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.

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!