Rapt

Becca Hoback

Featuring an original score by Ignacio Nieto Carvajal

Featuring a recorded aria sung by Sangeetha Ekambaram, Accompanied by Manuel Navarro

Featuring a custom costume build by Kat tierney-smith

This project was supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

Photo by Ben Hoback

A creature lurks, prowls, and postures. She is rigid, formed, molded. Sharp bones, a jutted jaw, a piercing stare. She bristles. She rises, defends, rears back, and finally… the great fall. Out of the dust, a crumpled form emerges. Where do we go from here?

Rapt is an embodied metamorphosis.

Premiered AT Kindling Arts Festival, OZ ARTS NASHVILLE, July 2026

Bosques de mi Mente
Ignacio Nieto Carvajal

Composer

Bosques de mi Mente is the moniker of Spanish composer Ignacio Nieto Carvajal, a minimalist composer of contemporary and cinematic music. He launched the project in 2007 in Spain, focusing on evocative, nostalgic soundscapes that explore the tension between noise and silence, memory and present reality.

Bosques de mi Mente blends piano, strings, found sounds, and electronic textures to craft music that pushes the boundaries of ambient, cinematic, and experimental genres. His compositions often evoke childhood memories and emotional landscapes, creating a fragile balance between chaos and calm. Several of his works are entirely improvised, captured in single takes to preserve their raw intimacy.

His compositions have been featured in films and theater productions, and performed internationally at festivals such as ROJO/Nova in São Paulo and events across Iceland and Brazil. His work has also been recognized with awards for best soundtrack in both stage and film contexts.

Sangeetha Ekambaram

Vocalist for Rapt’s concluding aria

Sangeetha Ekambaram’s interdisciplinary and multicultural background has led her to a rich and varied performance career across continents. She most recently made her role debut as Violetta Valery (La Traviata) at the State Opera Stara Zagora and joined Music City Baroque to perform Handel’s Gloria in Excelsis Deo. She also performed excerpts from Semiramide at the New York Chamber Music Festival, where she previously performed excerpts from Thaïs, Manon (cover), and Faust (cover) and the role of Chrysothemis in "A Look at Elektra". Other recent roles include Laetitia in The Old Maid and the Thief with Opera Huntsville, several engagements with Nashville Opera, including featured soloist at the annual Opera on the Mountain, Opera on Wheels, the “Evolution of Ingenue” with the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and in the opening gala concert at the Amadeo Bassi Festival. Past roles include Mimì (La Bohème), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) (described as “…[lacking] nothing in vocal power or beauty of line…and she conveyed the emotional range superbly”), Antonia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann), and regularly appeared with The Society for New Music, including roles in Eleanor and Frida.

  • A frequent concert performer, recent performances include a program of Spanish classical music with celebrated San Antonio-based flamenco singer Chayito Champion, Music City Baroque’s program of music from Latin America, and soloist for Brahms Requiem, and several chamber concerts with violinist Johna Smith and conductor/pianist Jennifer McGuire as the Leela Trio. With Opera Huntsville, she sang the role of Cinderella in Martin Warren’s The True Story of Cinderella. She has also collaborated with such artists as Craig Ketter and Anthony Gian diTomasso. She is featured on a CD of duets by Heinrich Marschner (Centaur Records). Sangeetha was recently recognized as one of the winners of the Anonymous Audition Project as well as the Latin American and Iberian Art Song Challenge. Her vocal mentors have included renowned sopranos Carole Farley, Cheryl Parrish, Rachel Bersier, Deborah Polaski, and Linda Roark Strummer.
    With the support of artistic sponsorships from local businesses and organisations and Metro Arts Thrive Awards (Nashville, TN), Sangeetha has produced and performed several original and interdisciplinary projects. Recent projects include the premiere of the first movement of her original vocal-choreo-composition “Tejas”, based on the Hindu epic, the Devi Mahātmya, in collaboration with Enactor Productions. She collaborated with renowned Iranian multi-instrumentalist, Reza Filsoofi, and conductor/pianist Jennifer McGuire at the Frist Art Museum in the performance of "Imagining Scheherazade in Exile", which includes an adaptation of Maurice Ravel’s “Shéhérazade”. She produced and performed in "Peripheral Convergence"- a multi-genre collaboration with celebrated local artists-- combining classical art song, contemporary dance, digital art and spoken word, which was selected for OZ Arts' Brave New Works Lab. She also performed alongside multi-genre musicians in "A Fabric of Sound", led by composer/musician Daniel Arite at Darkhorse Theater.

Kat Tierney-Smith

Custom Costume Element design + construction

Kat is a maker, stage manager, pop-up designer, DIY queen, cosplayer, and much more.
Her stage manager credits include: Madea’s Farewell Play Tour (Tyler Perry Studios); The Jonah People (Nashville Symphony); The Christmas Tree Farm, Things I Know to be True, The Calling Is In the Body, Tiny Beautiful Things, Kodachrome, The Vagina Monologues, How to Catch a Flying Woman, Citizen (Actors Bridge Ensemble); The Whale, End of the Rainbow (Actors Express); Of Mice and Men, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Serenbe Playhouse); All Childish Things, Tigers Be Still (Aurora Theatre), John Adam’s A Flowering Tree (Atlanta Symphony Orchestra); Petite Rouge, Body Awareness (Synchronicity Theatre). Kat is the company stage manager for Actors Bridge Ensemble.