07.03.17 The Cockpit, London
rough for opera #15 | 07.03.17
Second Movement in association with Tête à Tête
rough for opera #15 | programme and performers
SCHUTZWALL
Jonathan Higgins (composer)
Performers:
Mimi Doulton (voice)
Ella Taylor (voice)
Alex Gowan-Webster (live electronics)
HURRICANE ZOO
Benjamin Tassie (composer)
Hunter S. Thompson (words)
Ruth Mariner (director)
Michal Babinec (film editor)
Presented by Gestalt Arts
Perfomers:
Donna Lennard (soprano)
Liam Byrne (viola da gamba)
Laura Beardsmore (flutes)
Benjamin Tassie (keyboard and electronics)
‘First Visit With Mescalito’ by Hunter S. Thompson. Copyright © Hunter S. Thompson 1990, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited.
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER
Creation: Sasha Amaya, Naomi Woo, and Catherine Kontz
Concept: Naomi Woo
Direction: Sasha Amaya
Composition: Catherine Kontz
Performers:
Rosie Middleton (voice)
Rebecca Cuddy (voice)
Naomi Woo and Catherine Kontz (sound)
presented by Tick Tock
q and a’s after each performance with Professor Paul Barker (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)
7.30pm | 07.03.17 | The Cockpit, London NW8 8EH
Tickets £6 The Cockpit
Blaze
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER | programme note and biogs
A Certain Sense of Order (work in progress, 20 mins)
Sasha Amaya, Naomi Woo, and Catherine Kontz (creation)
Naomi Woo (concept)
Sasha Amaya (director)
Catherine Kontz (composition)
presented by tick tock
Rosie Middleton (voice)
Rebecca Cuddy (voice)
Naomi Woo and Catherine Kontz (sound)
text from “For John, who begs me not to enquire further” by Anne Sexton, first published in To Bedlam and Partway Back (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960)
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER | programme note and biogs
A Certain Sense of Order (work in progress, 20 mins)
Sasha Amaya, Naomi Woo, and Catherine Kontz (creation)
Naomi Woo (concept)
Sasha Amaya (director)
Catherine Kontz (composition)
presented by tick tock
Rosie Middleton (voice)
Rebecca Cuddy (voice)
Naomi Woo and Catherine Kontz (sound)
text from “For John, who begs me not to enquire further” by Anne Sexton, first published in To Bedlam and Partway Back (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960)
programme note and biogs:
Sexton: I think the tapes are very . . . I listen to them and it’s a different thing. In the first place I really hear you. Much more than I hear you here. Then again I hear me too, as much as I can bear to. Oh, I keep looking for some magical thing. If there was just some . . .
A Certain Sense of Order is an operatic work-in-progress for two female singers exploring the poetry of Anne Sexton, the multiplicities of identity, and the relationship between poetic and therapeutic practice. Throughout, the singers take on different roles from both the home and the therapy room, interacting as mirrors, foils, and supports for one another.
Catherine Kontz (b. 1976) is a Luxembourgish composer. She studied Composition with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths College and, as part of her PhD, produced and directed her mime-opera MiE with sold-out performances in 2006. Recent commissions include works for ensemble recherche, BBCSSO, Cathy Krier and Juliet Fraser. Catherine regularly features at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 2013 she composed and directed her first full-length opera Neige to great acclaim.
tick tock is a sonic and choreographic collaboration between Sasha Amaya and Naomi Woo. Sasha is a director focused on choreography, music and installation art. Naomi is a pianist, conductor and musicologist who specialises in the study and performance of contemporary music.
Rebecca Cuddy A versatile performer, Métis (Indigenous) Canadian Mezzo-Soprano Rebecca Cuddy is at home on both the contemporary and classical stage. Hailing from Toronto, Canada, she is currently enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, completing a Masters in Vocal Performance with world-renowned Mezzo-Soprano, Sarah Walker, and Vocal Coach Jonathan Papp.
Rosie Middleton Mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton trained at the Royal Northern College of Music. Since graduation, Rosie has specialised in contemporary music, performing new works both at home and abroad. She co-founded Aequitas Collective, an Anglo-Icelandic contemporary music-theatre group; later this year she will return to Reykjavik to create a new opera, funded by Rannis.
