Bernard Marie-Koltès described his 1985 work “In the Solitude of the Cotton Fields“ like an encounter between a bluesman and a punk. Perhaps more than an exploration of mercantile activity or the transaction of late-night cruising, his play is a speculation on the individual’s capacity to know another.

Adam Linder, whose work has regularly been presented at HAU, has made an opera with a score by Ethan Braun and stage by Shahryar Nashat.

His new creation is inspired by Koltes’ preoccupation with ‘the deal’. “The WANT“ is an exchange sung by four performers, with a libretto that is littered with interjections from Jacques Derrida to Missy Elliott. Linder approaches the business of language as the Self’s gateway drug between rational thought and rhapsodic expression. Doesn’t the interplay of language rendered in vocal music parallel the dynamics of various markets? The singers, actors and dancers Jess Gadani, Justin F. Kennedy, Jasmine Orpilla, and Roger Sala Reyner are ‘Offerors’ and ‘Offerees’ enrobed as the key archetype of mercantile Europe. Engaging a virtuosic performativity, these players embody the spiritual tradition of that figure: a constant trade between a reflexive mind and sensuous being.

Act II 1. Jewy XIV 1.2

Dates 2022
30 April, smell
11 June, smell & movement
30 July, smell, movement and sound intervention & performance, 14:41 and 15:47 RE3 Train from Südkreuz. This event is held as part of the Exhibition Finissage and Sommerfest. Please register here. 
 
Approaching the train ride from Berlin to Luckenwalde as a site itself for meaning-making and storytelling Lewis, Tolaas, and Braun score the 30 minute journey addressing multiple senses in a new work entitled H_SPACE_H. H_SPACE_H is a partitur that the public moves through in which smells, movements and sounds are guiding elements that amplify the experience of the bodily passage through the space and time between Berlin and Luckenwalde. H_SPACE_H unfolds in multiple stages and all of the elements come together as a new ambulatory live art work that will make its premiere on 30 July 2022.

H_SPACE_H commences on 30 April 2022 as a smell intervention on a carriage of the RE3 train from Berlin/Südkreuz to Luckenwalde, produced from the idiosyncratic smell of EW’s production of electricity, which Tolaas sourced while on a site visit to E-WERK. In June the work grows to include subtle movements, gestures, and indications choreographed and created by Isabel Lewis and finally in July an immersive and multi-site sound component performed by Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and composed by Ethan Braun is brought together with smell and movement interventions. The attunement process that begins on the train continues from the bahnhof in Luckenwalde to the site of the former Mendelsohn Hutfabrik near the E-WERK. Developing techniques of bodily attunement to ecology and practices for transformation of our relation to our biosocial surroundings have long been at the center of the collaboration between Isabel Lewis and Sissel Tolaas. They continue to apply their methodologies in this new collaboration with Ethan Braun and Kaliedoskop.

On 30 July, the third and final train intervention will take place, starting at 14:41 and 15:47 on the RE3 train from Südkreuz. A procession will lead visitors from Luckenwalde train station to E-WERK for tours of the power station and Stadtbad. The tours end at the Mendelsohn Hat Factory where artists Isabel Lewis & Sissel Tolaas, together with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and composer Ethan Braun, will create a moving and growing performance that will take the audience on a journey through sounds, movements and noises.

H SPACE H (excerpt July 30, 2022)

Barbora Kolářová, violin
Jordan Bak, viola
Mia Barcia-Colombo, cello
Charles Paul, bass

Commissioned by the Lake George Music Festival
made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts


Program Note:

