My string quartet Solicitations, which premiered in 2018, has been touring Europe and the US this Fall. Diotima Quartet brought it to Wien Modern Festival alongside works by Neuwirth, Furrer, and Haas (more in this review from DiePress). While Mivos Quartet gave its US premiere in NY, then toured it in California, Pennsylvania, and Paris. More info in the events page.
My new trio Dreams amongst hers premiered last week in Aix-en-Provence by the exquisite Marie-Laure Garnier, Shuichi Okada, and Emmanuel Jacquet. Through invented phonemes and consonants, it was an exercise in sound imbued with meaning. Diapason Magazine described it as an “Intensely poetic dialogue… a play on dreams”.
Like Flesh travelled to Musica Festival this month, with three performances at Lorraine National Opera. Crescendo Magazine described it as an “original, strange, beautiful and timely operatic experience” that “takes us on a sensory, musical, sonic and visual adventure.” The local Est Republicain described it as a work of “total immersion… great beauty… which leads us to a trance” while La Fleure du Dimanche described it as “Poetic and political with mesmerising music” “posing intimate questions about love, fidelity, and normativity with delicacy and tenderness” and “modern yet completely accessible, and above all sensitive and moving. A great success!”. See HERE for more reviews, videos and photos.
David Daurier of Camera Lucida Productions, together with B Media, have created a stunning film version of the opera Like Flesh, which premiered online this past weekend. You can stream it on Medici.tv until July 2027 (paid subscription) or on Opera Vision for free until January 2023.
Just back from LA, where a new collaboration is being born with Peter Sellars and Ganavya Doraiswamy. It’s the very beginning still, and a new musical direction, so more about that in the Fall. But meanwhile, a very big thank you to the Villa Albertine - the new residency program of the French Cultural Services in the US - for making the trip possible.
This Fall I will begin a one-year residency at the Villa Medici in Rome. More about that there.
My residency at MacDowell got rescheduled twice due to COVID, which meant that instead of working here franticly on Like Flesh, I get to take long walks in the company of trees, read plays by Annie Baker at the library, and go swimming with new friends. A breath of new inspiration after the opera premiere.
While the Words and Music workshop that I led with writer/director Ted Huffman came to an end last July, the operatic scenes that were created as part of it are premiering today in a beautifully filmed version by Opéra de Montpellier. I invite you to watch the six new works by composers Alex Ho, Diana Syrse, Dan Chappell , Kirsten Milenko, Ole Hübner and Juta Pranulyté and their collaborators HERE.
After three intense years of work, Like Flesh was born last month at Lille Opera, then travelled to Montpellier Opera as part of its French tour. The press are calling it “an absolute success” (Forum Opera), “astounding” and “innovative” (Liberté Hebdo), “carefully perfected” (Opera Online), “of great refinement” (ResMusica), a “seductive and moving personal universe” (Anaclase), “exceptionally expressive” (Bachtrack), “an operatic revelation” (Premiere Loge), “a contemporary gem” (Les Inrockuptibles), “a kind of magic” (Croix du Nord) and a “bold and intense sonic immersion” (Midi Libre). See HERE for more reviews, videos and photos.
In this one-hour interview with Laurent Vilarem for France Musique’s “Carrefour de la creation” I discuss my recent works leading up to Like Flesh, and am joined by Cordelia Lynn and Augustin Muller. For more about Like Flesh, have a listen also to my interview with Alexander Jamar for Opera Forum’s podcast “Le Bel Aujourd’hui”.
