Entries by Aaron Siegel

INTERVIEW: Miguel Frasconi

EiO Artistic Director Jason Cady interviewed Flash Opera composer Miguel Frasconi about his early development as an experimental music innovator and about his approach to adapting ‘Things You Should Know’ by AM Homes for the opera stage.  CADY: I wanted to start off with your background. I know you’ve worked with a lot of important […]

Setting The Voices in Jack Handey’s Head

EiO Co-Founder, Jason Cady, is the composer of ‘The Voices In My Head,’ a Flash Opera based on the short story by Jack Handey.  In this post he discusses the interaction that happens when artists combine their style with the ideas within and beyond the work they adapt. I’m a big fan of Jack Handey. […]

Questions and Answers

Miguel Frasconi’s adapation of ‘Things You Should Know,’ by AM Homes is one of the featured operas on May’s Flash Operas at Symphony Space.   As he sees it, his piece is in the lineage of experimental music stretching back to some of the very founders of this tradition in the US.  Questions, he says […]

Letting Narrative Take the Lead

EiO Co-founder, Aaron Siegel, has written a new short opera, The Wallet, as part of the upcoming Flash Operas at Symphony Space.  Coming off the recent workshop rehearsals on March 12 and 13, 2017, Aaron reflected on the challenges of adapting a short story for the stage.  Flash Operas are premiering on May 5 and […]

Depicting Mandela

Nicole Murphy is an Australia-based composer and one of the featured artists of our forthcoming Flash Operas Program.  Below are a collection of her thoughts about ‘Mandela Was Late,’ her short work based on the story by Peter Mehlman.   Nicole will be in New York next week to attend EiO’s Flash Opera Workshop with […]

Creating Satire Through Music: Cristina Lord

Cristina Lord is one of the commissioned composers for our upcoming Flash Operas Program at Symphony Space on May 5 and 6.  She has written her Flash Opera based on the story ‘Pledge Drive’ by Patricia Marx.  In advance of our upcoming workshop of her piece, we asked her about what she was thinking about as […]

The Sound of Cruelty

I just finished reading the exquisite, insightful, and thoroughly engaging book, “The Art of Cruelty” by Maggie Nelson.  The book is a revelatory collection of thoughts and ideas about how artists engage with cruelty, and pain, and darkness in their work.  Nelson’s arguments are erudite and opinionated and she isn’t afraid to acknowledge the role her […]

Betrayed By Technology:  An Interview with Jason Cady

Jason Cady, one of the co-founders of EiO, composed his new opera ‘I Need Space’ for the upcoming Story Binge II at Merkin Concert Hall.  In advance of this premiere, we sat down with Jason to talk about his unique perspective how our lives in ‘the future’ are just a big disappointment, and how opera […]

Tricking You Into Opera:  An Interview with Nick Hallett

Composer/Vocalist Nick Hallett is a busy man.  On top of his regular work composing for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, he has just put the finishing touches on Scene 2 of his opera ‘To Music’ which will be performed at the upcoming Story Binge II on December 15 (tickets here).  We sat down with […]

Riding and Talking: An Interview with Roddy Bottum

Roddy Bottum’s short opera The Ride will be featured on EiO’s upcoming Story Binge II at Merkin Concert Hall at the Kaufman Music Center on December 15, 2017 (tickets here).  We sat down with Roddy to discuss his piece, his wistful feelings about being part of an older generation, and why flutes, synthesizers and drums […]

So, You Have an Idea for an Opera…

On our EiO website, we have a form where artists can submit proposals to be considered for our future seasons. We get a steady stream of opera pitches at this address every week and try to get back to everyone in due time. Since we find many similarities in how composers conceive of their projects, […]

Outcome to Show Them

As an artist, I often bristle at the idea of an outcome.  My work as a composer is the outcome. That musicians have music on their stands and the resulting sounds were as I intended is the outcome.  For a painter an outcome might be a painting. For a writer, poem.   But for another segment of […]

Research and Disruption

For a certain kind of dreamer,  Bell Laboratories feels like the Land Of Oz.  The scientists working at the Princeton, New Jersey campus were the technology explorers of their time.  In tandem to the basic telephony services that their colleagues on the other side of campus were administering, the engineers at the labs developed some of the […]

The Straight Story? (pt. 1)

The conversation we have most frequently at Experiments in Opera is about how to prioritize narrative in opera.  Jason, Matt and I each come to opera with different sensibilities about how important the narrative is to the experience of music and story.  Composers we work with tend to fall into the same two camps that we […]