Project Archives
Soldier Songs
Soldier Songs is a riveting evening-length multimedia event from composer David T. Little that combines elements of theater, opera, rock-infused-concert music, and animation to explore the perceptions versus the realities of the Soldier, the exploration of loss and exploitation of innocence, and the difficulty of expressing the truth of war. Music can be easily co-opted to serve a political or ideological message or it can equally be a vehicle for reflection, engagement, and emotional connection, as is seen in this gripping music-theatre work.
With performances sold to standing room capacity, Beth Morrison Projects’ production presented at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC in September 2008 employed the amplified chamber version of the piece, which was directed by Yuval Sharon, conducted by Todd Reynolds, and featured the Newspeak ensemble plus baritone David Adam Moore. Existing in an orchestral scoring as well, Soldier Songs had its orchestral concert premier as part of New York City Opera’s Vox Festival in May 2008. Soldier Songs plays to the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut in June 2011. Worldwide touring available 2011-12 and 2013-14.
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Kocho
- Music and text by Garrett Fisher
- Performed by The Garrett Fisher Ensemble
- Directed by Benjamin Mosse
- Choreographed by Christy Fisher
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with installations by sculptor Louise McCagg
KOCHO, based on the Noh play of the same name, tells the story of a wandering Priest who meets a butterfly and "liberates" it by letting it dance under the plum blossom. The internationally acclaimed Seattle-based Fisher Ensemble has forged an original musical and theatrical style that incorporates sounds and instruments from multiple cultures, and ragas that are, in part, created by the performers, as well as from elements of the ancient Noh and Greek traditions. Beth Morrison Projects brings KOCHO to Galapagos Art Space as it offers a unique site-specific environment in which to explore the dualities inherent in the FIsher Ensemble's way of working - between the poles of presentational and immersive staging techniques, and between ancient and modern aesthetics and storytelling traditions. The space's walkways, stage, balcony and pools of water, heightened by original installations by sculptor Louise McCagg, will allow the piece to engulf the audience, immersing them in the "unambiguous beauty" of the sonic and visual experience.
“a strong, unified and strikingly individual
utterance of unambiguous beauty."
-The New York Times, March 21, 2010
KOCHO premieres at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn on September 23rd, 2011.
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NEW MUSIC NOW: Mazzoli, Muhly and Prestini at NYC’s River to River Festival
After this year's preview collaboration between Beth Morrison Projects and lower Manhattan's annual River to River Festival, next year's festival brings you three unique multimedia concert evenings, celebrating the composers and multimedia collaborators that BMP has championed since its inception.
MAZZOLI/ MUHLY/ PRESTINI
featuring...
~ 3 New Choral Works by Nico Muhly
A former boy chorister, Muhly has composed extensively for choir, including commissions from the Clare College Choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. New York’s Saint Thomas Church commissioned and performed his Bright Mass with Canons, later recorded on their American Voices album and on the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s all-Muhly Decca debut, A Good Understanding. Muhly will present three of his beloved choral works for River to River.
~ Tooth and Nail, A Thousand Tongues, Orrizonte, and Like a Miracle by Missy Mazzoli
with performers Missy Mazzoli (composer, keyboards, electronics) and Nadia Sirota (viola, voice)
This set presents an enthralling and extraordinary collaboration between Mazzoli and Sirota. Tooth and Nail premiered as part of the Ecstatic Music Festival at Merkin Hall last spring (presented here in a new arrangement that feature the composer on keyboards), as well as A Thousand Tongues, a dizzying volley of sampled piano chords that reverberate under Sirota's frenetic viola playing and plaintive singing voice. Mazzoli has also arranged Orizzonte and Like a Miracle, two works originally for her ensemble Victoire, for this new, pared down duo. Mazzoli and Sirota's collaboration was first sponsored by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where they debuted this program in April 2011 as part of the Walker's Sound Horizons series.
~ House of Solitude: a Poet’s Labyrinth by Paola Prestini
music for amplified violin, KBOW, electronics, video, and lighting
House of Solitude places the violinist as the poet in the labyrinth of life. Inspired by the writings of German poet Friedrich Holderlin (1779-1843), the work hovers between the poles of the essential human predicaments. This tension throws the poet back into nature as inspiration and solitude as the context of life. Labyrinth embraces the cutting-edge technology of the K-Bow, an invention by famed instrument designer (and ZETA inventor) Keith McMillan. As the work progresses, the labyrinth of life deepens, the complexity symbolically heightened by the multiple violin identities that unravel in the electronics. The sounds on the backing track are made of every day life: a percussion set made of washing machines, the human voice telling a story of failed love, and the sound of maddened horses, freed to run loose by the end of the labyrinth.
