On 15 February, Jimmy López Bellido​’s song cycle Quiet Poems receives its world premiere at Tucson Desert Song Festival in Arizona. The work was commissioned by the festival through the Wesley Green Composer Project and is performed by tenor Michael Fabiano and pianist Laurent Phillippe.

Quiet Poems sets four poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz. It is dedicated to all the children who suffer quietly in captivity, motivated by a desire to tell their stories.

Describing the project’s development, López Bellido comments: ​“At the height of the pandemic, my friend and close collaborator Nilo Cruz, embarked on a very personal project. Inspired by the work we had done on our oratorio ​‘Dreamers’, Nilo expanded some of those poems and kept reflecting around a few of the issues that we had addressed, in particular how many children whose stories are not being told suffer in captivity on a daily basis. When I visited him in Miami in the fall of 2021, he showed me those poems in confidence, and I was profoundly moved.”