Sasha Amaya Sasha Amaya studied classical music, ballet, and philosophy before experimenting with installation, direction, and choreography. Her work has shown on stage, in galleries, on videos, and alongside live chamber music and opera, in North America and in Europe. The recipient of a Foundation Mentorship with Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, Videopool’s New Artist in Media Art Fund, and a Transcultural Exchange Scholarship, her collaboration with Mexican artist and animator Paloma Ayala on Zala Moves (2013) was reviewed by the New York Times as full of « paradox… charm and fun » (NYT 2014). Recent work includes the direction of Actéon changé en biche at Clare College Chapel, Cambridge, a run of War War Brand War at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and choreography and lighting for dance and theatre (Big Bang 2016, Henry IV 2015, Francis Bacon Opera 2015, Endgame 2015). Sasha studied Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Naomi Woo Canadian-born Naomi Woo is a pianist, conductor and musicologist whose interdisciplinary approach to performance and scholarship has captivated audiences in Canada, the United States, and abroad. Equally at home on the harpsichord, the prepared piano, and the podium, Naomi frequently performs and conducts a wide variety of music as both a soloist and chamber musician. In the past year, notable engagements have included performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra, conducting the world premiere of Susie Self’s Spirit Wagon for singers and chamber orchestra, and solo recitals in New York City, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. In 2011, her debut in Carnegie Hall sponsored by the Prokofiev Society of America was praised as an “elegant performance” in the New York Times. Naomi studied Mathematics, Philosophy, and Music at Yale University, and was generously supported by the Canada Council for further study with Montreal’s Marc Durand. Naomi is currently a PhD student in Musicology at the University of Cambridge.
poster by James Houston
programme note and biogs:
Sexton: I think the tapes are very . . . I listen to them and it’s a different thing. In the first place I really hear you. Much more than I hear you here. Then again I hear me too, as much as I can bear to. Oh, I keep looking for some magical thing. If there was just some . . .
A Certain Sense of Order is an operatic work-in-progress for two female singers exploring the poetry of Anne Sexton, the multiplicities of identity, and the relationship between poetic and therapeutic practice. Throughout, the singers take on different roles from both the home and the therapy room, interacting as mirrors, foils, and supports for one another.
Catherine Kontz (b. 1976) is a Luxembourgish composer. She studied Composition with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths College and, as part of her PhD, produced and directed her mime-opera MiE with sold-out performances in 2006. Recent commissions include works for ensemble recherche, BBCSSO, Cathy Krier and Juliet Fraser. Catherine regularly features at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 2013 she composed and directed her first full-length opera Neige to great acclaim.
tick tock is a sonic and choreographic collaboration between Sasha Amaya and Naomi Woo. Sasha is a director focused on choreography, music and installation art. Naomi is a pianist, conductor and musicologist who specialises in the study and performance of contemporary music.
Rebecca Cuddy A versatile performer, Métis (Indigenous) Canadian Mezzo-Soprano Rebecca Cuddy is at home on both the contemporary and classical stage. Hailing from Toronto, Canada, she is currently enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London, England, completing a Masters in Vocal Performance with world-renowned Mezzo-Soprano, Sarah Walker, and Vocal Coach Jonathan Papp.
Rosie Middleton Mezzo-soprano Rosie Middleton trained at the Royal Northern College of Music. Since graduation, Rosie has specialised in contemporary music, performing new works both at home and abroad. She co-founded Aequitas Collective, an Anglo-Icelandic contemporary music-theatre group; later this year she will return to Reykjavik to create a new opera, funded by Rannis.