House of Solitude is a VisionIntoArt and Beth Morrison Projects co-production.
visit RIVERTORIVERNYC.COM
69° SOUTH: THE SHACKLETON PROJECT
co-conceived by Erik Sanko & Jessica Grindstaff/ Phantom Limb Company and the Kronos Quartet
composed by Erik Sanko
with direction by Sophie Hunter
United States Premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music November 2-5, 2012
Phantom Limb’s 69˚ SOUTH: THE SHACKLETON PROJECT is a new work inspired by Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and Antarctica’s past, present and future. Co-conceived by Phantom Limb (Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko, Co-Artistic Directors) and Kronos Quartet, this visual narrative installation-in-motion melds theatrical performance, puppetry, architecture, photography, film and dance with original contemporary music and an unconventional acoustic palette to create a moving artistic and emotional journey. 69˚ S. will bring unknown Antarctica to an audience, reinvigorating the spirit of foregoing individual glory for the sake of collective survival and seeking to find humanity in the face of crisis. Ancient and universal themes including the price of knowledge, the inevitability of adversity, and the power of endurance and camaraderie will provide emotional ballast that resonate powerfully in 21st Century hearts and minds. Having just returned from Antarctica on a data gathering grant courtesy of The National Science Foundation, 69˚ S. unites a diverse range of contemporary musical, visual, and performance artists in collaboration to explore the inherently bittersweet and complex nature of the Shackleton experience and what the future may hold for this fragile environment.
Choreographed by Christopher Williams with Original Composition by Erik Sanko, 69˚ S. is being developed at Hopkins Center for the Arts, Mass MoCA, Emerson College and the Noorderzon Festival in Groningen, Holland, where it will make its European premiere in August 2011, with a US premiere at the Hopkins Center for the Arts, and New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival.
WORLD PREMIERE, Noorderzon Festival, Groningen, Netherlands, July 11-August 18, 2011
US PREMIERE, Next Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, November 3-5
Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington, VA, October 6, 2011
Arts Emerson at Emerson College, Boston, MA, February 7−12
An ArKtype/Thomas O. Kriegsmann project produced in association with Beth Morrison Projects.
Sound samples are from Kronos Quartet, a lead collaborator on the piece. These samples are from their new album FLOODPLAIN, 2009
Audio Clips
Video Clips
Yale Institue for Music Theatre
The Yale Institute of Music Theatre (YIMT) was established to identify distinctive and original music theatre works by emerging composers and writers, and match them with collaborators who can help them further develop their work in an un-pressured workshop setting. In particular, the Institute seeks to provide the human resources to support writers in their own processes, including professional directors and music directors, and a company of actors and singers that includes professionals from NYC and current Yale students.
Produced by Beth Morrison
Readings of New Work:
June 16th to 18th, Yale Univeristy, New Haven, CT
21c Liederabend, op. 2
April 7th through 9th at The Kitchen, NYC
Seeking to update the definition of liederabend (song night) for the 21st century, independent producing companies Beth Morrison Projects, Opera on Tap and VisionIntoArt join forces to present the most ambitious, and comprehensive art song festival of the season.
Building on the festival's critcially-acclaimed premiere in 2009 (Best of 2009 in Classical and Opera in Time Out New York), the producers have expanded the festival exponentially, presenting the works of 21 composers including 8 world premieres over the course of 3 nights, encompassing an explosive array of styles presented within a visual palate of projection design, newly commissioned films and sculptural lighting design.
Featuring works by Douglas J. Cuomo, Phil Kline, Russell Platt, Julia Wolfe, and John Zorn, a commission in honor of the festival by Du Yun, and premieres by Ted Hearne, Gabriel Kahane, David T. Little, Matt Marks, Missy Mazzoli, and Paola Prestini. With performances by ACME and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Featuring special guest performers Theo Bleckmann, Rinde Eckert, and Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond. Projection design by S. Katy Tucker, lighting design by Marcus Doshi, video design by William Cusick, Murat Eyuboglu, Ali Hosaini, Carmen Kordas, Stephen Taylor, and S. Katy Tucker.
Tickets available at The Kitchen's box office or through ticketweb.com. Discounted festival passes available.
Special Festival Preview in Time Out New York
TUNE IN! - New York classical radio WQXR celebrates the composers of 21c Liederabend, op. 2
"Best of 2009" - Time Out New York
"Three ambitious grassroots organizations - Beth Morrison Projects, VisionIntoArt, and Opera on Tap - mounted an expansive, at times explosive - survey of contemporary art song, musical theatre and opera." - Steve Smith (Time Out New York)
Read about the 21c Liederabend in:
visit 21CLIEDERABEND.COM or visit our facebook page.
