Promise kept for aspiring composer

Blair Foley was just 10 when, gripping her mother's hand, she approached famed composer Aaron Jay Kernis after a Minnesota Orchestra concert.

Earlier, the Pulitzer Prize winner had told the audience that he was passionate about helping those in the future of his profession flourish.

It was her mom who posed the question that was in Foley's mind: "My daughter is the future. What are you going to do for her?"

"Blair immediately struck me as having the tenacity and the drive that was necessary to develop a real committed life in music," said Kernis, who runs the orchestra's annual Composer Institute. "It was very impressive in someone so young."

At 24, Foley is still striving to impress. Last week, she presented a 50-minute chamber opera, "We're All Mad Here," in London at the prestigious experimental opera festival Tête à Tête.

"I'm very pleased with and proud of the performers," she said after last Thursday's premiere. "It's always amazing to see the difference between a rehearsal, where players are focused on the details of the music, and the performance, where they add so much emotion and charm to it."

The libretto by Foley, who did graduate work in literature as well as music, draws on nine novels with insane or eccentric main characters. Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" was an obvious choice -- hence the title, straight from the Cheshire Cat's lips -- but others include "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by Herman Melville, "The Watchmen" by Alan Moore and a translation of Russian author Vladimir Nabokov's "Invitation to a Beheading."

A promise kept

Foley grew up worshipping the Minnesota Orchestra. Her mother, Serena O'Meara, who is a harpist, said Foley regularly produced work that was beyond her years -- or what her peers could perform.

"While in middle school she entered a composition contest," O'Meara recalled. "She got second place because the judge said she transitioned too often -- like Beethoven did! He wanted to see more predictable music."

Kernis fulfilled his promise to Foley, inviting her to behind-the-scenes looks at how Minnesota Orchestra composers and musicians interact and allowing her to sit in on rehearsals of new works and master classes. As a senior in high school, she interned at the American Composers Forum in St. Paul, working on online marketing for its record label, Innova Recordings.

A native of Menomonie, Wis., she first attended college as a chemistry major at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, but transferred into a composition program at Stanford University as a sophomore on a full scholarship. She finished her master's there, too, and now calls San Francisco home.

Foley's parents weren't able to attend the London performance, but the two, who now live in Eau Claire, Wis., are not short on pride for their passionate daughter.