Composer Curator: Whitney George
YouTube premiere: Chat live with Whitney and her guest creatives.
featuring composers:
Anne LeBaron, Jasmine Barnes, and Stephanie Leotsakos
Composer Curator is an initiative of Composers Now, presented through our digital platform on the Composers Now YouTube channel. This series empowers groundbreaking music creators to serve as curators, storytellers, and cultural connectors—designing and hosting programs that offer rare, behind-the-scenes access to their creative processes and artistic collaborations.
Working across genres and in dialogue with artists from other disciplines, each featured composer curates performances, leads insightful conversations, and shares compelling commentary that deepens understanding and expands horizons for composers, performers, and audiences alike.
Whitney George’s music traverses the affective terrain between tragedy and ecstasy, fragility and strength, bringing together romantically delicate intimacy and the spectacular darkness of the macabre. Haunted by ghosts and/of love, George’s operas, staged multimedia works, and chamber music coloristically explore the mysteries of irrationality, nightmare, and memory, sonically seeking lost objects and hidden subjects. Given George’s theatrical inclinations and preoccupation with the tragic, she has turned again and again to opera as both a composer and conductor.
Recently, George has been awarded a number of operatic commissions, premieres, and recognition: in 2017; the Elebash Award for her orchestration of Miriam Gideon’s opera Fortunato, which premiered under George’s baton in May 2019. In the same year; the commission of the two-act opera Princess Maleine by dell'Arte Opera and the video opera Julie by New Camerata Opera which was publicly released in 2020. In 2022, the commission of Fizz & Ginger by Fresh Squeezed Opera which premiered in 2023 with the Curiosity Cabinet, and was performed by the Chicago Fringe Opera in 2024. In 2024 George was awarded the Discovery Grant for her latest operatic endeavor: NO MAN'S LAND, which premiered June 2025 at Irondale.
A Los Angeles-based composer embracing unusual challenges, and an innovative performer on the harp, Anne LeBaron’s works and performances have been presented at venues around the globe. Major awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts, a Fromm Foundation commission, a Guggenheim, a Fulbright, and NEA grants. Her works, written for chamber ensemble, orchestra, opera, and chorus, often embrace scientific ideas wedded to mysticism, such as Telluris Theoria Sacra. Her operas celebrate legendary female figures, such as Marie Laveau in Crescent City. Several explore controversial subjects and experimental practices, such as LSD: Huxley’s Last Trip, composed for an ensemble that includes microtonal instruments built by Harry Partch. Her multi-year project of musical portraits, The Heroine with a Thousand Faces, honors women from all walks of life who have enriched humanity. LeBaron taught in the Experimental Sound Practices and Music Composition Program at CalArts for twenty-two years, where she now holds the distinction of Professor Emerita.
Stephanie Leotsakos is a Colombian-Greek-American opera composer/librettist, conductor, soprano, violinist, educator, and inventor whose work bridges storytelling, technology, and community. Her original multimedia operas OMG and Young Goodman Brown have been performed in new opera festivals and on concert stages nationally and internationally. A recipient of the National Opera Association’s 2024 Dominick Argento Fellowship for Opera Composition, she is pursuing a PhD in composition at Rutgers University, researching immersive sonic and sensory design in opera. She is also founder of GnotesbyStephanie™, LLC, which develops multimodal music education resources for neurodiverse learners.
Emmy award winning composer, Jasmine Arielle Barnes, is a Baltimore native, Michigan based composer. As a “composer to watch” (Chicago Tribune) her music has been described as “refreshing..,engaging...,exciting” by San Francisco Classical Voice, "Beautifully lyrical" by The Telegraph (UK), and “the best possible blend of Billie Holiday and Claude Debussy” by Boston Globe. The twice over graduate from Morgan State University and current DMA student at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor is a recent recipient of Opera America’s Discovery Opera Grant for women composers among two other grants from Opera America for her new opera “She Who Dared” that premiered at Chicago Opera Theater in June 2025, commissioned by American Lyric Theater with Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, librettist. The opera received rave reviews from the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Musical America, and many others remarking her score as “inventive and full of color” (Musical America) with noting “The composer is obviously quite comfortable in the form, skillfully weaving elements…” (Chicago Sun-Times). Barnes has been commissioned by numerous organizations such as NY Philharmonic , American Composers Forum, and Juilliard Pre College, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Carnegie Hall, National Orchestra Institute Festival, Washington National Opera and the Kennedy Center, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival and School, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Apollo Chamber Players, and Baltimore Choral Arts, among others. Aside from commissions, Barnes’ work has been performed in prestigious halls and festivals around the world, including LA Opera, Metropolitan Opera Museum, BBC Proms, Wigmore Hall, Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra, Portland Opera, Tulsa Opera, Elbphilharmonie, The Kimmel Center, Dallas Opera, Concertgebouw, Abu Dhabi Festival, Arizona Opera, Ravinia Steans Music Institute, among many others. Barnes is featured on several recording projects including “Rising” by Lawrence Brownlee and Kevin J. Miller, “Show Me the Way” by Will Liverman and Jonathan King, “A Miracle in Legacy” by Joshua Conyers , “Amplify Vol.1” by Navona Records and All Classical Portland , “Dreamer” by Baltimore Choral Arts, and will be featured on an upcoming album titled “Gaïa” by Gautier Capuçon. Barnes looks forward to making more music and takes great pride in bringing art into the world.