Death and the Powers
DEATH AND THE POWERS is a new opera by pioneering composer Tod Machover, directed by Tony award nominee Diane Paulus, with libretto by Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. When the eccentric patriarch Simon Powers downloads himself into The System, his entire house comes to life around his family and friends. A groundbreaking new production developed at the MIT Media Lab in creative partnership with the Chicago Opera Theater, Death and the Powers explores what we leave behind for the world and our loved ones, using specially designed technology and an expressively animated stage, including a chorus of robots and a musical chandelier. Passionately inventive music, full of arching melodic lines, richly nuanced textures, and propulsive rhythms.
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, MA - March 18-25
Chicago Opera Theatre in Chicago, IL - April 2-10
For more information on Death and the Powers visit: http://opera.media.mit.edu/projects/deathandthepowers/index.php
Check out a trailer of the opera by clicking http://web.media.mit.edu/~tod/media/video/DATP-Promo-paris-final-1280x720.mov
"As it now stands, Death and the Powers doesn't point the way to a new era of opera. It's there. Now." - The Philadelphia Inquirer
"[Tod Machover is] brilliantly gifted." - The New York Times
"America's most wired composer." - LA Times
NYC Opera’s VOX Contemporary Opera Lab
Re-affirming the role of New York City Opera as a leader in the development of American opera, the company’s celebrated annual new music festival, the VOX Contemporary American Opera Lab returns May 14th and 15th to the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University. Now in its eleventh year, this showcase for new American operas offers both emerging and established composers and librettists the opportunity to hear their previously unproduced works performed byNew York City Opera’s soloists, orchestra and chorus in readings that are free and open to the public. The ten operas to be featured in the VOX Lab were selected from a record-high total of 99 submissions. As a group, the operas are experimental and boundary-pushing, encompassing all of the diverse qualities that define contemporary American opera.
Katrina Ballads
KATRINA BALLADS CD Release and Theatrical Concert
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
(le) poisson rouge
6:30 doors / 7:30 concert
purchase tickets here
composed by Ted Hearne
with film by Bill Morrison
starring:
Abigail Fischer
Rene Marie
Isaiah Robinson
Anthony Turner
featuring the Katrina Ballads Band
***
Katrina Ballads goes to The Foundation for Modern Music in Houston, Texas!
August 28, 2010 at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts/Zilkha Hall.
Katrina Ballads is a powerful new piece of music by Ted Hearne, performed by 5 singers and a band of 11 musicians. Drawn entirely from primary source-texts from the week following Hurricane Katrina - including everything from first-person testimonies of survivors to George W. Bush’s infamous “heckuva job” Katrina Ballads creates a vivid look into America’s darkest hours. The BMP production will place the lens on how the media determines our reality and perceptions.
Like American music and New Orleans itself, Katrina Ballads is an omnivorous and multi-stylistic work. It is rhythmic and dramatic music, with an edgy post-minimalist drive and a deep jazz influence. In a new production featuring the work of renowned filmmaker Bill Morrison, Katrina Ballads is a riveting full-body experience, challenging us to remember that devastating and telling week in September 2005, and calling us to reflect upon our own history and relationship to the media.
Katrina Ballads was developed at New York City Opera's 2009 VOX Contemporary American Opera Lab.
More Information
Audio Clips
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Press for Katrina Ballads
Tell the Way
composed by Nico Muhly
for the BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS
featuring Nico Muhly / Sam Amidon / Bryce Dessner / Bishi
world premiere / feb 10 - 12 / St. Ann's Warehouse
click HERE to visit St. Anne's page for more details
presented by St. Ann's Warehouse & the Brooklyn Youth Chorus / Co-produced by BMP
Tell The Way is a newly commissioned collaborative work created for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Dianne Berkun, Artistic Director) by BMP's long-term collaborator, composer Nico Muhly. Loosely based on medieval and colonial English travel narratives, the work draws from American folk sources, prayers for the Royal Navy, early colonial diaries, Mandeville, Herodotus and Marco Polo. Nico Muhly’s music is propulsive travel-music, but at the heart of Tell The Way are three meditative collaborations between Muhly and Bishi, Muhly and Bryce Dessner and Muhly and Sam Amidon. ACME, an ensemble of strings, percussion, trombone, and flute augment the voices of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Bryce's guitar, Sam's banjo and fiddle, and Bishi's sitar.
Tell the Way was commissioned and developed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus with funds from Meet the Composer and the Educational Foundation of America.
I Drink The Air Before Me
album cover - I Drink The Air Before Me
I Drink The Air Before Me is a new ballet score composed by Nico Muhly, commissioned for the Stephen Petronio Dance Company in honor of its 25th anniversary. BMP toured Nico and his band to London's Barbican Center to perform along with the dancers and a live youth chorus. Performances October 5th and 6th, 2010.
