Officemates and Operamates: Composers Leanna Kirchoff and Cherise Leiter

by Leanna Kirchoff and Cherise Leiter

“In a semi-barbaric land, the King’s arena seems perfectly just, until his daughter falls in love…” In 2006, composers Leanna Kirchoff and Cherise Leiter began collaborating on a one-act opera based on the story of The Lady or the Tiger by Frank Stockton. It was scored for soprano, mezzo, tenor, and two baritone leads, a female trio, small chorus, and piano, flute, and percussion.”

Lasting approximately an hour, it was premiered in April 2007 at the Metropolitan State College of Denver in Denver, Colorado.

MW: Could you describe the opera you composed together and tell a bit about the actual process of your collaboration?

LK: Cherise knew of the Stockton short story…

CL: (interrupting) I read it in middle school and never forgot the ending!

LK:…and had always wanted to set it to a one-act opera. She came to me and said that the opera director, Gene Roberts, at our college would stage it if we wrote it and was I interested.

CL: I don’t even remember how it all happened. I just woke up one day and was apparently writing an opera with Leanna.

LK: I remember we started it during the summer of 2006 and we began working on the libretto. The short story is told entirely from the standpoint of a narrator, so we had to come up with the dialogue.

CL: I think that was the hardest part, for me at least, putting words into characters’ mouths that made sense and defined the plot. And this was where I was very happy that I was working with someone else!

LK: We were both more comfortable setting words to music rather than creating them, but I really enjoyed this part. We had several versions at first, but I was happy with what came out in the final draft.

CL: After we had the libretto, we each took characters that we identified with and began working on their arias and music. Once we had a rough draft, we would bring it to the other person for comments, critiques, and ideas. That was often a bit scary! I didn’t want her to think I was an idiot for making certain musical choices.

LK: I don’t remember us every nixing each other’s ideas.

CL: No, I don’t think we ever did, we would occasionally gently suggest an alternative.

LK: …we never came to blows which I think some teams have done! It may have come from the fact that we worked on the libretto together. We had a unified vision from the beginning.

CL: It was very useful for me to be able to show Leanna a spot where I was stuck.

LK: I definitely agree.

CL: It made for much less composer’s block than I have when I’m working on my own.

MW: What was your inspiration to compose the opera together? Why not separately?

CL: Seriously, do you know how much work it is to write an opera? There was no way I was going to tackle my very first opera by myself!

LK: I agree. It was a pragmatic decision and it was a genre that we were both interested in writing.

CL: We had been friends and colleagues for over five years and we knew we liked each other, and that our musical languages were compatible. And for me, it seemed like an interesting idea to work with someone on such a large project. We had actually collaborated the year before on a piano four-hand piece, and the process was quite successful. I may have gained enough courage from this experience to attempt an opera by myself at some point.

MW: Do you feel you had to modify your individual compositional styles in order to collaborate on this project?

LK: I don’t think I modified my style. The focus was so much on the elements of the opera that the modification was more to suit the specific needs of a particular scene or aria.

CL: I agree. I don’t feel like I changed my own musical language at its core. At the time we wrote it, our individual styles were not very far apart, and we have very similar approaches to text setting and to what we value in working with words. I definitely think I grew as a composer through this process, and a large part of that was being able to watch how Leanna worked with her music. It was like getting a composition lesson almost daily for several months.

LK: The characters in the opera were almost stereo-types and so that allowed us to each take a few characters that we closely identified with and work specifically to produce their voices. We would then bring the music to the other person and work closely together to refine each part.

CL: Yes, for example in the final scene—the classic ensemble scene—each character was singing their own individual music that had been introduced in previous scenes…

LK: (interrupting) it was leit-motif like, but not quite as distinct.

CL: …which meant that there were melodies being sung simultaneously, some that I had originally conceived and some that Leanna had. I think it worked really well, and that scene has some of my favorite moments in the opera.

MW: What do you admire about your colleague’s approach to composition?

CL: that’s easy. Everything! Seriously, her depth as a composer is truly remarkable and I so admired the way she would work with an initial idea—that I would have considered finished and fine—and continue to craft it until a brilliant melody came forth. I still have one of the characters’ arias stuck in my head four years later because it was so well done. The melody, harmonies, everything worked so well together. She is very disciplined and patient with her music and so original!

LK: In working on the opera project, I always had complete trust that Cherise would come up with music that was interesting, and I also trusted her feedback on the material I would bring into the project.  She has a great sense of what works, and what doesn’t.  Fusing together our musical ideas, Cherise built many of the large ensemble moments in the opera.  And I was always amazed how she could make all of these disparate parts come together into a grand whole.  The voice leading and modulations within these sections are very powerful, and I remember thinking to myself, that she can really practice what she preaches—she teaches theory and counterpoint!

