Erling Wold: Mordake: chamber opera CD released

Erling Wold’s latest chamber opera "Mordake," starring John Duykers in the title role, has been released by MinMax Music and is distributed by Starkland.

The CD is physically available at Amazon, CD Baby, ArkivMusic, and more.

The CD is digitally available at iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, MySpace Music, and over 20 additional sources.

The opera tells the story of young Edvard Mordake, a man of high birth, secreted away in his apartments due to his disfigurement: a woman’s face on the back of his head, whose constant imprecations, heard by him alone, lead him on a terrifying course of action, one that may result in his own destruction.

The librettist of the opera is the remarkable Douglas Kearney, a teacher of African American poetry, opera and myth at CalArts, well known for his recent performance work with Anne LeBaron. This recording follows Wold’s earlier release on MinMax, the critically acclaimed opera "A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil."

"Mordake packs a multi-sensory punch inside a tightly knit production... If the story of Mordake is a tragic, eerie and at times wickedly funny rumination on the split in the human ego – the violent psychic struggle to reconcile the different parts of our own porous personality – we appreciate its universal tensions because it wraps us so completely in its subject’s deeply fraught isolation,” writes SF360. The San Francisco Chronicle rhapsodizes that “[Duykers] storms, he blusters, he bewails his fate – and, when necessary, he taps into reserves of sweetly tuned lyricism... a dynamic, affecting performance.”

Wold, an eclectic composer whose teachers include Gerard Grisey, Andrew Imbrie and John Chowning, has been hailed as “the Eric Satie of Berkeley surrealist/minimalist electro-art rock” by the Village Voice. His opera Queer, on the book by William Burroughs, will be in San Francisco and New York as part of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the book. His Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi was commissioned and premiered by the Abbey of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He has collaborated with electronic and noise musicians, filmmakers (Jon Jost) and dance companies, including interactive audio and video projects with Palindrome Dance, Nürnberg.

John Duykers, an internationally acclaimed tenor, has appeared with many leading opera companies,  including The Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Netherlands Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. Duykers most celebrated role was Mao Zedong in the 1987 world-premiere of John Adams’ Nixon in China, which was televised (winning an Emmy Award), and recorded (winning a Grammy Award).

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Amy X Neuburg: "The Secret Language of Subways": New CD

Amy X Neuburg has announced the release of her latest CD, The Secret Language of Subways, a cycle of thirteen avant-pop songs performed by Amy with backing from The Cello ChiXtet, a trio of women cellists. Amy and the ChiXtet will perform The Secret Language of Subways in Los Angeles as part of the LA Philharmonic’s West Coast: Left Coast festival, curated by John Adams (Nov. 30).

Reviewing a live performance of Subways, Joshua Kosman wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle :

“Neuburg's new song cycle teeters beguilingly on the boundary between pop and avant-garde performance art, and to hear it complete and in sequence is to marvel at the grace and elegance with which Neuburg walks that tightrope… As serious as the cycle's overall import is, there’s a vein of wit that does wonders for the music. And when that humor bursts into full flower, as in the superbly drawn mental befuddlement of Dada Exhibit or the exuberant black comedy of Hey, the impact is irresistible.”

Amy describes The Secret Language of Subways as “a song cycle about the inane and perpetually unfinished businesses of love and war — and New York.” A stylistically versatile, classically trained singer/composer with a four-octave range, Amy is best known for performances with voice, electronic drums, and live looping in which she creates a chorus of layered voices and rhythms. Two years in the making, Subways consists of intricately composed, multiple layers of cellos topped by Amy’s distinctive and striking vocals; the songs range from intimate art-song ballads to electronics-based pop to Dadaist meanderings to lush symphonic arrangements. Sometimes the cellos are processed with electronic effects, other times heard in the expressive richness of their natural timbres. Neuburg explains:

“The idea for The Secret Life of Subways began in 2003 when I fell in love with the expressive voice-like quality, enormous pitch range, and dramatic look of the cello — I felt I had found a sort of instrumental kindred spirit to my own voice. I conceived most of these songs while sitting on the subway during a 3-year period when I lived part-time in New York — inspired by the rhythmic lull of the train, the fragmented meanderings of my thoughts, the dramas of recent world and personal events, and the deluge of sensory input that is New York itself. New York at that time presented such a vivid example of how life, love and art continue to move forward with full force, in spite of (or perhaps encouraged by) the fears and uncertainties of war.”