Press for I Drink The Air Before Me
Brooklyn Village
World Premiere
The New Roulette
Brooklyn, NY
March 24−25, 2012
Alan Pierson and the Brooklyn Borough's oldest orchestra take the stage at Roulette's impressive new space, joined by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy in presenting a multimedia event telling the tale of BROOKLYN VILLAGE, the borough's original settlement. Featuring world premieres by Brooklyn composers David T. Little (in collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek) and Sarah Kirkland Snider, as well as a lead performance by songstress Mellissa Hughes. The performance draws inspiration from Francis Guy's 1820 painting "Winter Scene in Brooklyn," which hangs in the Brooklyn Museum.
“David T. Little is amazing” -The New York Times
“Sarah K. Snider is too.” -The New York Times
a Brooklyn Philharmonic and Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy production
co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects
Katrina Ballads
KATRINA BALLADS CD Release and Theatrical Concert
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
(le) poisson rouge
composed by Ted Hearne
with film by Bill Morrison
starring:
Abigail Fischer
Rene Marie
Isaiah Robinson
Anthony Turner
featuring the Katrina Ballads Band
***
Katrina Ballads tours to The Foundation for Modern Music in Houston, Texas
August 28, 2010 at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts/ Zilkha Hall
Katrina Ballads is a powerful new piece of music by Ted Hearne, performed by 5 singers and a band of 11 musicians. Drawn entirely from primary source-texts from the week following Hurricane Katrina - including everything from first-person testimonies of survivors to George W. Bush’s infamous “heckuva job” Katrina Ballads creates a vivid look into America’s darkest hours. The BMP production will place the lens on how the media determines our reality and perceptions.
Like American music and New Orleans itself, Katrina Ballads is an omnivorous and multi-stylistic work. It is rhythmic and dramatic music, with an edgy post-minimalist drive and a deep jazz influence. In a new production featuring the work of renowned filmmaker Bill Morrison, Katrina Ballads is a riveting full-body experience, challenging us to remember that devastating and telling week in September 2005, and calling us to reflect upon our own history and relationship to the media.
Katrina Ballads was developed at New York City Opera's 2009 VOX Contemporary American Opera Lab.
Audio Clips
- When We Awoke, It Was To That Familiar Phrase - New Orleans Dodged a Bullet
- Brownie, You're Doing a Heck of a Job
Video Clips
Press for Katrina Ballads
Binibon
The Kitchen, May 2009
World Premiere produced by Beth Morrison Projects at The Kitchen in May 2009
Now available for world wide touring 2010-20112
Award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp teams up with noted sci-fi writer Jack Womack to present Binibon, a work of music-theatre and alternative history that tells a distinctly New York City story. Featuring a cast of four actors playing multiple roles and Sharp performing live on guitars, saxophones, and electronics, Binibon recalls the nexus of artists, musicians, and bohemian characters that peopled a grittier moment in New York’s history. Centered on an infamous murder that occurred in 1981 at the Binibon, an East Village café and hangout, Binibon draws on Sharp’s own compositional and performance language that he developed during the time of the events and reveals ties to punk, No Wave, electronic dance music, noise, and industrial sounds. Binibon is directed by Tea Alagic with design by Zane Pihlström, Jennifer Moeller, and Gina Scherr, and projections by Janene Higgins. Featuring Sonja Perryman, Ryan Quinn, Jedadiah Schultz, and Joe Tapper, with dramaturgy by Jane Malmo. Produced by Beth Morrison Projects. Actors Equity approved Showcase.
Audio Clips
Press for Binibon
New Music for a New Age: Nico Muhly
Atlas Performing Art Center, June 2010
The Washington Chorus introduces the music of young American composer, Nico Muhly in this year's New Music for a New Age series. Born in Vermont in 1981, Nico has already built an impressive career collaborating with classical giants like Phillip Glass and John Corigliano, pop stars Bjork and Bonnie "Prince" Billy and has written several film scores including the recent success, The Reader. The program includes an array of music written for a capella choir, chamber music for various instrumentation and chorus with a small orchestra which will feature the composer Nico Muhly himself and TWC's Music Director, Julian Wachner, on the piano. The music will be presented along with visual images of famed illustrator and author Maira Kalman's artwork. Maira's book "Principles of Uncertainty", a collection of her illustrated blog for The New York Times, was the source of inspiration for Nico to write a song cycle which will be featured in the program.
Atlas Performing Art Center is located at 1333 H Street NE, Washington, DC
Tickets are $25 and may be purchased at the Atlas website: here
American Songbook Series: Nico Muhly and Friends
Lincoln Center, February 2009
BMP continued its relationship with composer Nico Muhly to produce his Lincoln Center American Songbook series debut in February 2009. As part of the concert, Elements of Style by Muhly and Maira Kalman, which was originally produced in 2005 by BMP and Jim Keller, was revived along with performances of Principles (another Muhly/Kalman collaboration), and selections of other vocal pieces created in collaboration with Muhly’s nearest and dearest collaborators including Sam Amidon, Doveman, and Teitur.