MW: When you began working with the other performers (singers, pianist, conductor) how did this change the piece from an editing perspective?

LK: I don’t remember changing much—perhaps a note here or there, or adjusted a range a little bit.

CL: …although we did have the benefit of knowing what type of singers we would be using—we knew they would be students at our college, etc. And we knew up front that we had a very good pianist and percussionist that we would be using, so we didn’t have to hold back. The one thing I do remember is that we needed to cut some music and lengthen other spots for staging, which is typical for most shows. I think the biggest change was the most exciting—getting the music off the page and into real life.

MW: Are you working on any other collaborative projects?

LK: We are working on what we hope to be an annual festival of new vocal works to premiere this summer.

CL: and one of the elements of that festival is that we are each going to do a setting of the same poem. So while we won’t be collaborating in quite the same way, I think it will be interesting to see what we each do.

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Born in Florida, Cherise Leiter received a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Theory and a Master of Music degree in Composition from the University of Florida where she studied with Dr. Budd Udell. In 1998, Ms. Leiter relocated to Colorado and is currently Assistant Professor at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where she teaches music theory and composition classes.

An active composer whose output includes works for choir, piano, voice, carillon, orchestra and assorted chamber ensembles; her compositions have been performed throughout the United States and Japan. Ms. Leiter was the Colorado State Music Teacher’s Association 2004 commissioned composer, and her work The Life in a Day for flute/alto flute, guitar, and cello was recorded by Dr. Michelle Stanley and released on the Centaur label in May 2007.  She was a finalist in the Ithaca College 25^th Annual Choral Composition Contest, and in the Outside the Bach’s Competition, won the Braintree/Nashoba Valley Chorale choral competition in 2006, and the Ars Nova Composition Competition in 2007. She was a participant in the New Music Symposium, was a featured composer at UCM’s New Music Festival in 2009, an associate at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and a featured composer in the Hartford Women Composer’s Festival in 2010. A recent work, Love Letters from a War, was a vocal winner in the Boston Metro Opera call and received an Honorable Mention from the NATS competition. Ms. Leiter is published by Editions Viento.

In her spare time, Ms. Leiter is an avid knitter, hiker, swimmer, cook, and bibliophile. She also has a vested interest in anything made of chocolate.

Leanna Kirchoff writes vocal and instrumental chamber music, choral anthems, musicals and opera. A native of rural Colorado, she draws inspiration from poetry, nature, mythology, and spiritual writings, specifically working with universal metaphors that speak to the human experience.

Kirchoff’s music has been included in concerts at Carnegie Hall, NY; the 9th New London Wind Festival, UK; the Ernest Bloch Festival, OR; the Chamber Music Conference, VT; Stages Theatre Company, MN; the American Choral Directors Association conference, MO; the Colorado Music Educators Association conference, CO; as well as frequent performances in the Denver area.

Most recently Kirchoff was named the 2010 Colorado State Music Teacher’s Association Commissioned Composer, with a new piece to be premiered at the 2010 CSMTA conference in the Denver area. In 2007 Kirchoff’s Meciendo won the Sorel Medallion, an international choral competition named in memory of pianist-prodigy, Claudette Sorel.  Meciendo was performed at Carnegie Hall by Voices of Ascension, a New York-based choir under the direction of Dennis Keene.  Other performances include the 2008 Colorado Music Educators Association and the 2008 American Choral Directors Association conference in Kansas City, Missouri.

Collaborative projects highlight Kirchoff’s catalog. She has held an American Composers Forum Faith Partners Residency, composing several pieces for Temple Emanuel Synagogue and Twelfth Baptist Church, in the Boston area. The resulting choral works of the residency were performed at the North American Jewish Choral Music Festival in New York as well as at the Project Manna concert in Newton, Massachusetts, a benefit concert for local food shelters.

Two of Kirchoff’s chamber works appear on the 2006 recording, Cross Currents and Other New Music for Row Twelve, released by Massachusetts chamber ensemble, Row Twelve.  Her solo flute piece, Cantus Rosarum, was included on the 2004 release Airs to Charm a Lizard, music for solo flute recorded by flutist, Katherine Kleitz.

Kirchoff holds a Master of Arts in Composition from the University of Minnesota where she studied with Dominick Argento and Judith Lang Zaimont.  Her undergraduate degree in Commercial Music is from the University of Denver where she studied composition with Donald Keats and piano with Alice Rybak.  She has been a composition fellow in masterclasses with George Tsontakis, Paul Moravec, and Donald Crockett among others.

At the University of Denver, Kirchoff teaches Composition Seminar as well as directs the Lamont Composers Concert Series. Also, she has been a faculty member at Metropolitan State College of Denver since 2001, teaching composition, theory and class piano.

Kirchoff pursues a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Colorado where her main teachers include Daniel Kellogg, Carter Pann and Richard Toensing (Professor Emeritus).