Sasha Amaya Sasha Amaya studied classical music, ballet, and philosophy before experimenting with installation, direction, and choreography. Her work has shown on stage, in galleries, on videos, and alongside live chamber music and opera, in North America and in Europe. The recipient of a Foundation Mentorship with Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, Videopool’s New Artist in Media Art Fund, and a Transcultural Exchange Scholarship, her collaboration with Mexican artist and animator Paloma Ayala on Zala Moves (2013) was reviewed by the New York Times as full of « paradox… charm and fun » (NYT 2014). Recent work includes the direction of Actéon changé en biche at Clare College Chapel, Cambridge, a run of War War Brand War at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and choreography and lighting for dance and theatre (Big Bang 2016, Henry IV 2015, Francis Bacon Opera 2015, Endgame 2015). Sasha studied Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Naomi Woo Canadian-born Naomi Woo is a pianist, conductor and musicologist whose interdisciplinary approach to performance and scholarship has captivated audiences in Canada, the United States, and abroad. Equally at home on the harpsichord, the prepared piano, and the podium, Naomi frequently performs and conducts a wide variety of music as both a soloist and chamber musician. In the past year, notable engagements have included performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra, conducting the world premiere of Susie Self’s Spirit Wagon for singers and chamber orchestra, and solo recitals in New York City, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. In 2011, her debut in Carnegie Hall sponsored by the Prokofiev Society of America was praised as an “elegant performance” in the New York Times. Naomi studied Mathematics, Philosophy, and Music at Yale University, and was generously supported by the Canada Council for further study with Montreal’s Marc Durand. Naomi is currently a PhD student in Musicology at the University of Cambridge.
poster by James Houston
HURRICANE ZOO | programme note and biogs
Hurricane Zoo (Excerpt no.11 In search of some peaceful sound, 10 mins)
Benjamin Tassie (composer)
Hunter S. Thompson (words)
Ruth Mariner (director)
Michal Babinec (film editor)
Presented by Gestalt Arts
Donna Lennard (Duke)
Laura Beardsmore (flutes)
Liam Byrne (viola da gamba)
Benjamin Tassie (keyboards)
‘First Visit With Mescalito’ by Hunter S. Thompson. Copyright © Hunter S. Thompson 1990, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited.
programme note and biogs:
Hurricane Zoo is a darkly comic new opera with text by Hunter S. Thompson. Encapsulating the zeitgeist of the 60’s counterculture, Thompson’s alter-ego Duke uses a mescaline trip to rage against the failed promises of the American Dream. The scene shown comes at the work’s climax drawing together the show’s various strands – paranoia, politics and pervasive media.
The finished work, which will tour music festivals and theatres in 2018, will develop the scene, incorporating 360 degree video projection, and a larger ensemble to immerse audiences in the physical and sonic space of Duke’s trip.
Benjamin Tassie is a London based composer of electronic and acoustic music. He has worked with a range of leading ensembles and soloists, including the Britten Sinfonia, Rarescale, Rambert Dance, Liam Byrne, Joby Burgess, and Juice Vocal. His music has been performed at venues including The Place, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Modern, Wilton’s Music Hall, Wilderness Festival, The V&A, Moth Club, and Rockwood Music Hall NYC. He has been broadcast on Resonance FM and on BBC Radio 3.
Benjamin has received a number of awards, including winner of the Nonclassical #graphit graphic score competition, winner of Best Collaborative work in the 2015 Saboteur awards, finalist with the Rarescale 10th anniversary composition competition, and finalist with the Britten Sinfonia’s OPUS2014 competition. His opera, The Anatomy of Melancholy (commissioned by The Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England), was described as ‘an often dark yet heartfelt opera’ [wired magazine], with ‘a compelling score’ [everything-theatre], ‘✭✭✭✭✭’ [theatre bubble]. He was a British Music Collection New Voices 2015 composer, and was part of the Sound and Music Portfolio 2015 scheme.
Benjamin graduated with First Class Honours from the joint undergraduate-degree in music at King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Music, before completing post-graduate study at the Royal College of Music, where he achieved Distinction. Whilst at the Royal College of Music he was an RCM Scholar with support from the Angela Nankivell Award, the Ralph Vaughan William’s Trust, and the St. Marylebone Educational Foundation.
Recordings include Benjamin’s debut EP, wurl, (supported by Sound and Music / British Music Collection), SCHWUH-EEET recorded by Rarescale (and published by Tetractys), and If I Lay on My Back I Saw Nothing But Naked Women (supported by the PRS Foundation / Bliss Trust). 2017 will see the release of Benjamin’s LP, Slay (feat. Liam Byrne and Carla Rees). Current projects include an opera, Hurricane Zoo, with Gestalt Arts, setting text by Hunter S Thompson.http://www.benjamintassie.com
Ruth Mariner is a writer, director and facilitator with a background in composition and voice. She is a fellow of Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Artistic Director of Gestalt Arts, a creative company reinventing contemporary opera/music theatre as a tool to transform, unite and celebrate unique sites and their communities. Ruth has directed for companies including the learning and participation departments at The Royal opera House and Opera North and assisted at English National Opera, English Touring Opera and Garsington, and has had two works performed at The Royal Opera House including a commission for the Youth Opera Chorus.