The Making of Americans
Walker Art Center, December 2008
Brooklyn-based composer Anthony Gatto, celebrated Boston-based experimental theater director Jay Scheib, Minneapolis-based new music stalwarts Zeitgeist, and upstart New York string quartet JACK conspired to re-imagine Gertrude Stein’s groundbreaking history of “everyone everywhere at every time” with the Walker Art Center-commissioned opera The Making of Americans. Conceived as a cross-media opera for small orchestra, string quartet, six singers, an actor, and a chorus of families, this ambitious collaboration had its world premiere produced by Beth Morrison Projects and ArKtype at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in December 2008, with sets and machines by Minneapolis artist Chris Larson and Scheib’s signature live and processed video streams. In addition to JACK’s strings, live chorus, and six principal singer/actors, the unusual instrumentation includes accordions, autoharps, hurdy-gurdies, scrap-yard percussion, and church bells. Music composed by Anthony Gatto, book adapted from the novel by Jay Scheib, libretto by Jay Scheib with performances by Rachel Calloway as Martha Hersland, David Echelard as David Hersland, Jr., Bradley Greenwald as David Hersland, Sr., Michael Müller as Alfred Hersland, Elizabeth Munn as Martha Redfern, Pamela Stein as Julia Dehning, and actress Tanya Selvaratnam as Mary Maxworthing.
Yale Institute for Music Theatre (YIMT)
Yale University, June 2010
Established by Yale School of Drama and Yale School of Music, and produced by Beth Morrison, the YALE INSTITUTE FOR MUSIC THEATRE seeks to identify distinctive and original music theatre works by emerging writers and composers, and to serve those writers by matching them with collaborators such as directors, music directors, and actors/singers who can help them further develop their work. By limiting production resources and values, the workshop will keep the focus on the creative process of the artistic team. Two original music theatre works will receive two-week workshops in New Haven, June 13-27, 2010.
ABOUT THE 2010 SELECTIONS
THE DAUGHTERS
Music and libretto by Shaina Taub
In a work infused with an eclectic and exhilarating blend of soul, jazz and pop, we follow the three daughters of Zeus as they embark on separate and intersecting journeys of self-discovery: the child prodigy Athena grows up, the iconic vixen Aphrodite gets knocked up, and the reclusive rocker Artemis opens up. The Daughters is a timeless, and timely, story of three women coming of age in the very public eye.
Shaina Taub received her BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2009. Her other credits include Stuff: The Musical (music, lyrics), Post Secret: A New Play (music), The Reality Show (contributing songwriter), and the ten-minute musical Lord of the Flies, Chapter Eight.
STUCK ELEVATOR
Music by Byron Au Yong
Libretto by Aaron Jafferis
Stuck Elevatoris a hallucinogenic roller-coaster ride through the swirling and claustrophobic mind of an illegal immigrant Chinese food delivery man. Trapped in an elevator, he is terrified the authorities will discover his status if he pushes the call button for help and deport him back to China.
Byron Au Yong received his MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His other projects include Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas, Surrender: A T'ai Qi Cantata, Tzu Lho: Simmering Songs, Salt Lips Touching, and Forbidden Circles. He has been honored with awards from the American Composers Forum, Creative Capital, Ford Foundation, and Meet the Composer.
Aaron Jafferis received his MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. His other works include the hip hop musicals Kingdom (with music by Ian Williams; Richard Rodgers Award; Most Promising New Musical Award, New York Musical Theatre Festival), Shakespeare: The Remix (music by Gihieh Lee), and The Weird Sisters (music by Ian Williams).
For more information visit drama.yale.edu/YIMT/
COMPOSER PORTRAITS: Mazzoli, Muhly and Prestini at NYC’s River to River Festival
3 unique multimedia concerts, featuring composers MISSY MAZZOLI NICO MUHLY & PAOLA PRESTINI respectively.
After this year's preview collaboration between Beth Morrison Projects and lower Manhattan's annual River to River Festival, next year's festival brings you three unique multimedia concert evenings, celebrating the composers and multimedia collaborators that BMP has championed since its inception.
“The River to River Festival... hits the postclassical jackpot”
-Time Out New York (about Beth Morrison Projects 2011 River to River Festival concert, NEW MUSIC NOW)
Venues TBA/ The River to River Festival, New York, NY/ Summer 2012
New York City Opera’s VOX
NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, April 2010
Beth Morrison is the new VOX Producer!
