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Composer. Flutist. Storyteller.
Composer.
Flutist. Storyteller.
Artist-activist.
Innovator.
Genre-collider.
An opera composer devoted to revolutionizing the art form, centering communities who are rarely seen on the operatic stage, and telling the stories of today's people with exciting and innovative techniques.
A media composer stirring together the elegance of old-world operatic leitmotif technique with gripping modern electronic soundscapes.
A songwriter bringing eclectic interests together in a diverse catalog of musical theater, fluidly slipping between classic Broadway stylings, progressive rock and metal, cinematic folk, and more surprises around every turn.
“Sung gorgeously by soprano Bridget Ann Johnston and mezzo-soprano Courtney Kayser, the piece by lyricist Caroline Cao and composer Jamey Guzman was heart-warming, dynamic, and intricate.”
Twin Cities Arts Reader (John Anderson), on Open Heart Surgery
Watch & Listen
Open Heart Surgery
A telenovela-inspired medical drama chamber opera about family, love, and the strength it takes to follow one's passion. Commissioned by the New Works: An Arts Commission Project at the Center for the Performing Arts, and supported by a grant from the Bloomington Arts Commission and by Jupiter Opera.
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Connection
A choir work featuring organ, an improvisatory belting soloist, and audience participation, this work sees a single voice struggling but pushing their community away, pretending that they are okay. By the end of the work, with the entire audience joining in on a single drone note, the solo voice comes to reckon with the power of community and the strength that can be found in others.
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Behind the Counter
In this haunting monodrama for soprano and flute, an eternal shopkeeper keeps her watch over the returned and abandoned Universes and sings to the most recent addition to her shop. The flute plays the voice of the lost Universe, crying out to be heard, weaving in and out of the vocal line until the very final moments of the piece.
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Featured Projects
About
Photo by Allison Dettloff
Bio
Jamey J Guzman is a composer, librettist, and artist-activist. In her music, Jamey often explores identity and interpersonal connection, philosophy and humanity, and the unashamed pursuit of wonder. A firm believer in the unmatched power of art to enact social change, she is dedicated to using her music to illuminate themes such as female empowerment, racial equity, climate action, gender and sexuality, and mental health awareness. Jamey is deeply passionate about contemporary opera and vocal music, striving to use the unique power of the human voice to tell necessary stories of underrepresented peoples with excitingly experimental and innovative techniques.
Recently, Jamey’s work has been featured by Nightingale Opera Theatre’s Young Artist Program, the N.E.O. Voice Festival in Los Angeles, and Really Spicy Opera at Fondation des États-Unis in Paris. Recent major commissions have come from Really Spicy Opera for chamber operas Green Thumbed and Open Heart Surgery, which will tour Paris and Madagascar in Summer 2023; New Voices Opera for their 2022 mainstage; Strange Trace Opera for the 2022 Stencils Festival, ENAEnsemble for a new monodrama, Paradox Opera for an aria for Autonomy, a benefit concert for Planned Parenthood, and SONIT for a flute piece celebrating Salvadoran folklore.
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