Ruth studied composition and voice at Goldsmiths, Musicology at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and in September 2014 became the first writer/director to enter Guildhall School of Music and Drama on MA in Opera Making course, on a joint scholarship from the Leverhulme Arts Award and the Ewen Balfour Award. From 2015 – 2016 Ruth received a fellowship and became a Guildhall Creative Entrepreneur, through which Gestalt Arts is mentored by public art company Artichoke. Ruth still maintains a relationship with the school, developing a network for librettists in association with major opera companies.
Ruth has written libretti for The Royal Opera House and Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has directed for companies including Opera North, Mahogany Opera Group, Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, Opera 24, The Roundhouse’s Accidental Festival, and the LSO Soundhub Scheme. She has assisted for companies including English National Opera, English Touring Opera, and Lyric Opera Studio Weimar and Guildhall School of Music and Drama and directors including Martin Lloyd Evans and Martin Constantine. With Gestalt Arts she has created site responsive pieces for a range of incredible spaces. Her last work in 2016 saw the creation of a new piece for Horniman Museum around their archive of charms and magic objects.
Ruth also works as a music educator and workshop leader. She has worked extensively with primary school, SEN, PMLD, EBD and ESL children, and children with Autism. She has directed workshops for The Royal Opera House’s learning and participation department and Opera North’s In Harmony Scheme and revived Mighty Oaks for The Royal Opera House’s Out Loud festival. She has assisted Karen Gillingham on a project with patients at the National Spinal Injuries Unit and Garsington community chorus, with Garsington Youth Opera Chorus and on LSO Discovery’s The Hogboon. Recently, she has assisted Tim Yelland on SEN and primary school operas Silver Electra, and Different.
Ruth has been a participant on the 2014 Director’s lab at the Lincoln Centre and in 2013 she was funded by the EU to partake in a month long theatre residency making work about the economic crisis on Sifnos, Greece.
Ruth’s work is playful, surreal and emotionally true. She is fascinated by telling stories visually, and how, when combined, music, text and drama give one another qualities they do not possess in isolation. Ruth’s work seeks insight into the weirdness of being human, expressing and celebrating it through the weirdness that is opera.
Gestalt Arts is a creative company reinventing contemporary opera as a tool to transform, celebrate and unite unique sites and their communities. Through innovative parterships, Gestalt creates a range of experiences from mini operas to sound installations and creative learnng projcets across the UK.
Laura Beardsmore is a London-based flautist with a varied career as a solo performer, chamber and opera musician and teacher. She completed her Undergraduate and Masters degrees at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she studied with Carla Rees. She has also studied with Simon Channing and with renowned contemporary flautist Robert Dick at his residential studio in New York City.
Recent UK performances have included Yannis Kyriakides’ and IOU Theatre’s installation ‘Vortex’ at The Civic, Barnsley, Dartington International Festival as part of the Festival Orchestra, the International Prokofiev Festival, Kensington, with rarescale at The Forge in Camden and solo recitals. Laura has also performed internationally at temp’ora International Contemporary Music Meeting in Bordeaux, France, at Spectrum, New York City and with the low flutes ensemble rarescale Flute Academy in Athens.
As a student, Laura was selected to take part in the inaugural Soundings Academy, a contemporary music festival run through the Austrian Cultural Forum in Knightsbridge, London. As co-founder of cross-genre contemporary ensemble WOLF PACK, she performed numerous concerts culminating in a five day residency at Vault Festival in 2014. Future plans include a number of concerts to celebrate the tenth anniversary of rarescale Flute Acdemy, work with composers on new works, one for bass flute and another for Kingma System C flute, several chamber music projects and an upcoming performance at rough for opera, a night of scenes from newly written opera.