Re-affirming the role of New York City Opera as a leader in the development of American opera, the company’s celebrated annual new music festival, the newly-renamed VOX Contemporary American Opera Lab returned on Friday, April 30, and Saturday, May 1, to the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University. Now in its eleventh year, this showcase for new American operas offers both emerging and established composers and librettists the opportunity to hear their previously unproduced works performed byNew York City Opera’s soloists, orchestra and chorus in readings that are free and open to the public. The ten operas to be featured in the VOX Lab were selected from a record-high total of 99 submissions. As a group, the operas are experimental and boundary-pushing, encompassing all of the diverse qualities that define contemporary American opera.
VOX 2010 Selections:
With Blood, With Ink
Daniel Crozier, composer; Peter M. Krask, librettist
Zolle
Du Yun, composer & librettist
Song from the Uproar
Missy Mazzoli, composer & librettist
Star Across the Ocean
Scott Davenport Richards, composer & librettist
Dog Days
David T. Little, composer; Royce Vavrek, librettist
Inventory
Brian Current, composer; Anton Piatgorsky, librettist
Evangeline Revisited
Julian Wachner, composer; Alexis Nouss, librettist
Revolution of Forms
Anthony Davis & Dafnis Prieto, composers
Alma Guillermoprieto & Charles Koppelman, librettists
Oceanic Verses
Paola Prestini, composer & librettist
Acquanetta
Michael Gordon, composer; Deborah Artman, librettist
For more information visit: www.nycopera.com/VOX
Audio Clips
Press for New York City Opera’s VOX
Stuck Elevator
music by Byron Au Yong
libretto by Aaron Jafferis
directed by Chay Yew
"…a multi-layered musing on undocumented aliens, cultural identity, individuality, fear of oppression and the traps and boxes we construct for our own feelings. There’s desperation and loneliness and horror in the delivery-person’s plight. But there’s humor too."
-Chistopher Arnott, New Haven Advocate
Stuck Elevator is a comic-rap-scrap-metal-opera that finds an undocumented immigrant from China suspended between the upward mobility of the American dream and the downward plunge into an empty abyss. This music-theater hybrid tells the story of Guang, a Chinese food deliveryman struggling for freedom from debt, human smugglers, loud-mouthed co-workers and the temptations of General Tso.
The work features the contributions of avant/classical/folk composer Byron Au Yong, hip-hop playwright Aaron Jafferis and OBIE award-winning director Chay Yew, unique collaborators who are comfortable in theater, music and site-specific venues.
A violinist, cellist, scrap metal percussionist and rapper create the mongrel sound of Guang’s world: part American, part Chinese, part Bronx, part shipping container, part heart, part elevator. Bowed bicycle wheels evoke the ominous sounds of the elevator and other prisons Guang hallucinates. Lyrical melodies – mostly in English, some in Mandarin – propel the audience through Guang’s story. Though one actor plays Guang throughout his solo ordeal, musicians manifest characters from Guang’s memories, dreams and imaginings.
In the middle of a recession, when the lives of undocumented immigrants are overshadowed by unemployment statistics, Stuck Elevator focuses on a heroism that happens day to day and dollar to dollar. The themes surrounding Guang’s story propel the music: being stuck physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, legally and linguistically. His questions go from practical to existential, from "Where do I pee?" to "What is the meaning of life?" Stuck Elevator finds the immigration debate within a 4' x 6' x 8' metal box and a single human body.
click to LISTEN to a selected tracks from the score
Choral Spice from Indonesia at the River to River Festival 2012
The Manado State University Choir
featuring the Manado State University Choir conducted by André de Quadros
The Manado State University Choir redefines choral and traditional music by creating cross-cultural and time-sensitive bridges. Traditional songs are transformed from simple melodies into lush, complex harmonies; traditional gestures form the basis for contemporary choreography, and Indonesian music from its many islands are collaged with Arab, African, and Western classical music. Led by an Indian conductor with a global orientation, MSUC re-imagines choral music as a contemporary convergence of cultures expressed in drama, dance and song. Visit msuchoir.com to learn about the Manado State Choir.
21c Salon Series
Born out of the success of the 21c Liederabend that was presented at Galapagos in November 2009, the 21c SALON SERIES is an on-going series curated and produced by Beth Morrison Projects and presented by Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn that surveys contemporary vocal music in the form of art song, opera and music-theatre, and comes in many forms including acoustic, amped up, classical, indie-clasical, post-classical and new forms of vocal music waiting to be discovered.
The first installment, Art Song Forward: Unplugged was on March 11, 2010.
The series continued with 21c Aria on May 27, 2010, focusing on small New York opera companies that are commissioning, developing and premiering new work. Featuring work by: American Lyric Theater, American Opera Projects, Center for Contemporary Opera, The Coterie, Metropolis Opera Project.
