composer

​After years of collaboration on stages and in studios, mezzo-soprano Devony Smith and pianist Danny Zelibor are proud to release their first joint album: In This Short Life.

Released June 13, 2025 on Lexicon Classics, the album features a vibrant all-American program brought to life with cellist Michael Nicolas (International Contemporary Ensemble). It’s a bold and emotionally layered celebration of today’s most resonant voices in contemporary art song — composers who speak directly to our time.

The album features two newly commissioned artsongs by Jake Landau: "Sew My True Love (Jubilee)" and the single "The Sake Of You"

In anticipation of its 2027 production, Off-Brand Opera presents a concert reading of & AETERNA, a new opera by composer Jake Landau and librettist Emily Garber.

Following & AETERNA's world premiere in Narni, Italy and its American premiere last summer at The New Voice Festival in Boise, Idaho, the opera is arriving in New York City. A one-act composed to pair with Henry Purcell's DIDO & AENEAS, & AETERNA calls for Dido's death to not come only from "grief" over Aeneas leaving, but from childbirth. 16 years later, this child, Aeterna, embarks on a journey to confront her father over the death of her mother and discover what kind of leader she wants to be.

This concert reading will be presented in reduction at Opera America, featuring a pit of Baroque violin, piano, and percussion.

Tickets

LISTEN: "Destiny"

an aria sung by the ghost of Dido in & AETERNA

Performed here by Devony Smith (mezzo) and Jake Landau (piano)

Score samples available from Just A Theory Press.

For the 20th anniversary of Mark Campbell's Songs From An Unmade Bed, he and the show's original star Michael Winther have organized a concert benefiting Broadway Cares and The Trevor Project.

Campbell has commissioned Jake Landau to compose music to a new song for Winther, one written to honor the musical's late director David Schweizer.

The evening's cast includes Bowen Yang, BD Wong, Manu Narayan, Max Chernin, Elizabeth Stanley and Sally Wilfert.

Tickets available soon.