The Baltimore Waltz

Nya, an inner-city public high school teacher, is committed to her students but desperate to give her only son Omari opportunities they’ll never have. When a controversial incident at his upstate private school threatens to get him expelled, Nya must confront his rage and her own choices as a parent. But will she be able to reach him before a world beyond her control pulls him away?

Mary is an ambitious Jamaican woman determined to live a grand life; her adventures take her across oceans and eras, from a battlefield of the Crimean War to a contemporary nursing home, and many times and places in between.

Maths teacher Claire hears a mysterious low-frequency noise and the pollution is driving her crazy. The constant ‘hum’ drives her away from her family and towards others who also hear the same all-consuming sound. This support group offers compassion but what lies behind their cult-like rituals? Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek's brand new opera is a thriller about social rejection, the abuse of power and echo chambers. Based on an original story by Jordan Tannahill, The Listeners is inspired by an identified phenomenon, the ‘global hum’. Grammy-nominated Mazzoli was the first woman to be commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and has already successfully collaborated with librettist Vavrek, with whom she wrote the opera Breaking the Waves.

In Daniel J. Watts’ The Jam: Only Child, a nod to his great-grandmother’s plentiful recipe and the spirited spontaneity of jazz, Daniel J. Watts recounts his life as the only child of a single mother. From the fierce growing pains of boyhood innocence to the awkwardness of teenage years to a proud Black man, Daniel digs through his memory’s attic in a powerful and playful story of metamorphosis.