Magdalene | PROTOTYPE
This meditation on transformation and desire is scored by the collective voices of fourteen women. Set to Marie Howe’s Magdalene poems, the opera invites an audience into the interior world of Mary Magdalene — enlarging her to cross time and space, she appears as a woman alive now, who strives to heal the unyielding split between the sacred and the sexual. Encountering her life in flashes – wandering through a hotel, lighting birthday candles, making love in the ocean – Magdalene finds transcendence in the mundane to finally become the subject of her own story.
Monday, January 13, Wednesday, January 15, and Friday, January 17 at 7:30 PM; Thursday, January 16 at 6:30 PM
Tickets $35-$75
HERE, 145 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY
..:: Website
afterimage | String Orchestra of Brooklyn
Jacob Cooper
The String Orchestra of Brooklyn celebrates the release of their first studio album, afterimage, with a performance of Chris Cerrone’s High Windows and Jacob Cooper’s Stabat Mater Dolorosa. The orchestra will be joined by the Argus Quartet and guests.
Monday, January 13 at 8:00 PM
Tickets $18 online, $25 doors
Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
..:: Website
Ellen West | PROTOTYPE
Ellen West plunges into the emotional, psychological, and physical challenges of a woman struggling with perceptions of her body, her relationship with food, and the world closing in around her. Inspired by one of the earliest cases of existential analysis, poet Frank Bidart and composer Ricky Ian Gordon examine the lives of psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger and his patient, Ellen West. Bidart’s poem, which serves as the opera’s libretto, juxtaposes the clinical observations of Binswanger with fictitious entries of Ellen’s journals, illuminating a psychological portrait of a woman at war with her body.
Tuesday, January 14, Wednesday, January 15, and Friday, January 17 at 8:00 PM; Sunday, January 19 at 3:00 PM
Tickets $35-$150
Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, 29 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY
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Blood Moon | PROTOTYPE
Blood Moon is a poetic, opera-theatre piece for three characters who encounter the past on the night of a full moon: a nephew who returns to the mountain-top where he left his aunt to die forty years earlier, the ghost of the aunt he abandoned, and the moon that presides over this night of reckoning. A contemporary response to a 15th century Noh play, Blood Moon uses choreography, puppetry, and a Taiko-infused score to create a meditation on the end of life, the nature of joy, regret, and whether atonement is possible.
Wednesday, January 15 to Friday, January 17 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $35-$75
Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY
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Matt McBane + Build, Dollshot, Gulli Björnsson
The evening features the premieres of several new pieces from Build’s forthcoming third album. This will be Build’s first NY performance in years. Sharing the bill are Dollshot and composer/guitarist Gulli Bjornsson.
Thursday, January 16 at 7:00 PM
Tickets $15
ShapeShifter Lab, 18 Whitwell Place, Brooklyn, NY
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(a place is a place) | andPlay and Aperture Duo
andPlay–Photo courtesy www.andplayduo.com
This program includes three newly commissioned works by Carolyn Chen, Matt Evans, and Andrew McIntosh, as well as à l’unisson X (2015) by Eva-Maria Houben.
Thursday, January 16 at 7:30 PM
Tickets $20, $20 students
The Church of the Intercession Crypt, West 155th and Broadway, New York, NY
..:: Website
The Furies and ~Nois Put Their Heads Together
~Nois–Photo by Nick Zoulek
The Furies will perform their program “A Cure For Hysteria,” featuring works by Jennifer Walshe, Olga Neuwirth, Elizabeth A. Baker, Thundercunt, and Eve Beglarian. ~Nois will perform works by Viet Cuong, Emma O’Halloran, Pauline Oliveros, and Cassie Wieland.
Thursday, January 16 at 8:00 PM
Tickets $15
Scholes Street Studio, 375 Lorimer Street, Brooklyn, NY
..:: Website
Untitled (inspired by Film Stills) | FERUS Festival
Ellen Reid–Photo by Arnaud Pyvka
Untitled (inspired by Film Stills) is a series of four operatic monodramas exploring the stages of transformation and identity in a woman’s life. Inspired by iconic photographs from Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), the piece is a study of four women, each confronting a critical choice that determines the course of their lives. In this workshop performance, mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliotti performs new music by Ellen Reid and Paola Prestini. The afternoon also features excerpts by Nico Muhly and Missy Mazzoli, followed by a conversation with the collaborators, offering insight into the process of creating this new chamber opera work.
Friday, January 17 at 2:00 PM
Tickets $20
National Sawdust, 80 North 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY
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REV. 23 | PROTOTYPE
Julian Wachner’s REV. 23 is an exploration of an “unpublished” new chapter of the Book of Revelation. With a libretto by Cerise Lim Jacobs, this new production by director James Darrah takes us on a journey through the myths of our collective unconscious.
Friday, January 17 at 8:00 PM; Saturday, January 18 at 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM
Tickets $35-$75
Gerald W. Lynch Theater, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY
..:: Website
ACME: 15 Years – Music of Gavin Bryars
ACME explores music by the English composer Gavin Bryars in celebration of his 77th birthday, which falls on January 16. The program includes The Sinking of the Titanic and String Quartet No. 1 (“Between the National and the Bristol”).
Friday, January 17 at 8:00 PM
Tickets $15-$25
Tenri Cultural Institute, 43 West 13th Street, New York, NY
..:: Website
Sun Dog Collabs presents Breaking Consciousness with ~Nois and Parhelion
Annika Socolofsky
The Parhelion Trio and ~Nois saxophone quartet join forces to present a multimedia evening event showcasing original and new works written for each group by five bold emerging composers: Ricardo Gallo, Emma O’Halloran, Seong Ae Kim, Gemma Peacocke, and Annika Socolofsky. Each work explores dreamlike states of consciousness, highlighting different aspects of night, darkness, and silence, including the interplay between light and its absence.
Friday, January 17 at 8:00 PM
Tickets $18
Greenwich House Music School, 46 Barrow Street, New York, NY
..:: Website
If I Left the Zoo | Choral Chameleon
The Choral Chameleon 12-voice Ensemble explores the primal instincts in humans and the stories and fables of earth’s creatures and transformations in this narrative concert featuring music by Ivor R. Davies, Edward Thompson, and Lauren Bydalek.
Saturday, January 18 at 7:00 PM
Free
St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Church, 26 Olive Street, Brooklyn, NY
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