GRAMMY®-Winning Baritone/Composer Will Liverman Announces Publishing Deal with Just a Theory Press – Scores Available Now!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
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GRAMMY® Award-Winning Baritone and Composer Will Liverman
Announces Publishing Deal with Just a Theory Press  

Liverman’s Catalogue for Voice Now Available, Including: 

Collected Songs (High/Medium and Medium/Low), Featuring Original Works, Love Songs, New Arrangements of Spirituals, and Selections from Liverman’s GRAMMY®-Nominated Dunbar/Moore Sessions

Eternidad (2026), a Song Cycle for Soprano and Piano
with Text by Pablo Neruda and Jorge Debravo

Four Private Parables (2026), a Song Cycle for Baritone and Piano
with Text by Jonathan King 

 “A master of the recital... the writing of Liverman himself is given the chance to shine”
– BBC Music Magazine 

“Baritone Will Liverman is emerging as a musician with a capital ‘M,’ one whose
thoroughgoing approach to the craft is singularly illuminating, inviting, and affecting.”
– The Arts Fuse 

www.willliverman.com

 

New York, NY (October 13, 2026) – GRAMMY® Award-winning baritone and composer Will Liverman announces a new publishing relationship with Just a Theory Press. It begins with the release of three works in four editions, available now in print and as PDF downloads. 

Collected Songs is published in separate volumes for high/medium voice and piano and for medium/low voice and piano. It includes original works, “Love Song,” and new arrangements of spirituals, plus selections from The Dunbar/Moore Sessions, Liverman’s settings of poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The second volume of that series (Lexicon Classics, 2025) earned Liverman a nomination for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Compendium, marking his fifth nomination overall and first as a composer. Also published are Four Private Parables, a song cycle for baritone and piano with text by Jonathan King, and Eternidad, a song cycle for soprano and piano on poetry by Pablo Neruda and Jorge Debravo.

Liverman began composing during the pandemic. His first song was a setting of Dunbar’s “A Golden Day,” commissioned by soprano Lauren Snouffer. In his program note for Collected Songs, Liverman writes that something in Dunbar’s words “opened a door.” From there he was increasingly drawn to Dunbar’s poetry and to the writing of Dunbar-Nelson, Dunbar’s former wife. What began as a single song, one he “thought would never see the light of day,” grew over time into a larger body of work. 

The two volumes of Collected Songs share several songs, many of them offered in a choice of two keys, and each volume also includes songs not found in the other. The high/medium volume includes a duet setting of “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” and the medium/low volume includes “A Tribute to Mr. JFK” and “Birmingham Sunday.”

Eternidad (2026) sets two sonnets by Pablo Neruda, “Soneto XVII” and “Soneto LXXXIX,” followed by Jorge Debravo’s poem “Eternidad.” 

Four Private Parables (2026) grew out of conversations about why humanity seems invested in dividing itself. Jonathan King’s four poems, “For Amie,” “For Marcus,” “For Timothy,” and “For John,” each frame an actual event and the people involved. They proceed chronologically from a childhood story to a mentor’s final days. The work’s program note asks whether, by the end of our lives, it is possible to shed learned behavior and “return to what we knew all along,” that “we are each one another.”

Liverman shares, “Though I’ve always loved writing music, I never studied composition and didn’t feel I had permission to create. That changed during the pandemic, when space and stillness invited me to explore. I began writing songs from a deep love of melody, text, and storytelling. I felt most fulfilled when combining those passions. 

“A special joy in this project has been collaborating from the piano—returning to my first musical love. To shape these pieces from the keyboard, as both composer and performer, has made the experience deeply personal and creatively complete.”

About Will Liverman

Called “a voice for this historic moment” (The Washington Post), GRAMMY® Award-winning baritone and composer Will Liverman has been described as “a gifted chameleon of a singing actor who disappears into his roles” (Opera Magazine) with a “beaming, high baritone that easily asserts” (LA Times). Liverman is known internationally for his dedication and vision as a composer, artist, and advisor, helping to evolve and push the performing arts industry forward. 

