Victoria is a committed champion of new music and collaboration with living composers. In staged works she has premiered multiple operas, including Susan Kander’s The Giver with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, and three operas by composer Jorge Sosa. She has had a long association with the music of Brad Cox as the soprano soloist with the new music and dance ensemble Owen/Cox Dance Group. With her own project The Cecilia Series, she has presented and recorded the world premiere of “Eavesdropping”, a song cycle commissioned especially for her based on the poetry of Michelle Boisseau with music by Susan Kander. Her work in contemporary music include performances with newEar Contemporary Ensemble, Black House Collective, and the Kansas City baroque Consortium’s commission series New Works for Old Instruments.

In experimental performance, she has worked with avant-garde artist J. Ashley Miller on site-specific sound installations. With Miller's ensemble, Atemporchestra, she premiered a new work for TEDxKC and performed in Echosis, a workshop of Miller’s first full-scale opera.  

Her initial foray into new music began with her graduate work interviewing and coaching in Bogotá with Colombian composer, Jaime León (1926-2014). Her research turned into a thesis for a Master in Musicology on his complete songs. It remains the most comprehensive biography and musical analysis of this important Latin American composer.

NEW MUSIC CREDITS

PRESS

newEar Contemporary Ensemble Unreal City (Lansing McCloskey)

"The work has a haunting quality, especially in the quietude of the second movement with its extended vocal lines and pianissimo bowed crotales. The trio of Michael Kirkendoll (piano), Victoria Botero (soprano) and Christopher Larson (percussion) gave a poised and balanced reading. The piece does not follow conventions, with its spastic and surprising percussion part against the affirmative, take-charge piano. The vocals interrupted and dismantled this forward momentum, the text expressed with arresting clarity. Kansas City Star

 Owen/Cox Dance Group, The Lewis and Clark Expedition (Brad Cox)

“Victoria Botero served as a narrator to the mishmashed, but always amusing, storyline. Her singing was impressive.” KC Metropolis

Owen/Cox Dance Group, A Body of Work (Brad Cox)

“Venturing outside the box was… Brad Cox’s sound mixing of the electric keyboard, ambient noise, and vocals from soprano Victoria Botero. Botero fervently sang into a recording mic, which Cox captured and manipulatively looped and stretched and layered on top of the synthesized sounds. Botero produced everything from dramatic breathing and sustained notes to shrill staccatos that, when played back, took on the likes of animals and children. KC Metropolis