Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama

2019-12-06 Music

Author : Jelena . Novak
Release : 2019-12-06
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 380/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama by : Jelena . Novak

Download or read book Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama written by Jelena . Novak. This book was released on 2019-12-06. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s most celebrated collaboration, the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, had its premiere at the Avignon Festival in 1976. During its initial European tour, Metropolitan Opera premiere, and revivals in 1984 and 1992, Einstein provoked opposed reactions from both audiences and critics. Today, Einstein is well on the way itself to becoming a canonized avant-garde work, and it is widely acknowledged as a profoundly significant moment in the history of opera or musical theater. Einstein created waves that for many years crashed against the shores of traditional thinking concerning the nature and creative potential of audiovisual expression. Reaching beyond opera, its influence was felt in audiovisual culture in general: in contemporary avant-garde music, performance art, avant-garde cinema, popular film, popular music, advertising, dance, theater, and many other expressive, commercial, and cultural spheres. Inspired by the 2012–2015 series of performances that re-contextualized this unique work as part of the present-day nexus of theoretical, political, and social concerns, the editors and contributors of this book take these new performances as a pretext for far-reaching interdisciplinary reflection and dialogue. Essays range from those that focus on the human scale and agencies involved in productions to the mechanical and post-human character of the opera’s expressive substance. A further valuable dimension is the inclusion of material taken from several recent interviews with creative collaborators Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, and Lucinda Childs, each of these sections comprising knee plays, or short intermezzo sections resembling those found in the opera Einstein on the Beach itself. The book additionally features a foreword written by the influential musicologist and cultural theorist Susan McClary and an interview with film and theater luminary Peter Greenaway, as well as a short chapter of reminiscences written by the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

Laurie Anderson's Big Science

2021 Music

Author : S. Alexander Reed
Release : 2021
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 015/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Laurie Anderson's Big Science by : S. Alexander Reed

Download or read book Laurie Anderson's Big Science written by S. Alexander Reed. This book was released on 2021. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Shimmering in maximal minimalism, joyful bleakness, and bodiless intimacy, Laurie Anderson's Big Science diagnosed crises of meaning, scale, and identity in 1982. Decades later, the challenging and strange questions it poses loom even larger: How do we remain human when our identities are digitally distributed? Does technology bring us closer together or further apart? Can we experience the stillness of "now" when time is always moving? How do experiences become memories? This book attends closely to Anderson's artistic voice, detailing its unique capacities for ambiguity and revelation. It traces the sonic histories etched in the record's grooves, from the Cold War to a burning future, from the Manhattan skyline to the empty desert, from the opera house to the pop charts. Ultimately in Big Science, one can hear an invitation to rise above the dualities of parts and wholes, images and essences, the lone individual and the megasystem. The first and most enduring superstar of performance art, Laurie Anderson is recognized here for pioneering philosophically rich techniques within the medium, but is also taken seriously as a musician and composer. Packed with scrupulous new research, reception history, careful description, and dizzying creativity, this book is an interdisciplinary love letter to a record whose sounds, politics, and expressions of gendered identity grow more relevant each day"--

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance

2024-10-09 Performing Arts

Author : Paul Allain
Release : 2024-10-09
Genre : Performing Arts
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 797/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance by : Paul Allain

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance written by Paul Allain. This book was released on 2024-10-09. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is theatre? What is performance? What connects them and how are they different? How have they been shaped by events, people, companies, practices and ideas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? And where are they heading next? The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance offers some answers to these big questions. This third edition has been updated to now include over 160 entries, with all entries brought up to date and new topics added, including Caryl Churchill, Black Lives Matter and Hamilton, among others. This book provides an accessible, informative and engaging introduction to important people and companies, events, concepts and practices that have defined the complementary fields of theatre and performance studies. Three easy-to-use alphabetized sections include entries on topics and people ranging from performance artists Marina Abramović and Pope.L to directors Vsevolod Meyerhold and Robert Wilson, the haka, Taking the Knee and disability, theatre and performance. Each entry includes important historical and contextual information, extensive cross-referencing, detailed analysis and an annotated bibliography. The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance is a perfect reference guide for the keen student and the passionate theatre-goer alike.

On Minimalism

2023-04-25 Music

Author : Kerry O'Brien
Release : 2023-04-25
Genre : Music
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 099/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis On Minimalism by : Kerry O'Brien

Download or read book On Minimalism written by Kerry O'Brien. This book was released on 2023-04-25. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revisionist history of minimalism's transformative rise, through the voices of the musicians who created it. When composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich began creating hypnotically repetitive music in the 1960s, it upended the world of American composition. But minimalism was more than a classical phenomenon—minimalism changed everything. Its static harmonies and groovy pulses swept through the broader avant-garde landscape, informing the work of Yoko Ono and Brian Eno, John and Alice Coltrane, Pauline Oliveros and Julius Eastman, and many others. On Minimalism moves from the style's beginnings in psychedelic counterculture through its present-day influences on ambient jazz, doom metal, and electronic music. The editors look beyond the major figures to highlight crucial and diverse voices—especially women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ musicians—that have shaped the genre. Featuring more than a hundred rare historical sources, On Minimalism curates this history anew, documenting one of the most important musical movements of our time.

New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera

2024-09-16 Performing Arts

Author : Jingyi Zhang
Release : 2024-09-16
Genre : Performing Arts
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 833/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera by : Jingyi Zhang

Download or read book New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera written by Jingyi Zhang. This book was released on 2024-09-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera is the first and only book that approaches the dramaturgy of contemporary opera from the unique perspectives of living practitioners (composers, librettists, directors, producers, singers, dramaturgs, and administrators) who provide valuable first-hand insight into the coming into being of an opera today. The edited collection captures the ethos of contemporary opera-making in the global context and serves as a timely intervention in addressing the array of heterogenous dramaturgical practices that go into making an opera today in an era of flux. The collection is split into four parts: Part I presents the new dramaturgical considerations that the field is currently exploring; Part II investigates the ways in which non-Western cultures and perspectives can and have been represented; Part III explores the roles of space, nature, and environment in contemporary opera; and finally, Part IV looks at the ways in which technology has intersected with the creation of contemporary opera. With perspectives from practitioners throughout, this collection is essential reading for advanced students, researchers, and scholars of contemporary opera, as well as practicing dramaturgs in this field.

Popular eBooks

Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama

Laurie Anderson's Big Science

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance

On Minimalism

New Dramaturgies of Contemporary Opera

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