 Embarking on the first year of a five-year tenure as a Wigmore Hall Associate Artist, Liverman gives a featured recital at Wigmore Hall in Spring 2027. His season also includes the New York premiere of his own Songs of Humanity & Peace at Lincoln Center, as well as appearances at the LA Phil with Julia Bullock and John Moore, the Royal Concertgebouw for a recital of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and art songs, The Metropolitan Opera for its Diamond Jubilee: 60 Years, and in a portrait performance and recital with Opera Omaha. Upcoming performance highlights also include Cinderella at Opera San Antonio, Carmina Burana with The Philadelphia Orchestra and Pittsburgh Symphony, Madame Butterfly with the Washington National Opera, La Bohème at Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Handel's Messiah at North Carolina Symphony, Enigma Variations at Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Curlew River in the inaugural season of Chicago's 3000Hz Opera Lab. 

Lyric Opera of Chicago presented the sold-out world premiere production of Liverman’s opera The Factotum in 2023, which he starred in and composed with DJ King Rico. Inspired by Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Liverman and Rico place the story in a present-day Black barbershop on Chicago’s South Side, celebrating the strength of community and the power of the human spirit in a soul opera that “offers a chameleonic pastiche of soul, funk, and classical elements that is incredibly effective” (Opera News). In May 2026, Liverman and Rico – both alumni of The Governor’s School for the Arts (GSA) – presented a brand new version of The Factotum, called Factotum: Groom & Glow Lounge, specially reworked for the students of GSA and providing high-level mentorship to the students in an extended residency.  

In recent seasons, Liverman’s operatic engagements included Le nozze di Figaro at Washington National Opera and Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Houston Grand Opera, alongside his reprisal of Papageno in Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera’s holiday presentation and at Santa Fe Opera, Marcello in La bohème at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Ned Keene in Peter Grimes at Dutch National Opera. On the concert stage, he performed Jenufa with The Cleveland Orchestra; appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Edinburgh International Festival and again under Sir Antonio Pappano; sang The Pearl Fishers with Washington Concert Opera and Die Zauberflöte with the St. Louis Symphony; Messiah with the San Francisco Symphony and Music of the Baroque, Carmina Burana with the San Francisco Symphony, and Bernstein’s Mass with the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra; Kaija Saariaho’s Sombre at Carnegie Hall with the International Contemporary Ensemble; and Brahms’ Requiem with the Rhode Island Philharmonic and Shawn Okpebholo’s Two Black Churches and Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Oakland Symphony. In recital, he performed works by Burleigh, Vaughan Williams, and Still at The Concertgebouw; works by Schubert, Burleigh, and Larsen at the Oxford International Song Festival; a song cycle of his own compositions at National Sawdust; with the New York Festival of Song at Kaufman Music Center; and String Theory at the Hunter.

Liverman’s staged opera career highlights include starring in the title role of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X at The Metropolitan Opera, the world premiere of René Orth’s 10 Days in a Madhouse at Opera Philadelphia, playing Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette at The Metropolitan Opera, and headlining in a “breakout performance” (The New York Times) opening the Met’s 2021-2022 season in the widely celebrated Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Terence Blanchard, which won the 2023 GRAMMY® Award for Best Opera Recording. Liverman later reprised the role at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Liverman’s additional opera highlights include making history as the first-ever Black Papageno in The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Die Zauberflöte;  Horemhab (Akhnaten) and Malcolm Fleet (Nico Muhly’s Marnie) at The Metropolitan Opera; the title role of Pelléas et Mélisande at LA Opera; Figaro (Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Washington, Houston, Seattle, Virginia, Kentucky, Madison, and Utah Operas); Pantalone (The Love of Three Oranges, Opera Philadelphia); Raimbaud (Le Comte Ory, Seattle Opera); Sam (The Pirates of Penzance, Atlanta Opera); Andrew Hanley in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’ The Manchurian Candidate (Minnesota Opera); Zurga (Les pêcheurs de perles, Austin Opera); Silvio (Pagliacci, Opera Colorado); The Pilot (The Little Prince, Tulsa Opera); Foreman at the Mill (Jenufa, Santa Fe Opera); Tarquinius (The Rape of Lucretia), Beaumarchais (The Ghosts of Versailles), and Schubert’s Die Winterreise with Wolf Trap Opera; The Reverend (Jeanine Tesori’s Blue, Dutch National Opera); the title role of Porgy and Bess (Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal); and Dizzy Gillespie (Charlie Parker’s Yardbird, Opera Philadelphia, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Madison Opera, Apollo Theater). 