The thirteen songs form a compelling dramatic arc, drawing the listener into a vivid, subterranean emotional journey. Starting from the hushed a cappella opening of One Lie, Subways makes local stops at urban paranoia (The Closing Doors, Body Parts), nocturnal reveries (the haunting-yet-catchy Someone Else’s Sleep), the surreal juxtapositions of street life (The Gooseneck, Difficult), self-preservation through self-presentation (the lilting, folkish Hey), and Amy’s stunning closer, the resigned, chorale-like Shrapnel.

As an encore, Neuburg offers her ingenious arrangement of Back in NYC from Genesis’s groundbreaking 1974 concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

The CD is released by Paul Dresher's MinMax Music label, which specializes in adventurous new vocal and music-theater works. Other MinMax CDs include Paul Dresher's Slow Fire, Steve Mackey's Ravenshead, and D'Arc: woman on fire from Jay Cloidt and Amanda Moody. All MinMax recordings are distributed by Starkland.

Amy X Neuburg has developed a unique career bridging the boundaries between classical, experimental and popular music. Her ‘avant-cabaret’ songs combine her interests in language, expressive use of music technology, and exploration of multiple genres using the many colors of her wide vocal range. She has performed at the Bang on a Can Marathon, Other Minds, and other festivals, universities, rock clubs, and concert halls throughout the U.S. and abroad. Commissions include works for Present Music, Santa Cruz New Music Works, Solstice, and others. As vocalist, Amy has been featured in contemporary operas and recordings including works by Robert Ashley, Culture Clash and Guillermo Galindo.

The Cello ChiXtet consists of Jessica Ivry, Elaine Kreston, and Elizabeth Vandervennet.

This CD is available at Amazon.

CD Baby also has Subways in stock.

And it can be downloaded at iTunes.

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"D'Arc: woman on fire CD" by Jay Cloidt and Amanda Moody now available

A new MinMax CD, D'Arc: woman on fire, is now being distributed by Starkland.

Created by composer/performer Jay Cloidt and writer/singer Amanda Moody, the music theater piece D’Arc features performances by ex-Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud on six of the eleven songs. Also performing on the recording are cellists Danielle DeGruttola and Elaine Kreston, pianist Jon Herbst and guitarist Will Bernard.

Weaving the threads of the Dark Ages with our own dark times, the lyrics of D’Arc depict a present-day intercession by Saint Joan of Arc into the life of a contemporary mother, whose daughter vanished while working abroad in a war-torn region. St. Joan intrudes into the modern world through bizarre visions revealed through the cold flame of a television set, challenging today’s Joanne to listen to the call of her own life

The songs on D’Arc include a newly-written hymn setting of 14th-century lyrics, delicate acoustic duets and solo cello works, and intense electronic music. Cloidt weaves musique concrète elements into the music, along with electronic elements and acoustic instruments, to underscore the voice and cello parts. Amanda Moody’s vocal performance runs the gamut from medieval hymn singing to gospel wailing to full operatic bravura, and Cloidt has set her lyrics to an extremely wide range of vernacular styles and semi-abstract electronic textures. The music is intense and intelligent, yet emotional and accessible.

Jay Cloidt is a composer and sound designer working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College with Robert Ashley and David Behrman. He has collaborated with many groups, beginning with the late Ed Mock’s dance company (with a performance at the Vienna Biennale), and including the Paul Dresher Ensemble, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, ODC/San Francisco, and Kronos Quartet. His works have been performed extensively by these groups and others throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including performances at Lincoln Center, Royal Festival Hall, the Concertgebouw, and many other venues.

Cloidt released another MinMax/Starkland CD, Spectral Evidence, in 2007, featuring two string quartets performed by the Cypress String Quartet. Sequenza/21 said Spectral Evidence was “…engaging, attractive, and extremely crafty.”

Writer/actress/singer Amanda Moody’s critically acclaimed work, Serial Murderess, directed by Melissa Weaver and composed by Clark Suprynowicz, won the 2001 Dean Goodman Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theater, and the SF Bay Guardian's Best of 2000 Award for great solo performance. Her original oratorio, Bitter Harvest composed by Kurt Rohde, premiered with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. Georgia Rowe of the Contra Costa Times declared Bitter Harvest "Splendid boldly contemporary and undeniably moving." BackStage West said, “Moody’s virtuosity – as writer, singer and actor – is awesome.”

The CD is available at Amazon and CD Baby.

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