Theater & Stage

Theater music has one job: to deepen the action without ever stepping in front of it. When it's working, the audience doesn't notice. When it isn't, they notice nothing else.

Jane composes for the full range of the stage — Greek tragedy and new American plays, chamber musical and full opera, contemporary dance theater and site-specific immersive work. She begins with the script or the libretto. When she can, she attends early rehearsals. She works closely with directors, music directors, choreographers, and dramaturgs, asking what the arc is, where the weight sits, what a given silence is doing. The music that results is tied specifically to the production, to character, to image, to a particular performer's breath, in ways the audience may not consciously notice but will always feel.

For musicals and opera, she composes vocal lines with the singer's range, placement, and temperament in mind. A score a performer can actually live inside for a run, rather than one they survive. She writes for live onstage musicians, pre-recorded tracks, or any combination of the two, and works alongside sound designers to fold her scores into the production's overall sonic world.

If you're developing a new piece — a musical in workshop, an opera in early planning, a play whose director wants more than needle drops — she'd like to hear about it. Theater composition is almost always better when the composer arrives before the set does.