"Three ambitious grassroots organizations - Beth Morrison Projects, VisionIntoArt and Opera on Tap - mounted an expansive, at times explosive survey of contemporary art song, musical theater and opera." - Steve Smith and Olivia Giovetti on November's 21c Liederabend (Time Out New York's Best of 2009 Pick for Classical/Opera)
In The Night Kitchen
Beth Morrison Projects, coordinating producer, along with Syracuse University develops In the Night Kitchen, a delightful family evening of opera theatre, with music by acclaimed composer Philip Glass after the book by the celebrated children's book author Maurice Sendak. The charming and fanciful dream world of Mickey is recreated in marionette theater at its best. In The Night Kitchen will be paired with settings of Sendak’s macabre but alluring nursery rhymes, I Saw Esau, creating an evening length double bill.
Composed for only four voices and five instruments, In the Night Kitchen is a versatile show, perfect for small theaters, and of appeal to the child in us all. This exciting new concept for opera theatre will appeal to adults as much as to children and will bring theatrical opera to a broad, new audience in an intimate, engaging way. The score is being commissioned by Syracuse University, and a workshop production is planned at Syracuse University in Spring 2011. We are currently assembling a coalition of production commissioners that will bring this extraordinary work to its world premiere in Fall 2011 and beyond.
Madame White Snake
A new opera by renowned Chinese-American composer Zhou Long and librettist Cerise Lim Jacobs, MADAME WHITE SNAKE is a classical transformation myth, the story of a powerful white snake demon who transforms into a beautiful woman so as to experience love. This simple myth has become an icon in the hearts and minds of the Chinese people, and explores the always-timely question of what it means to be human.
Co-commissioned by Opera Boston and the Beijing Music Festival, after its acclaimed premiere in Boston in February 2010, Beth Morrison Projects will be touring Madame White Snake to the Beijing Music Festival in Beijing, China in October 2010. World-wide touring available for 2011-2012 and 2013-2014.
21C Liederabend
Galapagos Art Space, November 2009
An Unprecedented Evening of Post-Classical Song by the NYC-Based Movement's Rising Young Stars
- November 19, 2009
- Galapagos Artspace
- 8pm
- $20/ door
- ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT: www.galapagosartspace.com
Presented by Galapagos Artspace and produced in collaboration by Beth Morrison Projects, Opera on Tap and VisionIntoArt, 21cLiederabend (a multi-media event) will showcase a vast array of works by post-classical composers Caleb Burhans, Leah Coloff, Corey Dargel, Osvaldo Golijov, Judd Greenstein, Ted Hearne, David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Milica Paranosic, and Paola Prestini. The event will be capped off with the presentation of a piece commissioned for the occasion by composer/singer/accordionist Kamala Sankaram.
FEATURED SINGERS include Grammy award winner Hila Pitmann, Abigail Fischer, Amelia Watkins, Anne-Carolyn Bird, David Adam Moore, Helga Davis, Kamala Sankaram, Isaiah Robinson, and SKIM accompanied by the VisionIntoArt ensemble with very special guest stars ETHEL.
FILM WORK by Stephen Taylor and Carmen Kordas.
The Elements of Style
New York Public Library Live!, October 2005
Dia: Beacon Museum, May 2006
Conceived by Maira Kalman and composed by Nico Muhly, this new song-cycle set to the indispensable writing manual, Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, incorporates singers with instruments ranging from viola, banjo, and vibraphone to tea cups, typewriter, and duck call.
Kalman—an illustrator of children’s books, designer of fabrics and covers for The New Yorker, and the sole artist entrusted by the estate of E.B. White with the illustration of his timeless text—commissioned the emerging composer Nico Muhly to create operatic songs using lyrics from The Elements of Style.
Beth Morrison Projects produced this work which was presented in a sold-out performance as part of the LIVE from the New York Public Library series in October 2005, igniting a media frenzy of coverage in The New York Times, A&E, NPR, and CBS Morning News. THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE was selected by National Public Radio as one of its “Best of 2005.”
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Don Imbroglio
New York Musical Theater Festival, September 2005
Beth Morrison Projects gave this new opera by Peter Hilliard and Matt Boresi its world premiere in September 2005 at the New York Musical Theater Festival. After selling out the entire initial run, the show was extended to accommodate the vast public interest. A show with broad appeal and an accessible theme catering to both opera and musical theatre aficionados, DON IMBROGLIO seamlessly blends these two time-honored disciplines in a surprising combustion of creativity and originality that serves both to shed light on and to send up the popular Italian mafia fiction genre.
Talkin’Broadway wrote of the production: “A show daring to subtitle itself, ‘An Opera You Can’t Refuse,’ has three vital responsibilities to fulfill: it had better be an opera, it had better be irreverent, and it had better be darn good. Don Imbroglio[…] meets all three criteria and then some.”
