PSA Dixit and Savage Winter round out PS21’s Modern Opera Fest

Ipsa Dixit and Savage Winter Round Out PS21’s
Modern Opera Fest

For more info:
www.ps21chatham.org
518-392-6121
info@ps21chatham.org

Opera returns to the Pavilion Theater in September with Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit, September 4 and
Douglas Cuomo’s Savage Winter, September 9, two works that conclude the season’s popular Modern
Opera Fest, PS21’s exploration of innovative contemporary contributions to this exciting, evolving genre.
The Extinctionist, which was developed in residence at PS21 and opened our season on May 29, is
Heartbeat Opera’s audacious take on “a planet in free fall,” a world facing environmental collapse, where
a prospective mother asks “Who in their right mind brings a child here?”

Flutist Claire Chase’s Pan, an evocation of the life and death of the Greek goat-god, followed on July 16.
It is an engrossing composition for flute, electronics, and a community ensemble, who serve as chorus
and musicians. The New Yorker described the immersive experience as one where “The cult of the
godlike artist gives way to a collective ceremony—art as grassroots action.”

Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit, on September 4, is a theatrical chamber opera for soprano, flute, violin, and
percussion that explores the intersection of music, language, and meaning. Directed by Ashley Tata and
featuring the composer as vocalist, the opera blends elements of monodrama, Greek theater, and
screwball comedy to skewer the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of artistic
expression. A finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in music, Alex Ross (The New Yorker) has called Ipsa
Dixit “a twenty-first century masterpiece.”

The work’s six movements draw on texts by Aristotle, Plato, Freud, Wittgenstein, Jenny Holzer, and Lydia
Davis, invoking ideas from poetics, rhetoric, and metaphysics through extended vocal techniques and
blistering ensemble virtuosity. Tickets $40; $25, sold in pairs.

“Brainily winsome.” Kate Soper enacts “the polarities out of which art emerges.”
— Zachary Woolfe, The New York Times

Savage Winter, September 9, a fiercely contemporary reimagining of Wilhelm Müller’s poetry cycle
Winterreise by composer Douglas J. Cuomo, mirrors the complexity of modern life and relationships. In
the finale of our quartet of operas, presented on September 9 as a semi-staged production, Tony Boutté,
a “radiant, communicative tenor” (Opera News), delivers a searing, intense performance as a man
desperate for atonement, while electric guitar and electronics (Douglas Cuomo), trumpet (Frank London)
and keyboards (Alan Johnson)—infused with acid jazz and a punk energy—narrate his delirious fever
dream. Tickets $25, sold in pairs

The concert version of Savage Winter premiered in 2018 in Houston under the aegis of Aperio Music of
the Americas. Seventy-five minutes long and performed at PS21 without intermission, the opera features 2
projected images from the original opera that add depth to a dynamic, affecting work. A fully staged
version, directed by Jonathan Moore with images by Joseph Seaman, was performed at Pittsburgh Opera
and Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2018. It was coproduced by American Opera Projects.
“A man comes spectacularly unglued. . . . Cuomo and Moore transform Müller’s lovelorn winter wanderer
into a demon-haunted Everyman.” – www.bam.org

Audience members wanting to attend both Ipsa Dixit, September 4, and Savage Winter, September 9,
can save $40 by purchasing the Modern Opera Fest Pass, one discounted ticket for a seat at both
performances.

More Late Summer Happenings at PS21

James Casebere’s Solo Pavilion for Two or Three, Upstate Art Weekend, August 27—29
An imposing new work by the photographer and installation artist, Solo Pavilion for Two or Three was
unveiled on May 30 in conjunction with Upstate Diary’s Art Trek ’21, the magazine’s annual curated tour
of noteworthy art happenings in the region. The installation heralded the opening of Pathways: Blazing
Trails to a Sustainable Future, our annual pas de deux between nature and the arts in which
performances, educational experiences, and art installations respond to PS21’s 100 acre landscape.
Cirque Barcode performing their site specific work Branché, French circus troupe Les Hommes Penchés
performing Instable, and environmental encounters such as Bat & Moth Night, led by the Hawthorne
Valley Ecology Program, were some highlights of the Pathways programming. Casebere’s work will be
included as part of the upcoming Upstate Art Weekend, August 27—29.

With Solo Pavilion for Two or Three Casebere extends the interrogation of the constructed environment
that he began in 1975. Like his earlier works, it is rich in ambivalence: luminous yet portentous, offering
protection but open, exposed to the elements while shielding its occupants. To Casebere, the result is “a
playful atmosphere . . . an expression of the indomitable human spirit.” In a recent conversation about his
2020 exhibition On the Water’s Edge, he observed, “The best architects have always built for the poor
and less privileged and I would love to collaborate with others to get things built for the more vulnerable
around the globe.”

Pathways concludes with an installation project You Are Here (aka The Maze) by art duo TROUBLE on September 17, 2021.

Mounted next to PS21’s Pavilion Theater, You Are Here invites audiences to challenge habits of
assembly. A literal maze, the labyrinthine assemblage of hallways reconfigures audience-hood by dint of
each attendees’ navigation of the structure. Picking up on and intersecting with PS21s’ many paths and
trails, this iteration of TROUBLE’s Maze has been designed specifically with PS21s’ majestic campus in
mind. As communities of humans begin to return to the spaces of performance and audience, TROUBLE
and PS21 invite you to reflect further on what these spaces mean, in the maze.

Ipsa Dixit, Savage Winter and Solo Pavilion for Two or Three Images available here