Bright Shiny Things releases "Adoration," a World Premiere Opera by Mary Kouyoumdjian and Royce Vavrek

BRIGHT SHINY THINGS RELEASES ADORATION, THE WORLD PREMIERE LIVE RECORDING OF AN ELECTROACOUSTIC CHAMBER OPERA BY COMPOSER MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN, WITH A LIBRETTO BY ROYCE VAVREK

Adapted from a film by Atom Egoyan, the live recording features conductor Alan Pierson, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, and the Silvana Quartet

“Her lyric vocal writing contents with harsh reality, but her style is never far from profound rapture." —The Los Angeles Times

 “blisteringly uncomfortable...relentlessly tense—90 minutes of in-drawn breath passes with barely a moment’s respite... Kouyoumdjian’s score keeps us rapt and suspicious the whole time.” —Observer

  “timely and impactful”—OperaWire

NEW YORK, NY–On August 8, 2025, Bright Shiny Things releases Adoration [BSTD-0224], the world premiere live recording of an electroacoustic chamber opera by first generation Armenian-American composer Mary Kouyoumdjian. Adapted from the film of the same name by Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, the libretto was written by Royce Vavrek, and the work was produced by Beth Morrison Projects. Adoration follows a high school student whose fictional story about a terrorist plot goes viral, unpacking how grief, racism, and media distortion collide to obscure the truth. Conducted by Alan Pierson, the cast features Miriam Khalil, Omar Najmi, David Adam Moore, and Grammy Award winner Karim Sulayman, alongside Naomi Louisa O’Connell, Marc Kudisch and Sammy Ivany. They are joined by the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street under Thomas McCargar, the Silvana Quartet, and sound designer Daniel Neumann, with electronics by Kouyoumdjian. The album was recorded live during PROTOTYPE performances between January 12–20, 2024 at The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture in New York City. Adoration is available for pre-order here.

The protagonist of Adoration, Simon, is an orphaned high school student who is encouraged by a teacher, as part of a dramatic writing exercise, to appropriate details from a historical terrorist attack as an event perpetrated by his parents. When his story goes viral, Simon uses the hysteria within his community and on the internet to highlight the challenges of intolerance and racism. Adoration tells two simultaneous stories—a fictional story of terrorism and betrayal next to a real story of family strife and rejection, until a shocking final revelation fits them together. 

Kouyoumdjia nwas awarded an OPERA America commissioning grant to create the adaptation of Egoyan’s film, along with “exemplary creator of operatic prose” (The New York Times) Royce Vavrek. After its premiere as part of PROTOTYPE 2024, the opera had its West Coast premiere at LA Opera this past February. Adoration was commissioned, developed, and produced by Beth Morrison Projects.

In an artist statement in the booklet, Kouyoumdjian writes: “I believe that artists are the speakers of difficult truths. As a member of a family displaced from both the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, I consider my freedom of expression here in the United States to be an immense privilege, and so I am drawn to stories that are both challenging to confront and to speak. … Filmmaker Atom Egoyan has created such a story with his film Adoration, and I am incredibly grateful to have spent the last several years living in this wonderfully challenging space in adapting his film into an opera. … Our world continues to be fractured over unresolved multi-generational traumas that can cause horrifying divisions, globally and often in the closeness of our own families; however, like the story behind Adoration, individuals and communities, at their very best, also find beautiful ways through these divisions.” 

ABOUT THE COMPOSER:

MARY KOUYOUMDJIAN is a composer and documentarian with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic palette that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new. A strong believer in freedom of speech and the arts as an amplifier of expression, her compositional work often integrates recorded testimonies with resilient individuals and field recordings of place to invite empathy by humanizing complex experiences around social and political conflict.

A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Kouyoumdjian has received commissions for the New York Philharmonic, Kronos Quartet, Carnegie Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Beth Morrison Projects/OPERA America, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Roomful of Teeth, among others. Her work has been featured internationally at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, the Barbican Centre, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Millennium Park, Benaroya Hall, Prototype Festival, SF Jazz, Cabrillo Festival, Big Ears Festival, Cal Performances, Tribeca Film Festival, and PBS. 

Kouyoumdjian’s opera Adoration, adapted from Atom Egoyan’s 2008 film, recently received its west coast premiere at LA Opera and is slated for commercial release in August 2025, and her debut portrait album, WITNESS featuring the Kronos Quartet, was released through Phenotypic Recordings in 2025. In May 2025, her Pulitzer-nominated music-documentary, Paper Pianos, in collaboration with Alarm Will Sound was performed at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center after originally premiering in 2023 at EMPAC. 

Kouyoumdjian holds a D.M.A. and M.A. in Composition at Columbia University, an M.A. in Scoring for Film & Multimedia from New York University, and a B.A. in Composition from UC San Diego. She is a cofounder of the annual new music conference New Music Gathering, is on faculty at The New School, and is based in Brooklyn, NY. www.marykouyoumdjian.com