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Sleeping Beauty
Seoul Performing Arts Festival, October 2008
Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek reinvents this classic story with the help of acclaimed experimental Russian director Yana Ross in a dark and humorous production destined for an international tour of the festival circuit. In Jelinek’s version of this timeless fairytale, an apocalyptic battle of the sexes ensues. Locked up in an orthopedic corset and strapped to metal and glass for a hundred years, the Princess is as fragile as a Ndebele doll. Soon after the Prince rips off her surgical armor, she learns to walk again, and the two become embroiled in a bitter and macabre struggle for power in a work that deftly explores our illusions’ of sexuality, of power, and of being itself. Sleeping Beauty workshopped at the Yale Cabaret and premiered at the Seoul Performing Arts Festival (Korea) in Fall 2008 in a Beth Morrison Projects world-premiere.
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Going Down Swingin’
New York Musical Theater Festival, October 2007
Beth Morrison Projects teamed up with New Sounds Theatre to present the world premiere of Going Down Swingin' with music by Peter Hilliard and book and lyrics by Matt Boresi, which played at the New York Musical Theater Festival 2007 at the TBG Theater to rave reviews. VARIETY said Going Down Swingin’ is “one of the fest’s most inventive musicals [and] also one of its most successful.” BACKSTAGE said, "The savvy new musical Going Down Swingin' (The Don Giovanni Radio Hour)...a thoroughly scrumptious affair.... and, the entire cast sizzles."
A boozing, womanizing crooner is haunted by the misdeeds of his past in this sexy and swingin' comedy, set at the end of the Radio's Golden Age. It's 1956, and Dean Newhouse is the caddish host of a radio variety show that's facing a dangerous new foe...Television. Dean has double-crossed everyone on his show, including the tragic soap queen, the All-American teen couple, the hard-boiled detective, his wisecracking sidekick, and others! As Dean struggles to keep his show afloat - and his cast from killing him - we're treated to an original score that draws from genre music of the 40's and 50's to reinvent the story of a controversial classic - Don Giovanni - to startling comic and dramatic effect. The production was directed by Jenny Lord and starred Stacie Bono, Tom Deckman, Colin Hanlon, George McDaniel, Meredith Patterson, Hardy Rawls, Christopher Shyer, and James Stovall (all appear courtesy of Actors Equity Association). Production designs by Maiko Chii, Zane Pihlstrom, Kate Cussack, Burke Brown, and Amy Altadonna. Going Down Swingin’ was an official selection of the 2007 New York Musical Theatre Festival. BMP is currently seeking venues for the next developmental production.
Going Down Swingin’ was an official selection of the 2007 New York Musical Theatre Festival.
Audio Clips
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Hell: The Opera
Performance Space 122 (PS122), March 2006
A new operatic theatre piece by composer Michael Webster and poet Eileen Myles, HELL premiered at Performance Space 122 in March 2006. Grounded in contemporary politics, this multimedia work takes Dante’s Inferno as a point of departure to explore free speech and the role of poetry in post-9/11 America. By returning poetry to a place of central importance in performance, HELL reminds audiences of the necessity of this unique art form in a democracy. At times beautiful, funny, and horrifying, this rich work reflects on war as a tragic alternative to communication in a highly relevant and timely avant-garde opera.
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Don Juan in Prague
Estates National Theater of Prague, October 2006
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival, December 2006
A contemporary adaptation of Mozart’;s Don Giovanni, stunningly conceived by director David Chambers and featuring acclaimed Czech performance artist Iva Bittova, the production remains true to Mozart’s music and to the superb libretto by da Ponte but is told through the lens of the character Donna Elvira (Bittova), condemning the hapless Don for his unrepentant philandering. The music becomes at once contemporary through the arrangements and digital processing by Matthew Suttor along with video media design by Peter Flaherty. DON JUAN IN PRAGUE played at The National Theatre of the Czech Republic (where Don Giovanni premiered in 1787) as part of the city-wide celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday in October 2006. Following the Prague run, the production came to New York where it closed the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2006 Next Wave Festival in December.
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Laude in Urbis: On the Road to Emmaus
Orvieto, Italy, June 2006
A re-imagining of the medieval mystery plays, Compagnia Colombari’s THE ROAD TO EMMAUS—conceived by director Karin Coonrod—is a site-specific work with spoken and sung text and original compositions that played the streets of Orvieto, Italy in June 2006 to crowds of 600. Addressing and crossing cultural, racial, ethnic, language, and religious boundaries, this unique work unites communities. The audience traveled through the streets of Orvieto with the Company as the players played the play on the steps of the celebrated Duomo, in the medieval churches, through the narrow winding streets, and finally into the Piazza San Giovenale, where every evening the play ended with a banquet for the audience and performers alike. A revival of this street spectacle is planned for 2008.
