Voices from the Killing Jar

Composed in 2010–2012 for the Wet Ink Ensemble and released by Carrier Records on January 1, 2014, this work was written before Soper’s renowned chamber opera Ipsa Dixit, which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music.

The music depicts a series of female subjects, trapped in their own killing jars: hopeless situations, inescapable fates, impossible fantasies, and other unlucky circumstances.

[6] In the sixth movement, a young girl Asta Solilja from Halldór Laxness's novel Independent People finds beauty and a dream of love while cloud-gazing on her father's harshly isolated sheep farm in 19th century Iceland.

"[6] In 2015, Michael Lewanski at the Northwestern New Music Conference (NUNC) describes the piece as "ambitious, striking conception" and "a menace, a prison, an enactment of forces of repression".

[5] In 2018, Eric Skelly at the Houston Chronicle stated: "(This is) a score composed in a modernist aesthetic, fueling a disquieting performance that spoke directly to the #MeToo and #NeverAgain movements.