Photos from New Shorts on February 9, 2013 featuring works by Robert Ashley, Jason Cady, Joe Diebes, Ruby Fulton, Gabrielle Herbst, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Aaron Siegel, Justin Tierney, Leaha Maria Villarreal, and Matthew Welch
Photos from New Shorts on February 9, 2013 featuring works by Robert Ashley, Jason Cady, Joe Diebes, Ruby Fulton, Gabrielle Herbst, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Aaron Siegel, Justin Tierney, Leaha Maria Villarreal, and Matthew Welch
Videos from February 2013′s New Shorts:
Video Introductions from Experiments in Opera’s 2012 Spring Series:
To Scale, is a work-in-progress that details the relationship between an architect and her scalies—the two-dimensional characters who populate architectural models. Co-written by Lynn Levy, Dave Ruder, and Aliza Simons, To Scale explores the gap between creator and created. The piece will also play with novel techniques to bridge the gap between singer and listener, including the use of localized transmitters, picked up by radios in the audience.
“[New Shorts] is a genuinely experimental impulse, allowed to set off impulsively in all directions.”
Rick Burkhardt on CultureBot
Full Preview of New Shorts on CultureBot
“['Happiness is the Problem'] kept the energy hovering at 11 consistently, fusing the stilettoed coloratura of Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” with Glass at his most hyper-caffeinated; you’re left gasping at the end for a reprieve, while admiring the psychological underpinnings of Cady’s work.”
- Olivia Giovetti on WQXR’s Opravore Blog
Full Review of Spring Series on Opravore
“[While] Cady emphasizes his desire to present works that someone would readily identify as genuine ‘opera,’ all three artists [Matthew Welch, Jason Cady and Aaron Siegel] are united in an active effort to resist bottling up one notion of opera as one Authoritative and Unequivocal Thing. According to Siegel, choosing not to explicitly define opera enables the trio to ‘raise more questions.’”
- Daniel J. Kushner, The Huffington Post
Full Preview
Collective Interview with Experiements in Opera Composers on ‘I Care If You Listen’
Preview of the Spring Series on Feast of Music Blog
Preview of the Spring Series on ClassicalTV
“Experiments in Opera, illustrates perfectly the bootstraps gumption of New York’s musical community. Like VOX, this program offers excerpts from multiple works in various styles; the initial outing covers the jazz-punk vivacity of Matthew Welch’s Borges and the Other; Jason Cady’s bubbly, brainy Happiness Is the Problem; Aaron Siegel’s shimmering Brother Brother; and George Aperghis’s Sextour: l’origine des especes. That last work, a provocative gloss on writings by Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould, seems ideally suited to an evening that’s all about evolution.”
- Steve Smith in TimeOut New York
Full Preview
Jason Cady on East Village Radio sharing excerpts of his opera “Happiness is the Problem”
Review of Matthew Welch’s opera “Borges and the Other” on Megs New Music Blog
The Founders of Hotel Elefant discuss their work and ‘New Shorts’ on The Box is Empty
Watch Matt, Jason, Megan and Aaron introduce the four operas featured on the inaugural Experiments in Opera Concert at (le) Poisson Rouge on January 16, 2012:
Music by Jason Cady; libretto by Nadia Berenstein, Jason Cady, and Amy Cimini; graphics by Nadia Berenstein
2 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, chamber orchestra and rhythm section
“But, I mean, in order to, to actually do human trials you have to go through all this rigmarole, and rent is due, we don’t have time…”
Happiness is the Problem is a two-act opera buffa and comic book about idealism and disillusionment. It presents three young women who sell an elixir of happiness derived from the secretions of slugs which they market as “Euphoressence.”
Happiness is the Problem has had preview performances at The Stone, the Wilmette Theater, and Issue Project Room.