Liam Byrne divides his time between playing very old and very new music on the viol. He has been praised in The Times for his “nuanced and expressive, stylish virtuosity” and by The Guardian for his “glittering performance”. With the firm belief that baroque music can be vibrant and expressive on its own terms, Liam’s solo work regularly explores lesser known corners of 16th and 17th century repertoire. This same interpretative curiosity has led him to work increasingly with living composers, and he has recently had new works written for him by Donnacha Dennehy, David Lang, Edmund Finnis, Nico Muhly, Valgeir Sigurðsson and others.
As a chamber musician, Liam has performed and recorded with many leading Early Music ensembles. For several years he was a member of the renowned viol consort Fretwork, with whom he toured internationally and played an active role in commissioning new works. Other chamber music activities include performances and recordings with the Dunedin Consort, Huelgas Ensemble, The Sixteen, Le Concert d’Astrée, i Fagiolini, Concerto Caledonia, and the viol consorts Phantasm and Concordia, among many others.
Beyond the realm of early music, Liam has worked with a wide variety of artists including Damon Albarn, Nils Frahm, Matthew Herbert, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Bryce Dessner (The National), Richard Reed Parry (Arcade Fire), Martin Parker, and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond). He has played a significant musical role in the creation of several large-scale operatic works: Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee (2011-12), Shara Worden’s You Us We All (2013), and Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Wide Slumber (2014).
In April 2015, Liam became the first musician to be awarded a 6-month Artist Residency at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, in connection with the opening of their new Europe 1600-1815 galleries. Highlights included the weeklong one-on-one performance piece Inside Voices, and a new sound installation with Valgeir Sigurðsson for London Design Festival called Dissonances. Summer 2015 also saw Liam play a major role in creating sound installations at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art with Opera Erratica and London’s National Gallery with Nico Muhly.
Liam took his BMus and Performer’s Diploma in viola da gamba with Wendy Gillespie at Indiana University and holds an MPhil in Musicology and Performance from Magdalen College Oxford, where he studied viol with Laurence Dreyfus and counterpoint and early notation with Margaret Bent. Liam is professor of viola da gamba at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he also teaches Medieval and Renaissance Performance Practice and leads a viol consort.
Liam plays a 7-string bass viol by John Pringle, a 6-string bass by Marc Soubeyran, and a treble viol by Dietrich Kessler, which is graciously on loan from Marc Soubeyran.
https://www.donnalennard.co.uk
SCHUTZWALL | programme note and biogs
SCHUTZWALL
Jonathan Higgins (composer and librettist)
Mimi Doulton (Angelika Meyer)
Ella Taylor (Susanne Meyer)
Alex Gowan-Webster (live electronics)
programme note and biogs
Berlin, 1961. The newly erected Berlin Wall has fractured the city. Put up overnight without warning, residents awoke to find themselves divided from their families, friends and livelihoods. In the following years thousands of refugees would attempt to escape over the wall into West Berlin. Set one month after the wall’s construction, Schutzwall tells the story of two sisters who meet either side to wait for nightfall and their chance to be reunited. We follow their conversation as it meanders between a variety of topics including: day to day life in Berlin, growing up during the war and their hopes and fears for the future. Taking place in real time, Schutzwall uses this pivotal moment to provide a short window into lives of these two sisters.
Jonathan Higgins Jonathan Higgins is a composer and sound artist from Surrey who has recently completed an MA in Sonic Arts at the University of Sheffield. He works with a variety of different media including: fixed electroacoustic music, instrumental music, live electronics and sound installations. His work centres around an exploration of the relationship between pitch and noise, often drawing influence from glitch art.
He has presented works both in the UK and internationally, most recently at the International Computer Music Conference (Athens 2014, Texas 2015, Uterecht 2016), Sines and Squares (Manchester 2016), iFIMPaC (Leeds 2016), Noise Floor (Staffordshire 2015), Metanast (Manchester 2014) and Sound Junction (Sheffield 2014-2016). Jonathan received a Jury Award in the Binaural/Nodar – Viseu Rural 2.0 Electroacoustic Music Competition for his piece Disinter. His electroacoustic remix of Gary Carpenter’s “Neiderau” played by the Tempest Flute Trio was shortlisted for the Nonclassical 10 Remix Contest. Fragments, a piece based on Humpty Dumpty received a runners up prize in the USSS Nursery Rhymes competition. His piece Matryoshka for piano and live electronics was featured in a series of concerts by the Edison Ensemble.
