The Chandelier - developed by Mike Fabio, Steve Pliam, Brian Demers, and Lucas Hernandez-Mena - is a large-scale robotic musical instrument designed for the opera Death and the Powers. Using various electronically controlled actuators, The Chandelier is capable of creating sounds unlike traditional instruments, and even some sounds that defy the size of the instrument itself. In this installation participants are given control over an instrument that is clearly, visibly, much larger than themselves, yet inextricably linked to their movements on a traditional piano keyboard, exploring and breaking the limitations of human performers as well as the instruments that we think of as commonplace. Continue reading

ELECTRA by the Geneviève Favre :: October 27, 2007; 9 pm :: Festival NWEAMO at Roulette SoHo, NY :: October 28, 2007; 10 pm :: Galapagos Art Space, Brooklyn, NY.

ELECTRA makes reference to the mythological figure, but also to electronic music and to opera. White hair, in the middle of the stage, I stand, dressed with a long satin dress. On my head, a luminous crown reacts to the prerecorded elements which accompany my songs. As a modern diva, I move my arms, turn my face to the sky and play with the different jewels made of LED that I wear. These add mysteries to the story I tell you, such a clear and awake nightmare. ELECTRA evokes the psychological theme of the relation between parent and child and treats the subjects of death, violence and vengeance. Continue reading

LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible … is a collaboration between world-renowned composer / musician SAKAMOTO Ryuichi [videos] and TAKATANI Shiro, core members of the Kyoto-based internationally active art group dumb type.

While the genesis of this piece is in SAKAMOTO Ryuichi’s opera LIFE (first performed in 1999, for which TAKATANI Shiro created the video aspects), as is evident in the title’s “fluid, invisible, inaudible …” this installation revisits the resources of sound and vision in LIFE for an entirely new deconstruction and evolution of the work. While LIFE was an experiment conducted in opera’s linear, modern form at the end of the 20th Century, LIFE - fluid, invisible, inaudible … is a non-linear, decentralized flow of audio and visuals which the visitors themselves enter to experience.
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Aquatic Opera by Juliana Snapper and Jeanine Oleson :: July 14, at 7 p.m. :: Palm Springs Swimming Pool = La Scala + Jacques Cousteau; Work-in-Progress; Please bring swimsuit :: Susan Matheson and Ron Athey are co-hosting the first performance workshop :: Limited capacity; please email athey[at]earthlink.net.

Soprano and musicologist, Juliana Snapper and artist Jeanine Oleson are creating a series of intimate public experimentations to be performed in pools and bathtubs around LA and San Francisco. From their blog: Live in LA? Have a tub? Want to host an opera? Your bathroom = La Scala + Jacques Cousteau :: How do you host one of the first underwater operas in your Los Angeles home? Think up the most wonderful bathtub concert environment you can imagine and tell us in an email. Three hosts will be chosen for in-tub performances between July 14-18, 2007. You decide the parameters. We bring the opera. Continue reading

Scot Gresham-Lancaster is a composer, performer, instrument builder and educator. He is dedicated to research and performance using the expanding capabilities of computer networks for musical and cross discipline expression. He studied with Philip Ianni, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, John Chowning, Robert Ashley, Terry Riley, “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Jack Jarret, among others. Gresham-Lancaster has been a composer in residence at Mills College and he has been developing new families of controllers at STEIM, Amsterdam. He has toured and recorded as a member of the HUB and has performed the music of Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, and John Cage, under their direction. Gresham-Lancaster has also worked as a technical assistant to Lou Harrison, Iannis Xenakis, David Tudor among many others. http://o-art.org/Scot; http://myspace.com/scotgl; blog: http://scotgl.blogspot.com/.

Helen Thorington: Welcome Scot. You were a member of the computer network band, the HUB, and an early pioneer of computer networked music. Tell us about the HUB and the kind of work you, John Bischoff, Tim Perkis, Chris Brown, Mark Trayle and Phil Stone did at that time. Continue reading

Cellphonia: WET, a karaoke cell phone interactive sound/video installation by Steve Bull, Scot Gresham-Lancaster, Kalin Mintchev, and Terese Svoboda on the world water crisis premieres at NIME (new interfaces for musical expression) June 6 - 9 at Eyebeam, 540 West 21st, NYC. Participants repeat lyrics–or add to the Drip Chorus–by singing into their cellphones. The result is mixed into an instant 24/7 looping opera performance. Visitors will experience a 20-minute 5-song looping vocals of naiads lamenting the loss of the world’s fresh water with projected video accompaniment.

from Cellphonia: San Jose 2006

Not attending NIME? You can still perform by calling 212-937-7725. Listen to yourself in performance at http://cellphone.el.net/NIME/

Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS) at Spingold Theater Center present Puzzle Master. This is multimedia opera, a retelling of the Daedalus and Icarus myth, is set on an imaginary Caribbean island. Five singers perform in counterpoint with layers of computer-manipulated 5.0 channel surround sound and multiple video projections. Music by Eric Chasalow; libretto by F.D. Reeve; video by Denise Marika. Featuring performances by Jennifer Ashe, Donald Wilkinson, Pamela Dellal, Matthew Anderson, and Paul Guttry. Eric Hewitt conducts. Staging by Barbara Cassidy.

May 5, and 6, 8pm :: Admission: $20 general admission; student/senior discounts available :: The Laurie Theater Spingold Theater Center campus of Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02453 :: phone: 781.736.3400 :: email: music at brandeis.edu

Opera Calling is an artistic intervention into the cultural system of the Zurich Opera. By means of a audio-bug placed within the auditorium of the local opera house, the outside public is given access to the performances on stage. The performances are retransmitted to the public not through broadcasting, but by telephoning each person in Zurich individually.

Opera Calling is the first of three parts of a six-month-long exhibition at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich called «appropriate – manipulate – feed back!». It stands for the «appropriate»-part so to speak. It’s main aim is to explore the usefulness of as an artistic strategy of redirection and criticism.

Opera Calling is a project by Bitnik Media Collective and Sven König. Read a review at Furtherfield. Related [1] [2] [3] [4]

Nabaz’Mob: an opera

Atari is happy to present Nabaz’Mob: an opera for 100 communicating rabbits by Antoine Schmitt & Jean-Jacques Birge featuring Nabaztag by violet.

Installation http://nabazmob.free.fr/ from September 27th to October 1st 2006 during Wired Magazine’s nextfest at Atari Showroom Javits Center, HALL 3B, Chelsea, NY.

100 Nabaztag meet at Javits Center to all play together an opera specially composed by Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birge after an original idea by Guylaine Monnier. Inviting John Cage, Steve Reich, Conlon Nancarrow and Gyorgy Ligeti, this musical and choreographic partition in three movements, transmitted via wi-fi, plays on the tension between the music ensemble communion and individual behavior to create a strong and involved showpiece.

An Evolving Opera

OPERA.tion LIFE NEXUS: Jorge Orta began this mixed media work in 1996 and it will evolve and grow in length until 2006. Based on interdisciplinary collaborations, 3 generations of artists are invited to create a module for the open-ended composition: music scores, dance sequences, sculpture, light and video projections. The federating theme is the heart = Life, the creative idiom from both a symbolic and Human perspective. Its complex mythology renders the symbol poetic.

The Babylonians designated the heart the center of intelligence and memory. For the Egyptians it represented the terrestrial support for the soul. Hypocrite refer to the heart as the intelligence organ. Plato believed the heart was the center of feelings and passion. For Aristotle the heart transformed food into blood and was the emotional centre. Its universal nature helps to converge cultural, social, religious differences and from a scientific angle it exposes a new vision of a medical problem.
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