Composer

Trombonist

Artistic Director

### Event Description: The Comet / Poppea - Curtis Institute of Music

**Event:** The Comet / Poppea  
**Presented by:** Curtis Opera Theatre  
**Date:** November 1, 2024  
**Time:** 7:00 p.m.  
**Location:** 23rd Street Armory

**Overview:**
Curtis Opera Theatre proudly presents the East Coast premiere of "The Comet / Poppea," an innovative operatic production that intertwines two distinct yet thematically connected works. This unique performance juxtaposes George Lewis's "The Comet," based on W.E.B. Du Bois’s proto-Afrofuturist science fiction short story, with Claudio Monteverdi’s "L’incoronazione di Poppea," a hot-blooded political thriller from 1643.

**Concept and Direction:**
The production is directed and conceived by MacArthur Award-winner Yuval Sharon. The stage is designed as a turntable divided into two halves, allowing the two worlds to unfold simultaneously. The rotation of the stage creates a visual and sonic spiral, inviting audiences to experience associations, dissociations, collisions, and confluences.

**Musical Direction:**
The performance features a stellar cast of Curtis singers, led by conductor Marc Lowenstein, known for his genre-crossing conducting career.

**Program:**
- **The Comet**  
  - **Music:** George Lewis  
  - **Libretto:** Douglas Kearney  
  - **Language:** English (with English supertitles)  
  - **Adapted from:** W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story "The Comet"

- **L’incoronazione di Poppea**  
  - **Music:** Claudio Monteverdi  
  - **Libretto:** Francesco Busenello  
  - **Language:** Italian (with English supertitles)

**Additional Performances:**
- **Saturday, November 2, 2024:** 7:00 p.m.
- **Sunday, November 3, 2024:** 2:00 p.m.

**Subscription Information:**
Subscribe to the 2024-25 season to secure the best seats at the best prices.

**Special Thanks:**
This production is realized through a landmark partnership among organizations across the United States, produced by Anthony Roth Costanzo and Cath Brittan, The Industry, AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), and Curtis Institute of Music. Curtis’ Centennial Season is supported by various benefactors, including Derek and Sissela Bok, the Mary Louise Curtis Bok Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

**Tickets:**
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Curtis Institute of Music website.

Join us for an unforgettable evening of operatic innovation and cultural transformation!

The Comet / Poppea

23rd Street Armory

### Event Description: The Comet / Poppea

**Event Title:** The Comet / Poppea

**Dates:** June 14 - June 23, 2024

**Venue:** WAREHOUSE at The Geffen Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles  
**Address:** 152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90012, United States

**Overview:**
The Comet / Poppea is a groundbreaking opera that intertwines two distinct narratives to explore themes of cultural transformation and double consciousness. This innovative production juxtaposes Claudio Monteverdi’s 1643 Italian opera *L’incoronazione di Poppea* with the world premiere of *The Comet*, based on W.E.B. Du Bois's 1924 science-fiction short story. 

**Concept and Direction:**
- **Composer:** George Lewis
- **Libretto:** Douglas Kearney
- **Director:** Yuval Sharon

**Featured Artists:**
- Anthony Roth Costanzo
- Davóne Tines
- Doug Balliet
- Miranda Cuckson
- Emi Ferguson
- Keir GoGwilt
- Coleman Itzkoff

**Production and Partnerships:**
Developed over six years, The Comet / Poppea is a collaborative effort produced by Anthony Roth Costanzo and Cath Brittan, in partnership with The Industry, AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), and the Curtis Institute of Music. The Comet, composed by George Lewis with a libretto by Douglas Kearney, is commissioned by AMOC.

**Performance Details:**
The opera is presented on a turntable stage divided into two halves, allowing the worlds of ancient Rome and 1920s New York City to unfold simultaneously. This unique staging creates a visual and sonic spiral, inviting audiences to experience the interplay of these two narratives. As the performance progresses, elements from each story begin to intersect, highlighting the dialogue between the works and their contemporary relevance.

**Public Talks:**
In addition to the performances, a series of public talks featuring members of the cast and creative team will be held during the show's run. More details will be announced.

**Tickets and Additional Information:**
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the [event website](https://www.moca.org/program/the-comet-poppea).

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Join us for this extraordinary event that challenges and redefines the boundaries of classical music and opera.

EPSG:4326

The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

The Comet / Poppea brings together seemingly disparate worlds connected by stories of cultural transformation. The work juxtaposes Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), an Italian opera from 1643 unfolding among the social divisions of ancient Rome; and the world premiere of The Comet, based on the 1924 science-fiction short story by sociologist and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois. Set in 1920s New York City, “The Comet” depicts a Black man and white woman as the only survivors after a comet hits Earth.

Museum of Contemporary Art

Ensemble 20/21 celebrates this year’s composer in residence with a “Portrait of George Lewis,” featuring works by the award-winning composer, musicologist, author, computer-installation artist, and trombonist. Since the early 1970s, Mr. Lewis has expanded the frontiers of experimental music with wildly inventive works that bridge traditions of acoustic and electric, American and European, rhythmic and free form. This final concert of the season honors the MacArthur Fellow and pioneering legend who continues to sit at the vanguard of contemporary musical expression.

