minutelong A Hand of Bridge explores the inner thoughts of two unhappily married couples over a game of bridge, The Medium tells the story of a woman who conducts fake seances and devolves into madness after experiencing what she believes to be a real ghostly encounter.
The operas, while vastly different in their subject matter, share a connection in their composers. Menotti and Barber were close musical collaborators for several decades, and Menotti wrote the libretti for both operas. While they never openly discussed their relationship, many scholars conclude that Menotti and Barber were romantic partners, based on the fact that they lived together for thirty years and the subtextual themes of homosexuality found in some of their works. Read more in Samuel Barber: His Life and Legacy by Howard Pollack.