(Photo credit: Erik Castro)

Composer Gabriela Lena Frank has withdrawn from the premiere of her newest work with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Following the two killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE officers, Frank concluded she would not feel safe traveling to the state. The SPCO has chosen to postpone the Jan. 30 premiere of “The Ballad of John James Audubon and the Runaway: An American Tragedy Ignored and Retold” to allow Frank to return at a safer time.

Frank’s new work, a four-movement song cycle for baritone and chamber orchestra, focuses on one of the “founding fathers” of American birding and his legacy of racism. The work sets text by the ornithologist and poet J. Drew Lanham.

Frank shared her reasoning on social media saying, “…with the events unfolding in the Twin Cities…I made the hard realization that I would not be safe. I wrestled and delayed as long as I could, exchanging a multitude of texts with Drew, Mei-Ann, and Federico.” She concluded her post by thanking the SPCO with, “My gratitude to Mei-Ann and the SPCO for programming my first orchestra work instead, ‘Elegía Andina,’ when I first began my journey in understanding what it means to be a Latina in America.”

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