In May/June 2017 Jonathan will be undertaking a three week residency in the Guna Yala province of Panama. Here he will composing a new piece that aims to evoke emotions felt on the island through the manipulation of sounds recorded there. Jonathan is currently writing an opera focused around the Berlin Wall that will be performed in July 2017 in Manchester.
British soprano Mimi Doulton is a postgraduate scholar at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, studying with Gary Coward. In 2015 she graduated with first-class honours in Music and Languages from King’s College London, where she was a choral scholar.
Her career has recently taken a focus on contemporary music – highlights have included research and development workshops for Philip Venables’ 4.48 Psychosis with the Royal Opera; performing in the premiere run of Watch Me with the Guildhall Opera School; and performances of Judith Weir’s King Harald’s Saga across London, notably at Wigmore Hall and St. John’s Smith Square. Mimi has also recently enjoyed recording new works for children with Mahogany Opera Group.
Recital repertoire for 2017 includes Fauré’s La bonne chanson with string quintet, Copland’s 12 poems of Emily Dickinson and Bartók’s Five Village Scenes. She is also looking forward to a return to Wigmore Hall in May 2017 to premiere collaborative work by Guildhall School composers and librettists.
Mimi is grateful to the Guildhall School Trust and private donors for their generous support of her studies. If you are interested in supporting her continued studies, please get in touch via
soundcloud.com/mimi-doulton
Ella Taylor is currently studying for a Masters in Performance at the Royal Academy of Music under the tuition of Elizabeth Ritchie and Andrew Smith, having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a First Class Honours Degree in Music.
Ella has a thriving career as a soloist in and around the Sheffield area. She has performed regularly with the Sheffield Bach Choir, the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, the Overgate Hospice Choir, Halifax, St George’s Singers, Stockport and the Hallam Sinfonia. She has also worked with the National Festival Orchestra in performances of Messiah – Handel, The Creation – Haydn, Hear my Prayer – Mendelssohn and Requiem – Mozart. In November 2015, she appeared in Manchester Opera Ensemble’s production of The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten, playing Miles. Future engagements include the title role in Acis and Galatea – Handel and a performance of new music at the Leeds Lieder Festival. She is delighted to be performing in Schutzwall.
Ella is generously supported by the Sheffield Church Burgesses Trust, the Josephine Baker Trust and the Parepa-Rosa Prize, awarded by the Royal Academy of Music.
ellataylorsoprano.co.uk
Alex Gowan-Webster completed a BMus and an MA in Composition (WRCoAH funded) at the University of Sheffield. Whilst his main work is as a composer Alex also occasionally sits in dark rooms and moves sliders to control sounds. His music is often informed by the countryside of Surrey where he grew up and has now returned to. Alex is the sometimes regretful owner of an ever growing eurorack modular system. He frequently shares patches that eventually become pieces on Instagram, @agw62.
alexgw.co.uk
twitter.com/agw62
rough for opera #15 | works
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER
A Certain Sense of Order is an operatic work-in-progress for two female singers exploring the poetry of Anne Sexton, the multiplicities of identity, and the relationship between poetic and therapeutic practice. The collaboratively-devised work investigates the mind through both sonic and physical modalities, using the text of Sexton’s poetry as a focal point. Throughout, the singers take on different roles from both the home and the therapy room, interacting as mirrors, foils, and supports for one another.
HURRICANE ZOO
Hurricane Zoo is an adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s short story ‘First Visit with Mescalito’. Encapsulating the zeitgeist of the 60’s counterculture, Thompson’s alter ego, Duke, uses a mescaline drug trip to rage against the failed promises of the American Dream. Gestalt Arts are developing Thompson’s short story as an opera installation piece to form a reflection of the current issues facing the millennial generation. In 2018 the completed work will be toured to theatres, festivals and libraries.
SCHUTZWALL
Berlin, 1961. The newly erected Berlin Wall has fractured the city. Put up overnight without warning, residents awoke to find themselves divided from their families, friends and livelihoods. In the following years thousands of refugees would attempt to escape over the wall into West Berlin. Set one month after the wall’s construction, Schutzwall tells the story of two sisters who meet either sid e to wait for nightfall and their chance to be reunited.
