RACHEL PETERS: COMPOSER/LYRICIST/LIBRETTIST
Rachel grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. She began piano lessons at age six and attempted her first full-length musical at age nine. She was a member of the St. Louis Children’s Choirs for four years that included several performances with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. She appeared in productions by Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the Muny Opera, and she attended the Oberlin Summer Vocal Academy. In 1999 Rachel earned a double B.A. summa cum laude in Music and Theatre from Brandeis University, where she studied composition with Pulitzer Prize winner David Rakowski and choreography with Susan Dibble. She received Brandeis’s Milender Prize for her work in music and the Carnovsky Arts Award for her work in theatre. Concurrent to her academic work, she studied voice and jazz piano with teachers at Boston University and New England Conservatory. Upon graduation, Rachel performed in, choreographed, and/or served as music director for various regional and educational theatre productions, and she also trained at Opera Lirica a Orvieto. She moved to New York on the day of the infamous 2003 blackout to receive her MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2005.
Rachel’s musicals include Only Children with Michael R. Jackson (NYU Mainstage, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Dixon Place), Tiny Feats of Cowardice with Susan Bernfield (NYC Fringe Festival, Adirondack Theatre Festival), Write Left with John Walch (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School), Tomato Red (UC Irvine, Playroom Theater) f2m with Michelle Elliott, and Public Domain, which is adapted from found texts by Boston’s homeless population. Operas include The Wild Beast of the Bungalow, a triptych with Royce Vavrek (excerpts performed by Metropolis Opera Project and Opera on Tap), the one-minute Monkey Do (Rhymes With Opera), and an adaptation of bestselling novelist and Guggenheim Fellow Arthur Phillips's Companionship (Opera on Tap/American Opera Projects). She has scored many plays including the critically acclaimed Stretch (a fantasia) by Susan Bernfield (Living Theatre), The Bacchae (Asolo Rep Conservatory), Unrequited (Public Theater Shakespeare Lab), and Veritas (NYC Fringe Festival), The Tale of the Good Whistleblower of Chaillot’s Caucasian Mother and Her Other Children of a Lesser Marriage Chalk Circle (Theatre Askew) and Definite Possibilities, all by Stan Richardson. Concert works include song cycle Jack's Vocabulary, settings of her elementary school-age cousin's homework (Hartt SPASM, Make Music NY), mini-cantata I Live Here including recorded interviews about the Gowanus Canal (Galapagos Art Space), Canon I for soprano, piano, electric guitar, and photocopier (Two Sides Sounding/Tenri Cultural Institute), and And Then for women's chorus. Her art songs and cabaret songs have been performed at Lincoln Center, Second Stage, The National Opera Center, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, NYMF, the D-Lounge, the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Don’t Tell Mama, Indian Road Cafe, and cabarets throughout the Boston area for over ten years. She regularly presents programs of her work at Cornelia Street Café. Rachel is a Composer in Residence of The Coterie, a recipient of Anna Sosenko Assist Trust and ASCAPlus awards, a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild, a proud alumna of the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio and American Opera Projects' Composers and the Voice, and a current fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute. Her work has repeatedly been described as “jarring” and “inventive” by the press.
Rachel’s musicals include Only Children with Michael R. Jackson (NYU Mainstage, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Dixon Place), Tiny Feats of Cowardice with Susan Bernfield (NYC Fringe Festival, Adirondack Theatre Festival), Write Left with John Walch (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School), Tomato Red (UC Irvine, Playroom Theater) f2m with Michelle Elliott, and Public Domain, which is adapted from found texts by Boston’s homeless population. Operas include The Wild Beast of the Bungalow, a triptych with Royce Vavrek (excerpts performed by Metropolis Opera Project and Opera on Tap), the one-minute Monkey Do (Rhymes With Opera), and an adaptation of bestselling novelist and Guggenheim Fellow Arthur Phillips's Companionship (Opera on Tap/American Opera Projects). She has scored many plays including the critically acclaimed Stretch (a fantasia) by Susan Bernfield (Living Theatre), The Bacchae (Asolo Rep Conservatory), Unrequited (Public Theater Shakespeare Lab), and Veritas (NYC Fringe Festival), The Tale of the Good Whistleblower of Chaillot’s Caucasian Mother and Her Other Children of a Lesser Marriage Chalk Circle (Theatre Askew) and Definite Possibilities, all by Stan Richardson. Concert works include song cycle Jack's Vocabulary, settings of her elementary school-age cousin's homework (Hartt SPASM, Make Music NY), mini-cantata I Live Here including recorded interviews about the Gowanus Canal (Galapagos Art Space), Canon I for soprano, piano, electric guitar, and photocopier (Two Sides Sounding/Tenri Cultural Institute), and And Then for women's chorus. Her art songs and cabaret songs have been performed at Lincoln Center, Second Stage, The National Opera Center, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, NYMF, the D-Lounge, the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Don’t Tell Mama, Indian Road Cafe, and cabarets throughout the Boston area for over ten years. She regularly presents programs of her work at Cornelia Street Café. Rachel is a Composer in Residence of The Coterie, a recipient of Anna Sosenko Assist Trust and ASCAPlus awards, a member of ASCAP and the Dramatists Guild, a proud alumna of the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio and American Opera Projects' Composers and the Voice, and a current fellow at the John Duffy Composers Institute. Her work has repeatedly been described as “jarring” and “inventive” by the press.
