AWESOME WITH THE ARIAS. Originally from Menomonie, Blair Foley was commissioned by the Size Zero Opera Company to create a piece for the Tete a Tete Opera Festival.

Composer/Artist/Theorist Blair Foley believes growing up in the Chippewa Valley influenced her in extraordinary ways. “Living in an area with relatively sparse youth performing arts organizations (as compared to metropolitan cities) meant that young performers really had to create their own paths, both creative and professional, and take on a much broader sense of responsibility for their work,” states this talented composer. This year Blair was commissioned by the Size Zero Opera Company (all about performing innovative, challenging new work) to create a piece for the Tete a Tete Opera Festival (known as the most imaginative opera laboratory out there). The opera company was looking to commission two composers whose body of work valued theatricality and dealing with a wide variety of subject matter.  Though Blair wouldn’t classify herself as a composer who normally does staged works (such as operas or musical theater), her artistic views which “value artistic integrity of the subject matter, over it being ‘comfortable’ to listen to all the time,” won her the commission. In the luscious operatic milieu of the Tete a Tete Festival in London, her work, We’re All Mad Here opened earlier this month. The piece is a nine-part musical study of insanity in modern literature. Drawing from sources both fictional and political, the work examines writings whose narrative trajectory depends on the author’s distinction between characters as eccentric and those which are insane. A native of Menomonie, Blair attended UW-Madison for spell before transferring into a composition program at Stanford University on a full scholarship. Blair now resides in San Francisco and says plans, dates, and locations for bringing her piece to the U.S. are in the works.