Blaze
2 notes
roughforoperaFollow
rough for opera #15 | makers
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER
Catherine Kontz | Composer
Catherine Kontz (b. 1976) is a Luxembourgish composer. She studied Composition with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths College and, as part of her PhD, produced and directed her mime-opera MiE with sold-out performances in 2006. Recent commissions include works for ensemble recherche, BBCSSO, Cathy Krier and Juliet Fraser. Catherine regularly features at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 2013 she composed and directed her first full-length opera Neige to great acclaim.
Sasha Amaya | Director
Sasha Amaya is a multidisciplinary artist focused on contemporary dance, direction, and installation. Her work has shown on stage, in galleries, on videos, and as opera throughout Europe and North America. Amaya is particularly interested in experimenting with different modes of generating movement to create movement-based pieces with dancers, musicians, actors, and athletes.
Naomi Woo | Music Director
Currently a PhD student, Naomi Woo holds degrees in mathematics & philosophy, musicology, and piano performance from Yale University, the University of Montreal, and Cambridge. Equally at home on the harpsichord, the podium, and the prepared piano, Naomi maintains a versatile performance career in the UK and in her home country of Canada.
presented by Tick Tock
tick tock (Sasha Amaya and Naomi Woo) focuses on sonic and choreographic performance to produce, interpret, and devise works of opera, dance, and physical theatre. Sasha Amaya is a director focused on choreography, music, and installation art. Naomi Woo is a pianist, conductor, and musicologist who specialises in the study and performance of contemporary music.
HURRICANE ZOO
Benjamin Tassie | Composer
Benjamin Tassie is a composer working between electro-pop and classical traditions. He has worked with musicians including Britten Sinfonia, Rambert Dance, Juice Vocal, Liam Byrne and Joby Burgess, at venues such as The Place, Tate Modern, Wilderness Festival, and Moth Club, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. He was British Music Collection New Voice 2015 composer with Sound and Music.
Ruth Mariner | Director
Ruth Mariner is a writer, director and facilitator with a background in composition and voice. She is a former fellow of Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Artistic Director of Gestalt Art. Ruth has directed for Opera North and Mahogany Opera Group, assisted at English National Opera, English Touring Opera and Garsington, and has had two works performed at The Royal Opera House including a commission for the Youth Opera Chorus.
presented by Gestalt Arts
Gestalt means ‘The whole is more than the sum of the parts’.
Gestalt is a creative company reinventing music theatre as a tool to transform, celebrate and unite unique sites and their communities. Through innovative partnerships, Gestalt creates a range of experiences from mini operas to sound installations and creative learning projects across the UK.
Gestalt has produced 4 operas to date and has been supported and developed by LSO Soundhub scheme, Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival and Kings College, Cambridge; from 2015 – 2016 was incubated by Guildhall School of Music and Drama and public art company Artichoke.
Recent projects include work for The Horniman Museum and The Roald Dahl Musuem.
SCHUTZWALL
Jonathan Higgins | Composer and Librettist
Jonathan Higgins is a composer from Surrey. His music often focuses on the relationship between pitch and noise. He has presented work nationally and internationally, most recently at the ICMC (Athens, Texas and Uterecht), Sines and Squares (Manchester), iFIMPaC (Leeds), Noise Floor (Staffordshire) and Sound Junction (Sheffield). His remix of Gary Carpenter’s “Neiderau” was shortlisted for the Nonclassical10 Remix Contest. Jonathan received a Jury Award in the 2016 Binaural/Nodar – Viseu Rural Electroacoustic Music Competition.
rough for opera #15 | works
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER
A Certain Sense of Order is an operatic work-in-progress for two female singers exploring the poetry of Anne Sexton, the multiplicities of identity, and the relationship between poetic and therapeutic practice. The collaboratively-devised work investigates the mind through both sonic and physical modalities, using the text of Sexton’s poetry as a focal point. Throughout, the singers take on different roles from both the home and the therapy room, interacting as mirrors, foils, and supports for one another.
HURRICANE ZOO
Hurricane Zoo is an adaptation of Hunter S Thompson’s short story ‘First Visit with Mescalito’. Encapsulating the zeitgeist of the 60’s counterculture, Thompson’s alter ego, Duke, uses a mescaline drug trip to rage against the failed promises of the American Dream. Gestalt Arts are developing Thompson’s short story as an opera installation piece to form a reflection of the current issues facing the millennial generation. In 2018 the completed work will be toured to theatres, festivals and libraries.