Portrait of George Lewis

Curtis Institute of Music Lenfest Hall

DCWS trumpeter Robert White is joined by four of his faculty colleagues from Western Michigan University for a performance including the premiere of a new quintet by George Lewis as part of our Resonate project.

Western Michigan University Brass Quintet

Hagopian World of Rugs

London Sinfonietta travels to the future with three UK premieres and a favourite past commission. Sky Macklay’s Microvariations will lull you into a false sense of tonality before whisking you on a whistle-stop, microtonal tour of 19th Century European orchestras, “a fast-forward and transcontinental sonic truncation and fantasy on” the journey of British conductor George Thomas Smart and his tuning fork in 1825. In George Lewis’ lively Tales of the Traveller, the eponymous hero travels the limits of imagination: the piece allows a soloist total free reign to improvise against a notated ensemble part. After the interval, Katherine Balch’s “serenade to lost or wasted time” plays a soprano soloist against four hand-held cassette tape recorders to distort and fragment our memory of the piece even as it is played, while the programme is rounded off by Michel van der Aa’s latest commission for the ensemble, Shades of Red, which illustrates the different perceived properties of the colour red, alongside a soundtrack which confronts the players with their own warped and distorted soundworld.

New Traditions

Southbank Centre

We mark the anniversary of our first-ever concert with a celebration of the eclectic, provocative, surprising and beautiful music we have commissioned and performed throughout our history. Performing a mix of new commissions and classic chamber repertoire written specially for the ensemble over the years, we will be joined by special guests for a festive evening of new music. 

Decades

MacArthur fellow George Lewis is a composer, musicologist, and trombonist who serves as the Artistic Director of the International Contemporary Ensemble. On this concert, the US premiere of his Blombos Workshop (2020) for piano, which engages Sylvia Wynter’s celebration of the human, and Assemblage (2013) for nonet, which explores in musical form the practice of assemblage—artmaking that recombines and recontextualizes collections of natural and human-made objects—are performed by members of the Ensemble on a special double bill with Amina Claudine Myers. This multidimensional artist and creator is joined by her trio and actress, vocalist, and playwright Richarda Abrams to perform Stay in the Light, a partly notated, partly improvised composition that highlights her spiritual connection to the universe and reinforces positivity, faith, and love for all living things.

Artists Studio: Double Bill: George Lewis/amina Claudine Myers

Park Avenue Armory

The American Composers Orchestra premieres music by hundreds of today’s top composers, and no two concerts are alike. In this program, they offer a wide-ranging musical testament to humanity’s bold endeavors. Works include a multimedia rendering of a famed (and ultimately doomed) expedition to the North Pole, written by Nina C. Young; a world premiere by composer and jazz pianist Guillermo Klein; a world premiere by George Lewis, one of the leading exponents of experimental music today; an Augusta Read Thomas composition originally written to precede Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony; and a world premiere by Jack Hughes.

American Composers Orchestra

Carnegie Hall

The Rhythm Method presents a concert of contemporary works for string quartet, joined by contemporary performance students. Works by George Lewis, Shelley Washington, and members of the Rhythm Method will be performed.

Guest Artist: The Rhythm Method

Boston Conservatory at Berklee

This concert brings together improvisatory works by two of the most formidable composers of our time, Roscoe Mitchell and George Lewis. In the composer’s words, Lewis’s Artificial Life “[presents] a model of group improvisation as an emergent phenomenon arising from negotiation and local intelligence.” Mitchell’s “Cards from At 440 Oakwood Drive” are excerpted from an in-progress multi-movement work that is being composed for Emi Ferguson, Ruckus, and the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet as a co-commission with Metropolis Ensemble.  The “Cards” invite the performers into Mitchell’s language through unmeasured melodic and harmonic material, leaving the creation of the musical structure to the performers.

Ojai Dawns: Mitchell & Lewis

Besant Hill School

This cutting-edge concert is a vital part of Carnegie Hall’s Pierre Boulez centennial celebration, combining the creative forces of the International Contemporary Ensemble with the latest breakthroughs in responsive music-performance technology. It features a world premiere that incorporates the machine-learning advancements of SOMAX 2, developed with researchers at IRCAM (Boulez’s world-renowned institute for computer and electro-acoustic music and innovation). The program also includes works by Boulez and leading composers inspired by his legacy, including longtime IRCAM researcher and visionary composer Philippe Manoury; genre-defying American multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey; and the late Kaija Saariaho.

George Lewis

Composer, Trombonist, Artistic Director

Events

Upcoming events

Jan 30, 2025

International Contemporary Ensemble · Carnegie Hall

Past events

1 - 3 Nov, 2024

The Comet / Poppea · Curtis Institute of Music

14 - 23 Jun, 2024

The Comet / Poppea · AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

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