The Book Club Party
Nora's Updates
7/22/25
​​Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a book club gathering, navigating the diverse personalities and unspoken dynamics? Set that experience to music, and add some humor and heartfelt emotion. That’s precisely what Mark Vance and Sands Hall are creating with their new opera, The Book Club Party.
THE CREATIVE VISION BEHIND
The Book Club Party is a new opera in progress by composer, Mark Vance, and librettist, Sands Hall. It's a loving and whimsical look at a young couple planning a book club party. Stay tuned for plot development...
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7/22/25
Mark Vance, Composer
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Mark Vance is a composer and music educator living in Nevada City, California. He has played an extensive role composing, teaching, coaching, arranging, conducting and promoting music throughout his community in the rural California Foothills. He is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing and C. Alan Publications. His CDs It’s About Time! and God, I Love Chamber Music! are available on CD Baby and iTunes. He serves as Executive Director of the Nevada County Composers Cooperative since 2003. Here, he oversees a wildly talented group of composers planning and producing concerts of new music. He also created and teaches the award-winning education program Young Composers Project, a music composition program for teens.
Vance and his wife, Estelle, live with their two goldfish.
Sands Hall, Librettist
Sands Hall is the award-winning author of the memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint), the novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine), and a book on writing, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. Stories and essays have appeared in such journals as Alta, New England Review, Iowa Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Sands’s extensive theatre experience—as director, actor, and playwright—infuses her teaching and her writing; she is also a singer/songwriter. In addition to an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, she holds a BA in Acting (UC Irvine) and an MFA in Theatre Arts (University of Iowa). She works as a writing coach and teaches annually for the Community of Writers, the Sierra Writers Conference, and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among others. Professor Emeritus at Franklin & Marshall College, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. www.sandshall.com
Stay tuned for Nora's upcoming
Book Club Party Blog...
Nora Miller Rubinoff
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Nora Miller Rubinoff is VP of Business Development and Operations for IPA Source. She focuses on streamlining processes, improving user experiences, and identifying new pathways for partnerships and innovation, helping IPA Source deliver the best possible resource to our customers worldwide. Nora enjoys biking, hiking, and camping. She resides in West Chester with her husband and dachshunds.