SCHUTZWALL
Berlin, 1961. The newly erected Berlin Wall has fractured the city. Put up overnight without warning, residents awoke to find themselves divided from their families, friends and livelihoods. In the following years thousands of refugees would attempt to escape over the wall into West Berlin. Set one month after the wall’s construction, Schutzwall tells the story of two sisters who meet either sid e to wait for nightfall and their chance to be reunited.
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rough for opera #15 | makers
A CERTAIN SENSE OF ORDER
Catherine Kontz | Composer
Catherine Kontz (b. 1976) is a Luxembourgish composer. She studied Composition with Roger Redgate at Goldsmiths College and, as part of her PhD, produced and directed her mime-opera MiE with sold-out performances in 2006. Recent commissions include works for ensemble recherche, BBCSSO, Cathy Krier and Juliet Fraser. Catherine regularly features at the Tête-à-Tête opera festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 2013 she composed and directed her first full-length opera Neige to great acclaim.
Sasha Amaya | Director
Sasha Amaya is a multidisciplinary artist focused on contemporary dance, direction, and installation. Her work has shown on stage, in galleries, on videos, and as opera throughout Europe and North America. Amaya is particularly interested in experimenting with different modes of generating movement to create movement-based pieces with dancers, musicians, actors, and athletes.
Naomi Woo | Music Director
Currently a PhD student, Naomi Woo holds degrees in mathematics & philosophy, musicology, and piano performance from Yale University, the University of Montreal, and Cambridge. Equally at home on the harpsichord, the podium, and the prepared piano, Naomi maintains a versatile performance career in the UK and in her home country of Canada.
presented by Tick Tock
tick tock (Sasha Amaya and Naomi Woo) focuses on sonic and choreographic performance to produce, interpret, and devise works of opera, dance, and physical theatre. Sasha Amaya is a director focused on choreography, music, and installation art. Naomi Woo is a pianist, conductor, and musicologist who specialises in the study and performance of contemporary music.
HURRICANE ZOO
Benjamin Tassie | Composer
Benjamin Tassie is a composer working between electro-pop and classical traditions. He has worked with musicians including Britten Sinfonia, Rambert Dance, Juice Vocal, Liam Byrne and Joby Burgess, at venues such as The Place, Tate Modern, Wilderness Festival, and Moth Club, and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. He was British Music Collection New Voice 2015 composer with Sound and Music.
Ruth Mariner | Director
Ruth Mariner is a writer, director and facilitator with a background in composition and voice. She is a former fellow of Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Artistic Director of Gestalt Art. Ruth has directed for Opera North and Mahogany Opera Group, assisted at English National Opera, English Touring Opera and Garsington, and has had two works performed at The Royal Opera House including a commission for the Youth Opera Chorus.
presented by Gestalt Arts
Gestalt means ‘The whole is more than the sum of the parts’.
Gestalt is a creative company reinventing music theatre as a tool to transform, celebrate and unite unique sites and their communities. Through innovative partnerships, Gestalt creates a range of experiences from mini operas to sound installations and creative learning projects across the UK.
Gestalt has produced 4 operas to date and has been supported and developed by LSO Soundhub scheme, Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival and Kings College, Cambridge; from 2015 – 2016 was incubated by Guildhall School of Music and Drama and public art company Artichoke.
Recent projects include work for The Horniman Museum and The Roald Dahl Musuem.
SCHUTZWALL
Jonathan Higgins | Composer and Librettist
Jonathan Higgins is a composer from Surrey. His music often focuses on the relationship between pitch and noise. He has presented work nationally and internationally, most recently at the ICMC (Athens, Texas and Uterecht), Sines and Squares (Manchester), iFIMPaC (Leeds), Noise Floor (Staffordshire) and Sound Junction (Sheffield). His remix of Gary Carpenter’s “Neiderau” was shortlisted for the Nonclassical10 Remix Contest. Jonathan received a Jury Award in the 2016 Binaural/Nodar – Viseu Rural Electroacoustic Music Competition.
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