Composer Gabriela Lena Frank recently withdrew 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 that as a Latina woman, she would not feel safe traveling to the state.

The SPCO has chosen to postpone the premiere of The Ballad of John James Audubon and the Runaway: An American Tragedy Ignored and Retold rather than cancelling it, to allow Frank to return at a safer moment. On the night the premiere was scheduled, the orchestra instead performed Frank's Elegía Andina, a 2000 work that explored the multiplicity of Frank's ethnic identity.

Her new work, The Ballad of John James Audubon and the Runaway: An American Tragedy Ignored and Retold, focuses on one of the "founding fathers" of American birding and his legacy of racism. A four-movement song cycle for baritone and chamber orchestra, the work sets text by the ornithologist and poet J. Drew Lanham. 

In a lengthy social media post, Frank described instances where she has been the subject of racial harassment and detailed how these instances have been getting worse over the past few years.

"I'm angry that I now carry my US passport with me everywhere," Frank wrote. "I'm angry that in case I'm taken into custody, I carry in my purse extra hearing aid batteries and medicine I need to stay alive. I'm angry to worry that my mom's decades-old citizenship will be rescinded. I'm angry that I'm exhausted with protesting even as I know that I'll not stop. I'm angry that even with my comparatively privileged status, my family worries that my visible concert life makes me a target for the Latino/latinoamericano stories I tell. I tell my family that our government doesn't pay attention to concert music. They say: Kennedy Center."

"How I regret to pull out of my gig this week with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and their excellent musicians. We were to premiere The Ballad of John James Audubon: An American Tragedy Ignored and Retold with words by the incredible J. Drew Lanham and the charismatic baritone Federico DM. To tell this story of famous, genre-setting "white" men and slavery, it was important to me to have a multi-national, multi-racial team -- A Black writer, a Latina composer, an Argentinian singer, a Taiwanese conductor (the inspiring Mei-Ann Chen) -- because anyone with humanity would feel the story's truth."

"Then with the events unfolding in the Twin Cities, after the murder of Renée Good and before the killing of Alex Pretti, 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."

"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."