The initial impetus for …enfumée was Georgia O’Keeffe’s Blue II, an early work from a series of abstract and monochromatic explorations in 1916. When setting out to write this piece I initially chose to engage with O’Keeffe’s work because of her close connection with Lake George. While browsing a featured exhibit of her work at MoMA, I was immediately struck by the deep saturation and subtle shading of the color in this particular painting, the powerful movement portrayed in the crumpled yet expansive swirl of blue –  like someone making a fist of smoke. This image resonated particularly strongly at the time, as we were in the midst of New York’s first encounter with the hazardous smoke from the Canadian wildfires which was engulfing the city and surrounding regions of the country. In that moment I decided not to write a work that was necessarily in direct response to O’Keeffe’s painting, but rather to allow my connection and inspiration in that moment to refocus the piece as an outlet for my experience with that recent and present change in our environment. I began to see vivid imagery of the swirls of smoke, the flow of the air patterns, the gradually shifting colors of haze. I was mesmerized by air flow maps I found on various air quality tracking apps, the constantly shifting color patterns, all the while living through my own waves of paralyzing anxiety, an almost PTSD-like response to being told to be afraid of the air we breathe, yet again. It was ironic that after such a long period of time with Covid, growing accustomed to masking indoors but finding relief and safety in the free-flowing air outside, we were now being told to stay locked indoors and mask up if we ventured out. 

I composed …enfumée while in residence at Copland House, an idyllic retreat in Cortlandt, NY. Aaron Copland’s house is situated in a wonderfully isolated natural setting, a perfect space to engage with this subject matter, to escape from the city and breathe the fresh air. In the middle of my residency another wave of smoke set in, creating an opportunity for me to re-engage directly with the experience in the middle of the composition itself. I remember the first afternoon of the smoke’s return, driving on a bridge across the Croton Reservoir and almost stopping my car in the middle of the road as a I was struck by the imagery looking out into the hills beyond the water: it looked exactly like O’Keeffe’s paintings of Lake George, the haze from the smoke recreating her shading, her brushstrokes. The title …enfumée is also a reference to the work …à la Fumée, an homage to the composer Kaija Saariaho who passed away in June and whose music I have held in my mind and heart as I worked on this piece.

...enfumée (2023)

Settings of three Chinese poems, two by Tu Fu (8th century AD) framing one by contemporary poet, Bei Dao (b. 1949), for soprano, flute and viola. There is also a brief refrain between the poems; this version is performed by software.

REFRAIN

And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves,
And he looked after the sound.

The blossoms of the apricot blow from the east to the west,
And I have tried to keep them from falling.

THREE CHINESE LYRICS

nr. 5 mm 78 - Act 2 nr. 6

Live at Roulette Intermedium March 15 2023

Vocalists Lucy Dhegrae and Tariq al-Sabir
Contemporaneous, conducted by David Bloom

Swan Songs Act 2 Excerpt

Working with Google's Arts initiative and the LUMA Foundation Arles we developed a custom AI controlled via app from a watch worn for six months by the artist. During this time, the watch would collect data including biometrics and emotional state of the artist, and in real time form imagery set to one of forty compositions in combination with one of thirty narrations, each sound corresponding to one of Rohrshach's defined emotional states.

REVERSE ROHRSHACH Depression 2a+scanner+2nd Screen

1) Foreword     2) Allegro    3) Berceuse

(Photo: Istria, Croatia)

Triptych (for trombone)

The WANT Finger Lickin'

Act II 5 Somewhat S&M 1

Act II 2 Scaffold of Babel

Act I 8 RopePull

Composer Alyssa Weinberg uses color, texture and gesture to channel big emotions, creating music that is “quite literally stunning” (Chicago Tribune). She is fascinated with perception and loves to play with form, subverting expectations to create surreal scenarios, often in dreamy, multidisciplinary productions.

Alyssa’s music has been performed by celebrated artists and ensembles around the world, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, as well as Eighth Blackbird, So Percussion, yMusic, and the Aizuri Quartet. She has received commissions and awards from organizations including Chamber Music America, FringeArts and the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Barnes Foundation, and the Curtis Institute of Music.

A dedicated educator, Alyssa currently teaches composition at Peabody Conservatory and Mannes School of Music. She is the Founding Director of the Composers Institute at the Lake George Music Festival, a summer program that centers mentorship and community alongside the craft of composition.

Alyssa holds a PhD in composition from Princeton University, as well as degrees from Vanderbilt University, Manhattan School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music.

...enfumée (2023)

Alyssa Weinberg

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