Kate Soper's "IPSA DIXIT" Now Available on PSNY

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 12, 2017, 12:41 p.m.

Kate Soper's ambitious and multi-faceted project, IPSA DIXIT ["She, Herself, Said It"] is now available on PSNY. A finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, IPSA DIXIT is a six-movement chamber music theater work for soprano, flute, violin, and percussion that explores the intersections of music, language, and meaning. In addition to being performed as a full work, each of the movments may be performed as a standalone piece, or in any combination with each other. 

The work was developed by Soper with musicians from the Wet Ink Ensemble during a residency at EMPAC, and later premiered in a fully staged version at Dixon Place. Writing in the New Yorker, Alex Ross calls IPSA DIXIT a "twenty-first century masterpiece", and an example of Soper's unique genre of "philosophy-opera."

Steve Smith reviewed the work's premiere at Dixon Place as "a dazzlingly varied six-part sequence of quartets and duets spanning a stylistic range best described as broad and eclectic, but never unapproachable, employing texts concerning matters of intellect and sentiment, cognition and persuasion, perception and awareness."

Now, in addition to the full score and performance materials, each individual movement of IPSA DIXIT is also available on PSNY: Poetics, Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say, Rhetoric, The Crito, Metaphysics, and Cipher. 

A complete studio recording of the six movements of IPSA DIXIT is forthcoming, so stay tuned for more news!

Check out video excertps of each movement below. 

Kate Soper's "Ipsa Dixit" Named Finalist for Pulitzer Prize

by Ted Gordon on April 18, 2017, 10:14 a.m.

Kate Soper's Ipsa Dixit has been named a Finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music, along with winner Du Yun for her work Angel's Bone and fellow finalist Ashley Fure for Bound to the Bow.

Ipsa Dixit, which synthesizes several of Soper's compositions into a seamless theatrical performance, was developed during a residency at EMPAC, and premiered in a fully-staged version this February at Dixon Place. The piece, as Alex Ross writes in The New Yorker, is a "twenty-first century masterpiece" and "an awesomely wide-ranging intellectual journey." Soper's nomination also marks an important event in the seventy-four year history of the Pulitzer Prize: it is the first time that all three nominees are women. 

Three of the movements of Ipsa Dixit are available on PSNY, and each can also be performed as a standalone work: Cipher, for soprano and violin; Only The Words Themselves Mean What They Say, for soprano and flute; and Rhetoric, for soprano, flute, violin, and percussion. The remaining movements will be published soon, making each individual movement available for study and performance, as well as a score and set of parts for Ipsa Dixit in its entirety.

Below, check out an excerpt from Ipsa Dixit from the recent live staged performance at EMPAC with Soper and the Wet Ink Ensemble:

Praise for Kate Soper's "Ipsa Dixit"

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 23, 2017, 6 p.m.

The New Yorker has just published an in-depth review of Kate Soper's Ipsa Dixit", which critic Alex Ross calls her "philosophy-opera". Ross writes: 

"There is a good argument to be made for retiring the words “genius” and “masterpiece” from critical discourse. [...] Nonetheless, in the face of a work as comprehensively astounding as Kate Soper’s “Ipsa Dixit,” which the Wet Ink ensemble recently presented at Dixon Place, on the Lower East Side, the old buzzwords come to mind."

Ipsa Dixit was also reviewed by Steve Smith, who has written about Soper's work in the past; Smith writes, 

"Ever since I saw Here Be Sirens, the brainy, whimsical, extraordinary music-theater piece that Kate Soper mounted with director Rick Burkhardt and other artists at Dixon Place in 2014, I’ve been waiting in eager anticipation for another opportunity to catch one of her singular creations."

For those eager to hear Soper's work soon, the Fresh Squeezed Opera Company will perform the Here Be Sirens Suite at New York's LGBT Community Center on March 3rd, in a program of "nano opera" by women composers. More info can be found here. 

Check out an excerpt from Cipher, a movement in Ipsa Dixit, below.