THE CHITTENDENS SUITE

Ensemble: 
Gascia Ouzounian	 Violine / violin 
James Eccles	 Bratsche / viola 
Augustin Maurs	 Cello 
Jane Grothe	 Harfe / harp 
Ivan Manzanilla	 Schlaginstrumente / percussion 
Andrew Infanti	 Piano, Synthesizer, musikalische Regie und Zusammenarbeit / piano, synthesizer, musical direction and collaboration 
Carl Francis	 Kommentator / narrator 
Carolyn Shoemaker	Gesang / vocals

Download of excerpts of "The Resuscitation of Uplifting" and "Shallow Brown" at the Tate Modern wesite: 
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/sullivan/viewthework.htm

"Griffin's scores reflect on whether structure is music's way of "getting a grip" on itself after some hard times, dirty secrets, bad faith, or ugly divorce. His structural "Betty Ford Clinic" later checks in Thrash Punk, Webern, Canonical Horror Film Music, Free Jazz, Hysterical Opera vis Berio's aging Sequenza III, and Pythagorean drones across expensive La Monte Young tunings. Each of these patients remain mutually condescending in their white rooms ... they also refuse to just shut up and take their pills." 
Wolf-Dieter Schlühnz, from Regimenting the Perhaps-burgs

04 Bean Counters

2 variations on passages from George Lewis's opera Afterword created for Catherine Sullivan's Afterword Fantasia

Variations on a Death

Oakwood Cemetery Variations

Ouija Indicator Drone from the Chittendens Suite

Indicator Drone

Opera Povera's collaborative interpretation with Carmina Escobar, Micaela Tobin and Sharon Chohi Kim of The Lady Trio - an evocation in Sean Griffin's operatic setting of Ron Athey's automatic writing autobiography project called Gifts of the Spirit performed in St. Vibiana's cathedral. Music by Opera Povera in collaboration with Alison Bjorkedal, Madeline Falcone, Don Nichols, McLean Macionis, and Don Nichols Seth Parker Woods, and Scott Worthington. Presented by the Broad.

Lady Trio evocation from Gifts of the Spirit - a ritual opera

A fragment instrumental passage from Induction 2 - Corpse Tracings from the Body of Ariel Camacho following conduction. From Sean Griffin's operatic setting of Ron Athey's automatic writing autobiography project called Gifts of the Spirit. 
Music by Opera Povera in collaboration with Alison Bjorkedal, Madeline Falcone, Don Nichols, McLean Macionis, Don Nichols, Seth Parker Woods, and Scott Worthington. Presented by the Broad.

Induction 2 from Gifts of the Spirit - a ritual opera

In this induction scene, the Moon Oracle played by Carmina Escobar delivers her last incantation from the choir loft to a mesmerized congregation of worshipers before she appears to them in the cathedral's transept. Ron Athey has just read a passage from his scripture, a flashback. She is in the loft but really she's floating over the people and she can hear their thoughts as she passes over each of them. 
That is what I am doing with the boom mic as I wonder through the bewitched congregation creating the musical condition of her floating body over them. This is a sonic dislocation of her character’s interior into the center of the massive space as she audibly passes through people's minds. That’s what this duet is and that is why it sounds this way.

Induction 3 - Floating Duet from Gifts of the Spirit - a ritual opera

Excerpt from Anything Can Happen Tonight: a monologue for 2 voices based on Masha's monolog from the 1982 film King of Comedy.
Premiered at Torrance Art Museum on April 14, 2018
Performed by Sharon Chohi Kim and Micaela Tobin

Excerpt from Anything Can Happen Tonight 2018

Escobar's solo from Sean Griffin's operatic setting of Ron Athey's automatic writing autobiography project called Gifts of the Spirit.

Sean Griffin

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