Jeremy Bloom's video: Aperghis LPR Preview

Opera inspired by Darwin and Stephen Jay Gould ***Preview @ Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St, NYC *January 16, 2012. Performances @ Joria Productions, 260 36th St, NYC *February 2, 3, and 4, 2012. experimental opera by Georges Aperghis Sop I, Megan Schubert Sop II, Christie Finn Sop III, Gelsey Bell Mezzo, Silvie Jensen Contralto, Amirtha Kidambi Cello, Émilie Girard-Charest Director, Jeremy Bloom Lighting Designer, Kryssy Wright Rehearsal Conductor, Nick DeMaison About Voices of the Cambrian creatures, Death, Birth, Life, cycles, Riddles of Existence, Evolution... Description Sextuor is composed like an oratorio, telling the story of life on Earth as interpreted through fossil records... "Between each species and the common ancestor, who is unknown, one must seek, forever seek the intermediate forms" Narrated by the cellist, and also by the singers through straight singing, Sprechstimme, nonsensical syllables evoking the sounds of beginning life forms and fast-forward sound portraiture of evolution, and as instruments, the story unfolds through bouts of rhythmic complexity and quartertones, and each of the performer's symbolic characters is revealed. "Immense Nature improbable and unpredictable, contingent nature, where are we going, we who say life was wonderful, we who say life is wonderful?" Music by Georges Aperghis, Text by François Régnault and Georges Aperghis, Translation by Cozette Griffen-Kremer, (Based on Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life) Georges Aperghis was born in Athens in 1945. He has lived and worked in Paris since 1963. After a few instrumental pieces more or less inspired by serial technique, Georges Aperghis composed in 1971 The tragic story of the necromancer Hieronimo and the mirror (for two female voices: singing and speaking, a lute, a cello): its first music theater piece, the source of much of its future investigations of the relationship between music and text, between music and stage. The creation of the l'Atelier Théâtre et Musique (ATEM) installed in the Paris suburbs, in Bagnolet (1976 to 1991) and in Nanterre (at the Theatre des Amandiers from 1992 to 1997) completely renewed his practice as a composer. Using musicians as well as actors, shows with the ATEM were inspired by the everyday social facts translated into a poetic world, often absurd and satirical, built as and rehearsals. All ingredients (vocal, instrumental, gestural, theatrical ...) are treated equally and contribute - outside of a pre-existing text - the drama. A prolific composer, Georges Aperghis built, with an invention never drying up, a very personal work: serious and full of humor, attached to tradition as well as free of institutional constraints, he can open unexpected horizons of vitality and ease its performers skillfully reconcile the sound and vision. (translated text from Antoine Gindt, official biographer)