Sound Designer

Based on the Ernest Hemingway 1952 novella, this innovative adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea is the result of a collaboration between illustrious composer Paola Prestini, librettist Royce Vavrek, and conductor and stage director Karmina Šilec. Breathtakingly staged with eight pools of water enhanced with dynamic lighting, costumes, and sound, the performance combines the Hemingway text with original portraits of everyday life to create a look at aging, legacy, and our relationship to the ocean.

Onstage you’ll hear music from longtime collaborators and muses of Prestini’s including Jeffrey Zeigler as the featured cellist, as well as percussionists and a 16-person chorus featuring students from Ohio State’s School of Music. The cast brings to life the book’s pivotal characters: Santiago, Manolin, and the wife, who’s rewritten as La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, a goddess in the Afro-Caribbean faith Santería found floating off the coast of Cuba in 1628. Themes of baseball, ecology, religion, and economy paint a conflict between progress, tradition, passion, and exploitation, ultimately shedding contemporary perspectives on this timeless tale.

The Old Man And The Sea

Mershon Auditorium

Wexner Center for the Arts

With inclusion on several reviewer’s “best of the decade” lists when it was released including those of Paste, NPR, and Rolling Stone, Sufjan Stevens‘s acclaimed 2005 concept album Illinois enjoys cult status for its lush orchestrations and wildly inventive portrayal of the state’s people, landscapes, and history, complete with UFOs, zombies, and predatory wasps. This musically ambitious work, which weaves together cinematic orchestral anthems, jazz riffs, and other musical influences to explore wide-ranging narratives about blossoming queerness and self-exploration is expanded upon through a mix of live music and impressionistic choreography to revisit the beloved album’s themes of self-discovery.

EPSG:4326

Illinoise

Park Avenue Armory

Direct from its five-star UK run, the NYC premiere of Song of Songs fuses Pam Tanowitz’s choreography with Pulitzer Prize winner David Lang’s “dreamlike” (The Guardian) choral settings of the Biblical love poem, performed live by six musicians, with movement mined and abstracted from Jewish folk dance. Tanowitz’s intricate assemblage of style, form, and emotion "fills the stage with love” (The Guardian).

Pam Tanowitz | Song of Songs

New York City Center

An outcast fisherman was born under an unlucky star. But day after day, Santiago casts his nets, waiting for the catch that could redeem and reward his efforts. 

Breathtakingly staged with eight pools of water enhanced with dynamic lighting, costumes and sound, our latest collaboration with the groundbreaking Beth Morrison Projects  transforms Hemingway's Pulitzer-winning novel into a rumination on age, loss,  nature, and what it means to be beautifully, stubbornly human.

Sound Designer

Garth MacAleavey

Events

Upcoming events

20 - 23 May, 2027

The Old Man and the Sea · LA Opera

Past events

10 - 12 Oct, 2025

The Old Man And The Sea · Opera Columbus

2 - 23 Mar, 2024

Illinoise · Park Avenue Armory

About

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