Kate Soper Wins Virgil Thomson Award from American Academy of Arts and Letters; "Here Be Sirens" now on PSNY

by Ted Gordon on April 12, 2016, 10:11 a.m.

Kate Soper, known for her cutting-edge vocal works that fuse together voice, instruments, and text, has just won the second ever Virgil Thomson Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. First given in 2014, this award "recognizes an American composer of vocal works," and is endowed by the Virgil Thomson Foundation. True to the award's namesake, Soper continues Thomson's tradition of radically new vocal music, her texted works echoing Thomson's avant-garde compositions such as Four Saints in Three Acts, with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. 

In announcing the award, composer and Academy member John Harbison writes of Soper:

Soper's vocal music is bold, varied, and forward-looking. Its advanced qualities are never dutifully or modishly present, but stem from a rich exploration of Voice, answering many imperatives—theatrical, textual, technological, social. There is joy, wit, shock, and allure in her pieces, all grounded by something meticulous and exacting.
 

(excerpt from Soper's Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say)

Perhaps most well-known of Soper's vocal works is her opera, Here Be Sirens, which follows the daily lives of three sirens on their well-trafficked island. First premiered in 2014, this work ranges from "ethereal medieval chant, gentle otherworldly melody, and the terror of the sublime"—what the Wall Street Journal calls "audacious, genre-bending music theatre" and The New Yorker hails as "an erudite, hilarious, furiously inventive meditation on the siren myth."

And now, Here Be Sirens, as well as a suite taken from the opera, are available via PSNY. In Soper's words, the Suite "presents an exquisite corpse-like portrait of these beloved and familiar monsters in all their murderous and irresistable glory."

Check out some excerpts from the opera below. 

String Theories features Mincek, Soper and Cerrone

by Ted Gordon on March 23, 2016, 11:17 a.m.

The String Orchestra of Brooklyn celebrates its fifth annual String Theories festival with three concerts at Roulette. From March 22nd to the 24th, the SoB will perform several world premieres, along with recent works from some of the most exciting composers of our time. 

On March 23rd, Alex Mincek's Ebb and Flow will begin the program—a piece commissioned by the String Orchestra of Brooklyn for their inaugural String Theories festival in 2011. The festival continues on March 24th with Kate Soper's Cipher for voice and violin, along with Christopher Cerrone's The Pieces That Fell To Earth, commissioned by the LA Philharmonic and premiering on the East coast for the first time. The program also includes music by Julia Wolfe and Alex Weiser. 

As a preview, check out Cerrone's 2013 commission from the String Orchestra of Brooklyn, High Windows: 

Kate Soper's OITOITOI Premiered by Ogni Suono Duo

by Ted Gordon on Feb. 8, 2016, 9 a.m.

Kate Soper's music has always lived in the porous boundaries between the human voice and instruments—reminding us that the voice is indeed an instrument, at once internal and external from our selves. Her new work, OITOITOI, commissioned by the Ogni Suono Saxophone Duo, explores vocal multiphonics paired with instrumental multiphonics, utilizing the player's two voices along with two tenor saxophones. Part of the SaxoVoce project, supported by New Music USA, this new work will be premiered at the Outpost Concert Series at the University of California, Riverside on February 10th. Check out the Ogni Suono duo below.