In concert, Liverman has been featured in performances at BBC Proms, Tanglewood, Aspen Music Festival, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, Park Avenue Armory, The Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Art Song Society, Seattle Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, American Pops Orchestra, Art Bath, Sparks & Wiry Cries, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Chamber Music Northwest, and Friends of Chamber Music. Liverman has also joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Lexington Philharmonic, The Washington Chorus, Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys, Nu Deco Ensemble, Experiential Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, plus Dayton Opera, Caramoor, Cincinnati Song Initiative, and Ithaca College for vocal recitals. He also served as Artistic Advisor for Renée Fleming’s SongStudio at Carnegie Hall.  

Liverman is a five-time GRAMMY® Award nominee. He won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Opera Recording as a soloist on the Metropolitan Opera’s recording of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones, and earned a Best Classical Solo Vocal Album nomination for his recording of Shawn Okpebholo’s “Lord, How Come Me Here?” with pianist Paul Sánchez. Liverman’s The Dunbar/Moore Sessions, Volume II (Lexicon Classics, 2025), a follow-up to his 2023 debut EP, sets original art songs to the late 19th- and early 20th-century poetry of writer/activists Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Moore. The album features performances by Joshua Blue, Jacqueline Echols, Lady Jess, Mykal Kilgore, Isabel Leonard, Erin Morley, Adam Richardson, Lindsey Sharpe, and Ann Toomey, and was nominated for a GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Compendium.

 Cedille Records released Liverman’s Show Me The Way with pianist Jonathan King in March 2024. Hailed as a “glorious” (BBC Music) and “spellbinding” (San Francisco Classical Voice) celebration of American female composers from 20th-century trailblazers Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Amy Cheney Beach to present-day composers commissioned for this program, it featured guest performances by Renée Fleming, J’Nai Bridges, Nicole Cabell, Lady Jess, Tahirah Whittington, and his mother, Terry Liverman, and was nominated for the GRAMMY® Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album.

Cedille Records also released Liverman’s Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers with pianist Paul Sanchez in 2021, a collection of works by Damien Sneed, Henry Burleigh, H. Leslie Adams, Robert Owens, Margaret Bonds, and Thomas Kerr, plus a world premiere recording by Shawn Okpebholo and Liverman’s arrangement of Richard Fariña’s Birmingham Sunday. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart, and The New Yorker praised its “clarity, sensitivity, and barely contained heartbreak,” while NPR declared, “velvet-voiced baritone Will Liverman is out to make the classical music canon more inclusive.” Dreams of a New Day was nominated for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. Liverman’s 2020 album, Whither Must I Wander, with pianist Jonathan King, released on Odradek Records, was named one of the Chicago Tribune’s “best classical recordings of 2020." 

Accolades include the Beverly Sills Artist Award from The Metropolitan Opera (2022), a Sphinx MPower Artist Grant (2022), Marian Anderson Vocal Award (2020), Richard Tucker Career Grant (2019), Sphinx Medal of Excellence (2019), 3Arts Award (2017), George London Award (2017), Luminarts Fellow by the Luminarts Cultural Foundation (2017, classical division), Stella Maris International Vocal Competition (2015), Gerda Lissner Charitable Fund Award (2015), and Opera Index (2015, top prize).

Liverman is an alumnus of the Ryan Opera Center at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and was a Glimmerglass Festival Young Artist. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School (M.M.) and Wheaton College in Illinois (B.M.). Please visit www.willliverman.com for more information.

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