FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 24, 2015
Information: www.experimentsinopera.com
Tickets available at the door

Aleba Gartner, 212/206-1450
aleba@alebaco.com

“An innovative opera venture”
— The New York Times

“It’s not a traditional opera – it’s more like weird little operettas”
— Rolling Stone

announces its

An Alternative to the O Word

While the world is awash in new opera ventures, Experiments in Opera stands out from the crowd. A composer-driven collective with an air of mad scientists in the lab, EiO is interested in new formulas, not traditional ones, questioning what opera really can be in the 21^st Century. 

The company was founded in 2010 by a trio of “talented, fearless, and congenial” (The Brooklyn Rail) composer-performers in Brooklyn: Matthew Welch, Jason Cady, and Aaron Siegel. In the personalities of these three creators, there's a certain amount of anarchy, wit, and invention that guarantees though they may be dead serious, it will be a fun ride.  

As Experiments in Opera embarks on its fifth season, it continues to place composers at the forefront as key visionaries of modern-day opera—giving them the freedom to mess with the mechanics of opera itself (as in EiO's Radio Operas), how it’s delivered (live or on video), scale and duration (10 minutes to evening-length). Whether it’s fully or minimally produced is inconsequential. EiO bypasses the cumbersome traditional production schedule and lets things happen as fast as possible.

EiO's subversive impulses and numerous commissions from both rising and established composers has led The New Criterion to hail the organization as “a vital part of the subculture.” This season alone will see 20 world premiere vocal works, from newcomers such as Emily Manzo to experimental master Elliott Sharp.

In addition to performances at The Stone and Anthology Film Archives, EiO will continue to organize What Goes On, an annual publication that features writings on and about contemporary opera, written and edited by other creators of contemporary opera. All of the activity throughout the 2015-16 season will be documented and archived at experimentsinopera.com, a growing library of experimental works.

The Stone, at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street
$15 General Admission for each set at the door
experimentsinopera.com/burroughs

Renegade William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), of Naked Lunch fame, is known for his challenging and hallucinatory prose, and deeply experimental streak. Norman Mailer declared him “the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius.” Burroughs helped to pioneer the art form of cut-ups: repurposing of previously published materials into new art forms. In celebration of the recently published book, The Travel Agency on Fire (edited by Alex Wermer Colan)—a selection of "cut-up" experiments by Burroughs on texts by a range of canonical writers, including Arthur Rimbaud, William Shakespeare, and James Joyce—EiO has commissioned 11 new compositions for ensemble and voice. 

The Commissioned Composers:
Travis Just, Charlie Looker, Jason Cady, Aaron Siegel, James Ilgenfritz, Anne Guthrie, Lukas Ligeti, Katie Young, JG Thirwell, Elliott Sharp, and Natacha Diels.

The performers include James Ilgenfritz's Anagram Ensemble with vocalists Meagan Schubert and Michael Douglas Jones. 

Burroughs selected the source texts, cut them up, and juxtaposed the fragments to select random word combinations and create new compositions. The resulting texts challenge the 11 commissioned composers to reorganize their musical work around non-linear narratives and ideas and embrace a logic of sound and experience. Each set—8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.—will feature different songs.
 

The Stone, at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street
$20 General Admission at the door
experimentsinopera.com/matthewwelch

Experiments in Opera co-founder Matthew Welch hosts a set of music featuring several of his most recent operas, including "The Three Truths" (from 2013's ‘New Shorts’) and a workshop performance of new scenes from his work-in-progress, "And Here We Are," with a libretto by Daniel Neer. This opera is based on the wartime memoirs of Welch's uncle who was interned in a Filipino prison camp. 

Welch's music will be performed by his longtime chamber band Blarvuster—which plays an infectiously ecstatic blend of Scottish bagpipes, Balinese gamelan, minimalism, impov and rock—in collaboration with Mantra Percussion. Welch himself is a virtuoso of the Highland Bagpipe and has been hailed by Indie rockers as "the Eddie Van Halen of the bagpipes." The vocal soloists include Anne Rhodes, Jeffrey Gavett, Daniel Neer and Kate Maroney.
 

Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003
$10 General Admission
anthologyfilmarchives.org
experimentsinopera.com/videooperas

In the late 1970s Robert Ashley made his opera Perfect Lives for television because he believed that the America of his time was a culture of TV—not opera houses. Today we are in the midst of a transformation of the medium of video and how we consume media, thanks to Youtube, Vimeo, and of course the everpresent smartphone. Experiments in Opera has commissioned six new operas for video that dive into this trend of web video. These video operas will inevitably share the intimate, small-scale production values of web videos and will be created specifically for the medium of video, not songs or stage pieces adapted to video. The six works will premiere at Anthology Film Archives in New York in April 2016 (each performance is a film screening), and then be released on the web through Experiments in Opera’s video channel. 
 
The commissioned composers for the Video Operas project include EiO's three 2015-16 Fellows (see below): Matana Roberts, Emily Manzo and Anna Mikhailova, as well as Jason Cady, Aaron Siegel, and Matthew Welch.
 

The Stone, at the corner of Avenue C and 2nd Street
$15 General Admission at the door
experimentsinopera.com/choralworks

Co-founded by composers Matthew Welch, Jason Cady, and Aaron Siegel, Experiments in Opera is a composer-driven initiative, featuring recent and new works with innovative answers to the traditional questions about how to connect words, story and music. EIO's work is playful and funny as well as serious and dark. They catalyze opportunities that make strong connections to life and art in the twenty first century. EIO makes no meaningful distinction between the merit of short works and long works, full productions and concert presentations, live works and works on video. Artists from a variety of styles and backgrounds find common cause with their efforts and feel at home in their productions.
 
Since 2011, Experiments in Opera has produced thirty seven new works, collaborating with over one hundred performers, designers and directors from the New York City artist community. Experiments in Opera has presented the work of more than 26 composers including Georges Aperghis, Robert Ashley, Gelsey Bell, Roddy Bottum, the Cough Button collective, Jason Cady, Joe Diebes, Ruby Fulton, Nick Hallett, Gabrielle Herbst, Sam Hillmer, John King, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Daniel Kushner, Jonathan Mitchell, Jessica Pavone, Paul Pinto, Dave Ruder, Aaron Siegel, Justin Tierney, Leaha Maria Villarreal, Matthew Welch and John Zorn.
 
Over the last four years, EIO has produced its events at Abrons Arts Center, Le Poisson Rouge, Spectrum, Roulette, and Issue Project Room.
 
All of the work developed with Experiments in Opera is documented extensively in videos, images and writings that are available in an online catalogue at experimentsinopera.com. These insightful looks into the origins of artists’ ideas and their working habits help to support EIO’s mission of building a more robust conversation about how and why opera works the way it does.
 

“Experiments in Opera is telling stories that are not being told in other places”
— The Wall Street Journal

“Some of the most avant-garde players in the game today” 
— Huffington Post

For further information, press tickets, photos, and to arrange interviews,
please contact Aleba & Co. at 212/206-1450 or aleba@alebaco.com.