Lighting Designer

HARAWI realizes Olivier Messiaen’s deeply affecting, hour-long song cycle for voice and piano in new physical and dramatic dimensions, featuring soprano Julia Bullock, pianist Conor Hanick, choreographer/dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, with direction by Zack Winokur. Moving from duet to quartet, this production breaks open Messiaen’s cycle, connects movement to music, and grapples with the intensity of love and loss.

EPSG:4326

Harawi California Tour

 University of California, Santa Barbara

Cal Performances

The Walls Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

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.

The Comet / Poppea

Museum of Contemporary Art

Taylor Mac, the MacArthur Fellow, Kennedy Prize winner, and Pulitzer Prize finalist, visits with with the West Coast premiere of Bark of Millions, an epic four-hour “parade trance extravaganza.”  Bark of Millions is a rock opera meditation on queerness featuring 54 original songs (one song per year since the Stonewall uprising) inspired by queer antecedents throughout world history and performed by a diverse cast of 13 ensemble members and a band of 11 musicians. As in his legendary retelling of American history, 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Mac, his cast, and longtime collaborators Matt Ray (music) and Machine Dazzle (costumes) use music, dance, and drag spectacle to subvert and deconstruct conventional narratives, and joyfully, transgressively celebrate queerness in all its forms. “Taylor Mac uses his many talents to get us to listen, think and feel. The effect is heartening, vital and liberating” (The London Times).

Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions

University of California, Berkeley

AMOC*’s production of HARAWI realizes Olivier Messiaen’s deeply affecting, hour-long song cycle for voice and piano in new physical and dramatic dimensions, featuring soprano Julia Bullock, pianist Conor Hanick, choreographer/dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, with direction by Zack Winokur. Moving from duet to quartet, this production breaks open Messiaen’s cycle, connects movement to music, and grapples with the intensity of love and loss.

Harawi

Broken Theater is a new work created within the walls of La MaMa that melds live dance-theater, music, and cinematic beauty. Twelve artists meet in a ghost theater where they grapple with love, humiliation, and loss at the cost of each other. When the script has disappeared, when the audience is gone, where are the lines between the part you play and the person you are?

Broken Theater: Benefit Night

Ellen Stewart Theatre

Bobbi Jene Smith’s Broken Theater

Superstar Joyce DiDonato invites us back to the Garden of Eden through this groundbreaking, through-performed, theatrical program that spans four centuries of music exploring our relationship with the natural world. Joined by the award-winning Il Pomo d’Oro orchestra conducted by Zefira Valova, she lends her celebrated voice to questions at the very core of our existence as channeled through composers including Handel, Gluck, Wagner, Mahler, Ives, Copland, and Oscar-winner Rachel Portman (Emma). “With each passing day,” DiDonato shares, “I trust more and more in the perfect balance, astonishing mystery and guiding force of the natural world around us, how much Mother Nature has to teach us. EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots and to explore whether or not we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being, to create a new EDEN from within and plant seeds of hope for the future.”

Joyce DiDonato, Mezzo-soprano: EDEN

Richardson Auditorium

Superstar Joyce DiDonato invites us back to the Garden of Eden through this groundbreaking, through-performed, theatrical program that spans four centuries of music exploring our relationship with the natural world. Joined by the award-winning Il Pomo d’Oro orchestra conducted by Zefira Valova, she lends her celebrated voice to questions at the very core of our existence as channeled through composers including Handel, Gluck, Wagner, Mahler, Ives, Copland, and Oscar-winner Rachel Portman (Emma). “With each passing day,” DiDonato shares, “I trust more and more in the perfect balance, astonishing mystery and guiding force of the natural world around us, how much Mother Nature has to teach us. EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots and to explore whether or not we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being, to create a new EDEN from within and plant seeds of hope for the future.” The evening will also feature a guest appearance by the Princeton Girlchoir.

Joyce DiDonato: EDEN

From the expansive musical mind of Joyce DiDonato comes Eden, the renowned mezzo-soprano’s latest project exploring the majesty, might, and mystery of the natural world. As in her well-received Cal Performances program In War & Peace: Harmony Through Music, DiDonato is joined by longtime partners, the early-music ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro. The theatrical, semi-staged concert features music from the 17th to 21st centuries by Handel, Gluck, Cavalli, Wagner, Mahler, Ives, and Copland. Oscar-winning British composer Rachel Portman composes a new work specially for the project, setting a text by American poet Gene Scheer for The First Morning of the World. “Joyce sings and the world is suddenly brighter. She compels us to listen actively, to hear things anew” (Gramophone).

Joyce DiDonato: Eden

Harawi is a deeply affecting hour-long song cycle for soprano and piano written by Olivier Messiaen. In addition to Julia Bullock and Conor Hanick’s performance of this sweeping work, this production breaks open Messiaen’s musical explorations of love and death into a newly physicalized and theatrical dimension.

John Torres

Lighting Designer

Events

Past events

Sep 27 - Oct 4, 2024

Harawi California Tour · AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

14 - 23 Jun, 2024

The Comet / Poppea · The Industry

About

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