Composer Kevin Puts released his new album Emily: No Prisoner Be on the Platoon label. The album is a collaboration with mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato, and string trio Time For Three, which consists of violinist Nicolas Kendall, bassist Ranaan Meyer, and violinist and VC Artist Charles Yang.

Emily: No Prisoner Be presents Puts's new work of the same name, which sets poetry by Emily Dickinson to music. The twenty-four movement song cycle was co-commissioned by the Bregenzer Festspiele, Carnegie Hall, and Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to the work's musical element, Emily: No Prisoner Be was conceived as a live theatrical experience with immersive staging and lighting design by tenor and opera director Andrew Staples. The stage performance received its premiere in August 2025 at the Bregenzer Festspiele.

"Initially, the inspiration was very much coming from the performers," Puts told The Violin Channel. "I loved working with Joyce DiDonato on my opera The Hours at the Met and just as much, I loved collaborating with Time for Three on our concerto called Contact. The idea of bringing the four of these performers from different worlds together was a very exciting one and when I married that excitement with the astonishing poetry of Emily Dickinson, only some of which I already knew, I found myself writing songs with more fluency than perhaps I’ve ever written before. But the energy between these four performers remained at the center of my creative drive for this project.

"I will never forget how deeply satisfying it was for me to hear them at the very edge of what is possible for performers, giving everything they had to this challenging composition," Puts continued. "I am deeply grateful to the four of them and also to engineer Silas Brown—a true artist in his own right—for his expertise and patience, always going the extra mile for us in this recording."

Hear the full album below:

 

Composer Kevin Puts has been a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy Award, and in 2024, he was named Musical America's Composer of the Year. His music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera, the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, and more. He has served on the faculty of the Peabody Institute of Music and the Juilliard School. His music is published worldwide by G. Ricordi & Co., New York.