THIS SHOW IS BEING RESCHEDULED DUE TO COVID 19

Through the Same Streets with Different Eyes is a queer music project that focuses on trans experiences through texts commissioned from trans residents of Boston.  The texts provided are set into a musical context, with the author of each text as an orator conveying their written work in the musical performance.   Each author’s text is presented in a short suite centered around their writing and experiences. This performance explores the range of trans experiences, through the joy, trauma, confusion, discovery, realization, and euphoria involved with the assertion of one’s self.  

This performance features texts from Olivia W. Becker (They/Them), Nnamdi Odita-Honnah (They/She), and Lyra Montoya (She/her).

Lyra Montoya is a multi-instrumentalist woodwind player and composer.  Lyra is currently a masters student in the Contemporary Improvisation department at the New England Conservatory.  She began playing flute and clarinet as doubles for roles in big band and wind ensembles, and has since moved to focus primarily on flute and bass clarinet as her primary instruments.  Her works and performances are now spread across the flute, clarinet, and saxophone instrument families, and ties to jazz, open form music, and improvised music come together in her performances and works.  Her compositions are primarily programmatic music centered around her experience as a mixed queer person, and how she navigates the world from these intersections of identity.  

Her musical background began on saxophone in elementary school, which then led to participating in the RIALTO program, Georgia State University’s jazz outreach and pedagogy program for middle and high school students.  She completed a BA in music at the University of Colorado, Boulder under the instruction of Tom Myer in jazz and classical saxophone.  At NEC, she studied with Donny McCaslin, Jerry Bergonzi, Anthony Coleman, Cynthia Meyers, Carla Kihlstedt, and Linda Chase in composition and performance.  She continues to compose and perform music with fellow musicians in the Boston area.