Kate Soper's "Ipsa Dixit" Premieres at Dixon Place

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 2, 2017, 10:12 a.m.

For six years, Kate Soper has been developing Ipsa Dixit ["She, herself, said it"]: an evening-length work that brings together her voice and instrumentalists of the Wet Ink Ensemble for an evening-length, staged work that explores the intersections between music, language, and meaning. Bringing together texts by Aristotle, Lydia Davis, Freud, and Plato, Ipsa Dixit addresses questions long avoided by philosophers and music theorists alike: is music a language? What, exactly, does it communicate? And who—body, voice, or instrument—is speaking?

Ipsa Dixit began when Soper realized that several of her works for voice and instruments—including Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say (2010-11) and cipher (2011)—shared several theoretical and musical correspondences, and ought to be developed into a single, multi-movement work. Through the past six years, Ipsa Dixit has developed into an evening-length work, with workshops and performances around the country, featuring Soper and Erin Lesser, Ian Antonio, and Josh Modney from Wet Ink. During a week-long residency at EMPAC in 2016, the piece developed into its final, fully-realized form, with the addition of director Ashley Tata, lighting designer Anshuman Bhatia, and projection artist Brad Peterson. 

Now, on February 3rd and 4th at Dixon Place, Ipsa Dixit is set to premiere in its most evolved form. (Dixon Place also saw the premeire of another of Soper's theatrical works, Here Be Sirens, in 2014.) If you're in New York, be sure to be there! 

Christopher Cerrone in Los Angeles, Albany, Charleston, and more...

by Ted Gordon on May 19, 2015, 4:50 p.m.

Just after being awarded this year's prestigious Rome Prize, PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone has a slew of performances and premieres throughout the US before heading off to Italy. Last Friday, May 15th, saw the premiere of Cerrone's Four Naomi Songs at EMPAC, as a part of the composer collective Sleeping Giant's residency. Performed by The Dogs of Desire, the Albany Symphony Orchestra's resident new music ensemble, along with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, Cerrone's songs were accompanied by contributions from the other composers in the collective—which includes Timo Andres, Andrew Norman, Ted Hearne, Jacob Cooper, and Robert Honstein. Check out a preview of the Naomi Songs, with Cerrone, Bleckmann, and Andres, here: 

Coming up next is Cerrone's premiere of The Pieces That Fall to Earth by the LA Philharmonic on May 26th. Commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, the piece is a symphonic setting of poems by Kay Ryan. The premiere takes place as part of the LA Phil's Green Umbrella series and will be conducted by John Adams with soprano Hila Plitmann as soloist. 

Rounding out Cerrone's activities in May, The Living Earth Show will be performing his Double Happiness, along with Timo Andres' You Broke It, You Bought It and Adrian Knight's Family Man at the Spoleto USA Festival on May 28th. Check out the band performing Andres' piece at San Francisco's Mission Science Workshop below. 

New Music from Christopher Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 5, 2015, 10:32 a.m.

2015 has already been a busy year for PSNY composer Christopher Cerrone: a residency at EMPAC, a successful Kickstarter campaign with percussionist Owen Weaver, and on February 6th, the premeire of a new Violin Concerto at a new music venue in New York (new!) called Subculture. Jointly commissioned by violinist Rachel Lee Priday and pianist David Kaplan, with funding from the Fromm Foundation, this new piece will have its first performance on a program curated by Cerrone that centers around the relationship between contemporary music and 19th century Germany. Cerrone's work, a violin sonata, retains the formal sections of classical Sonata form while wildly reimagining its boundaries. Also on the program is Hannah Lash's Liebesbrief an Schumann which draws intertexts from Robert Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze [League of David Dances], instrumental works he wrote at the height of his compositional powers, which pit the fanciful league of David against the "Philistines"—Schumann's vision of (1830s) mass culture. Rounding out the program are new works by Samuel Carl Adams and PSNY's own Scott Wollschleger. 

Part of MATA's Interval series, the concert is jointly produced by Issue Project Room, and was curated by Cerrone. Check out a sneak preview of Priday and Kaplan rehearsing Cerrone's new sonata below.