Following the triumph of her opera The Romance of the Rose, which received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera in February, Seattle Modern Orchestra presents Kate Soper’s evening-long chamber music theater work Ipsa Dixit (“She, herself, said it…”) at Cornish College of the Arts’ Raisbeck Auditorium this weekend: Friday, March 24 and Saturday, March 25, both at 8PM.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Soper explores the intersections of language and music and has been described by Alex Ross as “a 21-century masterpiece … a ninety-minute tour de force …call it philosophy-opera.” Zachary Wolfe praised The Romance of the Rose‘s “ability to stick in the mind and soul.”
SMO’s performances will feature local soprano Maria Männistö alongside musicians Sarah Pyle (flute), Eric Rynes (violin), and Bonnie Whiting (percussion). This dramatic showcase will be directed by C. Neil Parsons and includes immersive lighting design.
Kate Soper is a composer, performer, and writer whose work explores the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the slippery continuums of expressivity, intelligibility and sense, and the wonderfully treacherous landscape of the human voice. She has been hailed by The Boston Globe as “a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power” and by The New Yorker for her “limpid, exacting vocalism, impetuous theatricality, and mastery of modernist style.” A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Soper has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Koussevitzky Foundation, and has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and Yarn/Wire. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Camargo Foundation, the Macdowell Colony, Tanglewood, and Royaumont, among others.
Praised by the New York Times for her “lithe voice and riveting presence,” Soper performs frequently as a new music soprano. She has been featured as a composer/vocalist on the New York City-based MATA festival and Miller Theatre Composer Portraits series, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, and the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series. As a non-fiction and creative writer, she has been published by McSweeney’s Quarterly, PAJ, the Massachusetts Review, Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies.
Soper is a co-director and performer for Wet Ink, a New York-based new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out adventurous music across aesthetic boundaries. She is the Iva Dee Hiatt Professor of Music at Smith College. http://www.katesoper.com
Founded in 2010, Seattle Modern Orchestra (SMO) is the only large ensemble in the Pacific Northwest solely dedicated to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Led by co-artistic directors Julia Tai and Jérémy Jolley, SMO commissions and premieres new works from an international lineup of composers, in addition to presenting important pieces from the contemporary repertoire that are rarely if ever heard by Seattle audiences. The ensemble “operates at that exciting cusp between old and new, between tradition and innovation” (Vanguard Seattle) curating new sounds and experiences for concert goers in the region.
SMO provides audiences with performances of the best in contemporary chamber and orchestral music, and develops radio talks, lectures, and other forms of outreach in an accessible and inviting format all designed to expand the listener’s appreciation and awareness of the music of today. https://www.seattlemodernorchestra.org
Filed under: Kate Soper, new opera, Seattle Modern Orchestra
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 