Sample audio from Happiness is the Problem:
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Watch Jason introduce Happiness is the Problem in this video from the inaugural Experiments in Opera Concert at (le) Poisson Rouge on January 16, 2012:
A modular dance opera for Blarvuster by Matthew Welch
for 2 Mezzo-sopranos, Baritone, Tenor, chorus, flute/piccolo, viola, 2 electric guitars, piano, bass guitar, vibraphone, drumkit
For some time now, I have been working on a series of short operas (or modular “Acts”) centered around the luminary Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, all played by an expanded version of my ensemble Blarvuster. In 2007, the first of these Borges mini-operas featured two mezzo-sopranos portraying an older and younger Borges meeting in a dream space. Borges was not shy to rework the basic concept of a story in to a new and equally fantastic second tale, and so for a second act written for tenor and baritone, two additional Borges of differing ages meet yet again in a separate encounter of dreaming each other. In both operas/acts, each Borges views his other in disbelief, hashing out self-loathing critique, whilst verifying biographical information. This pushes the iconic identity of Borges and his astonishing deconstruction of time and memory as forefront topics. The upcoming production in May 2012 will be the first performance of the complete opera, which combines the previous two modular acts of dialogues, further enhanced by new sections for chorus that pontificate and comment upon the multifarious identity of Borges (along the lines of the use of chorus in Greek Tragedy and the Baroque oratorio), coupled with intimate chamber passages and ecstatic returns to the labyrinthine rhythmic lattices of Blarvuster.
Mezzo-Soprano: Lisa Komara
Mezzo-Soprano: Amirtha Kidambi
Baritone: Jeff Gavett
Tenor: James Rogers
Flutes: Leah Paul
Viola: Karen Waltuch
Piano: Emily Manzo
Electric Guitar: Taylor Levine
Electric Guitar: Matthew Hough
Bass Guitar: Ian Riggs
Vibraphone: Joe Bergen
Drums: Tomas Fujiwara
plus the EIO Chorus!
Conductor: Matthew Welch
Sample audio from Borges and the Other:
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Watch Matt introduce Borges and the Other in this video from the inaugural Experiments in Opera Concert at (le) Poisson Rouge on January 16, 2012:
Words and music by Aaron Siegel
for soprano, countertenor, tenor, chorus, 2 vibraphones, glockenspiel, viola, cello and flute
Brother Brother is an operatic work for percussion, strings, choir soloists and actors that explores the enigma of brotherhood. The story follows the lives of two pairs of brothers-one historical (Orville and Wilbur Wright) and one fictional (Red and Blue)-as they discover the character of their bond to one another.
The performance at Roulette on May 10 will feature two excerpts from Brother Brother for SATB chorus and piano featuring:
Amanda Sidebottom, Soprano
Patrick Fennig, Countertenor
Jonathan Hampton, Tenor
Thomas McCargar, Bass
Emily Manzo, Piano
Sample Audio from Brother Brother Act I, Scene 3: The Silent Puzzle Played:
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Watch Aaron introduce Brother Brother in this video from the inaugural Experiments in Opera Concert at (le) Poisson Rouge on January 16, 2012:
Libretto by François Régnault and Georges Aperghis (based on texts by Charles Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould) and music by George Aperghis
For five singers and speaking cellist
Sextuor is composed like an oratorio, telling the story of life interpreted in fossil records, co-written by François Règnault and the composer, inspired by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life.
“In the beginning… there was not a beginning. The common ancestor is unknown. Between each species and the common ancestor, who is unknown, one must seek, forever seek the intermediate forms” Narrated by the cellist, and also by the singers through straight singing, Sprechstimme, nonsensical syllables evoking the sounds of beginning life forms and fast-forward sound portraiture of evolution, and as instruments, the story unfolds through bouts of rhythmic complexity and quartertones, and each of the performer’s symbolic characters is revealed.
“Immense Nature improbable and unpredictable, contingent nature, where are we going, we who say life was wonderful, we who say life is wonderful?”
Sample audio from Sextuor: l’origine des especes:
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PERSONNEL
Sop I, Megan Schubert
Sop II, Christie Finn
Sop III, Gelsey Bell
Mezzo, Silvie Jensen
Contralto, Amirtha Kidambi
Cello, Émilie Girard-Charest
Director, Jeremy Bloom
Lighting Designer, Kryssy Wright
Rehearsal Conductor, Nick DeMaison
Watch Soprano Megan Schubert introduce Sextuor: l’origine des especes in this video from the inaugural Experiments In Opera Festival at (le) Poisson Rouge on January 16, 2012:
