Bassist

Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies (2024) is an uncategorizable work of music-theater: part opera, part song cycle, part vocal symphony. Based on poetry by Jorie Graham, the piece is a portrait of our moment in history as seen through the eyes of a cancer patient undergoing a drastic medical procedure. As the patient experiences the transformation of her own body, she meditates on questions that range from the personal to the cosmic: in a time when life is more and more virtual, what does it mean to have a body? And above all, after our species has poisoned the planet with uncountable toxins, can we still listen to what the earth has to tell us?

EPSG:4326

“Music for New Bodies” at Tanglewood

Tanglewood Music Center

AMOC* presents the New York premiere of Rome is Falling, conceived and composed by AMOC* bassist Doug Balliett. Rome is a zany lesson on the absurdity of what can happen when influential people lose power. In his ever-prescient, ever-joyful way, Balliett brings audiences of all ages on a musical journey through a world that includes lollipops, an absurd number of characters, and an emperor with a chicken fetish. Rome was one of the world’s great civilizations, yet, like all empires, it fell. Why and how? The story is a mixture of politics, betrayal, immigration, religion, climate, pandemic, natural disaster, xenophobia, and bad luck–so much of what makes us human and that we continue to face today.

“Rome Is Falling” – Run AMOC

Lincoln Center

Early music band Ruckus and AMOC* member Keir GoGwilt celebrate the legacy of Niel Gow (b. Perthshire, 1727-1807), one of Scotland’s most important musicians, with the New York premiere of a dynamic folk-baroque feast of Scottish dance music. Weaving together these jubilant, hard-driving and nostalgic tunes into large-scale dramatic forms, Ruckus and GoGwilt bring the 18th-century tradition of blending folk and art music to the present day. The evening is presented in collaboration with Nadia Sirota’s Living Music Underground.

“Edinburgh Rollick” – Run AMOC

Jaffe Drive

GRAMMY-nominated Seth Parker Woods, one of the foremost interpreters and scholars of esteemed contemporary classical music composer Julius Eastman, curates a weekend-long celebration of Eastman’s art and the greater context of his life, creativity, and humanity. As part of the Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center, this free marathon of Eastman’s work on Josie Robertson Plaza will also showcase music by Arthur Russell.

“Julius Eastman: The End Is Not in Sight” and King Britt – Run AMOC

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

GRAMMY-nominated Seth Parker Woods, one of the foremost interpreters and scholars of the esteemed contemporary classical music composer Julius Eastman, curates a weekend-long celebration of Eastman’s art and the greater context of his life, creativity, and humanity. As part of the Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center, the weekend opens with the New York premiere of a boundary-breaking concert at David Geffen Hall, showcasing AMOC* members Davóne Tines, Conor Hanick, and Coleman Itzkoff, alongside colleagues including JIJI, Adam Tendler, and artists from Wild Up.

“Julius Eastman: A Power Greater Than” – Run AMOC

AMOC* opens our milestone Run AMOC* Festival with the New York premiere of The Comet / Poppea. This production fuses Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea (1642) with W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story The Comet (1920). Directed by Yuval Sharon, it explores power, survival, and race through the lens of cosmic disaster. George Lewis’s evocative new score—a 2025 Pulitzer finalist—links these narratives in a visionary operatic landscape. The stellar cast features AMOC* members Davóne Tines and Anthony Roth Costanzo. Tony Award-winner and Lincoln Center Artist-in-Residence (2022–24) Mimi Lien’s rotating set merges ancient Rome with comet-ravaged New York, creating an apocalyptic, immersive experience.

“The Comet / Poppea” – Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center

### Event Description: Rome is Falling

**Event Title:** Rome is Falling

**Date:** August 10, 2024

**Time:** 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

**Location:** The Clark Art Institute, 225 South St, Williamstown, MA 01267, United States

**Event Overview:**
Join us for an extraordinary performance of "Rome is Falling," an opera composed by Doug Balliett, a member of the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC). This captivating opera delves into the fall of one of the greatest civilizations in history—Rome. Through a blend of politics, betrayal, immigration, religion, climate change, pandemics, natural disasters, xenophobia, and sheer bad luck, the story mirrors many challenges we face today.

**Performance Highlights:**
- A zany and insightful lesson on the absurdity of power and its loss.
- A musical journey filled with humor, featuring a multitude of characters and an emperor with a peculiar chicken obsession.
- Suitable for audiences of all ages, making it a delightful experience for families and individuals alike.

**Ticket Information:**
- General Admission: $10
- Members: $8
- Students: $7
- Children (15 and under): $5

**Additional Information:**
- Tickets can be purchased through the Clark Art Institute's website: [Event Details and Tickets](https://www.clarkart.edu/event/detail/2617-91599)
- For more information, contact the Clark Art Institute at 413-458-2303.

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Don't miss this unique and entertaining performance that brings history to life with a modern twist. Join us at the Clark Art Institute for an unforgettable evening!

Rome is Falling

Clark Art Institute

Join us as AMOC* artists traverse centuries and landscapes in two programs that bring audiences from the Summer sunset to theatrical night. The first, at 7:00pm, includes Cassandra Miller’s About Bach—a patient meditation on melody, memory, and the passage of time at the day’s end—and Andrew McIntosh’s Little Jimmy, which combines field recordings, piano, and percussion to reflect Southern California’s terrifyingly sublime expanse.

Salon With Amoc*

Baryshnikov Arts Center

The French Dispatch

Colburn School

The Huntington

Music Academy of the West

The Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza

AMOC* celebrates Latin American poets and the voices of women with its production of John Adams’s El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered, featuring a libretto by Peter Sellars and production conceived by AMOC* soprano Julia Bullock, with a return to The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for a second year, capping off a tour of cities across the US.

El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered in NYC

The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist

American Modern Opera Company’s (AMOC) production of contemporary composer John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with libretto by Peter Sellars and concept by Julia Bullock is a chamber music arrangement created and conducted by Christian Reif and was first performed at The Met Cloisters in 2018 in the beautiful San Martín at Fuentidueña chapel. The New York Times calls it “intimate, affecting and quietly rich with activism.” This rarely performed work celebrates Latin American poets and voices of women. Says Julia Bullock, “one of opera’s fastest-rising stars” (Vanity Fair), who curated the selections being performed and will sing in the performance, “El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered ruminates on the notion that with the promise of new life, there is the equal threat of inexplicable violence and sacrifice.”

El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered

Stanford University

AMOC* celebrates Latin American poets and the voices of women with its production of John Adams’s El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered with a tour across the United States. The piece, with a libretto by Peter Sellars and concept by AMOC* member Julia Bullock, will appear from December 11 to 21, 2023 at Opera Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska, Stanford Live in Stanford, California, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut before returning to The Cathedral of St. John the Divine for a second year.

El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered on Tour

5BMF presents Theotokos, the resident ensemble of St. Mary's Grand Street, in a side-by-side program of old and new church music. The liturgical traditions of the Baroque are linked with contemporary compositional voices in Cantatas: Yesterday and Today, featuring works by Telemann performed alongside two newly-composed cantatas by bassist, composer and director of Theotokos, Doug Balliett.

Five Boroughs Music Festival presents THEOTOKOS

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church

Ruckus is a “shapeshifting” Baroque band with a fresh, visceral approach to early music, formed by some of today’s leading soloists of this repertoire. Their collaboration with acclaimed English-American flutist Emi Ferguson, recorded for Ruckus’s acclaimed debut album, Fly The Coop, is a joyous, kaleidoscopic romp through some of Bach’s most playful and transcendent works. Savor these new arrangements of Bach’s flute sonatas and keyboard preludes that explode his bass lines into a rainbow of textures and colors, continually shifting like light over the landscape as Ferguson’s flute lines dance above.

Ruckus with Emi Ferguson, flute: Fly the Coop

Hobby Center for the Performing Arts

Kicking off The Clark’s Concerts at Conforti series, AMOC* performs a program on journeying, featuring music composed and arranged by AMOC* musicians.  AMOC* Company Members Doug Balliett, Emi Ferguson,  Keir GoGwilt, and special guest Jordan Dodso blend folk, baroque, and classical influences to tell musical stories about journeys across the Camino de Santiago, the Irish Sea, and the continental United States. Combining spoken narration

Concerts at Conforti: Amocaway From Home

This chamber music arrangement—specially written for AMOC*—was first performed at The Met Cloisters in 2018 in the beautiful San Martín at Fuentidueña chapel. The New York Times called it “intimate, affecting and quietly rich with activism.” The piece, which celebrates Latin American poets and the voices of women, returns for a one-night-only engagement this holiday season at a different New York City landmark.

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine

Composers in Paris took pride in absorbing the artistry of others and building on it to create their own auditory worlds. Composers like Milhaud, Saint-Saëns, Debussy, and Ravel drew inspiration from Baroque composers and idioms to create the masterworks in this concert.

A Weekend in Paris: Beg, Borrow and Steal

Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center

Step into the famed halls and studios of Le Conservatoire de Paris, the epicenter of Paris’ most innovative musical minds where, whether as student or professor, composers like Debussy, Lili Boulanger, Franck, and Fauré reflected the great artistic and intellectual movements of their times.

Join us for the Music Prelude for Aestas Trio’s performance of Tailleferre’s Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello and Wynona Yinuo Wang’s performance of Selections from Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin

A Weekend in Paris: Le Conservatoire

Salons were the cultural and intellectual hub of Paris; open forums for the city’s most creative minds to engage in thought-provoking and often subversive conversations. These events, along with the famed Masquerade balls, were rife with stirring and seductive new ideas, art, literature, and music. The pieces on this program emerged from these glamorous salons and range from the charming piano duo by Debussy and Sarasate’s devilishly virtuosic Carmen Fantasy to Ravel and Caplet’s decadent and macabre evocations of Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Masque of the Red Death.

A Weekend in Paris: The Salon and The Masquerade

What creative genius’ work has permeated the culture and had more influence than that of the Bard himself? Join us for this intermission-free Wednesday evening event as we enjoy music from Shakespeare’s time and hear some of his most famous words composed into song. Following Korngold’s popular incidental music for the comedy Much Ado About Nothing, composed in 1920, we conclude with Beethoven’s “Ghost” Piano Trio, which came out of sketches for an opera based on Macbeth that he never completed. Stay after the concert for a special event in the Wu Tsai QRT.yrd to enjoy more music and a feast featuring the best of San Diego’s culinary and craft cocktail scene!

Join us for the musical prelude with Pelia Quartet for a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat Major, Op. 74 “Harp.”

Under the Influence: Shakespeare's World

The Baroque period contains riches that inspired composers above any other. We begin with J.S Bach’s immortal concerto for two violins, and continue to explore some of the most captivating pieces of his era and beyond, with C.P.E. Bach’s (his son) Cello Concerto, Biber’s brilliant and irreverent Battalia, a commentary on the Thirty Year War that engulfed Europe at the time, and Grosso Mogul, Vivaldi’s fiery and dazzling concerto.

Beyond Bach

Interdependent yet independent, these selections explore the musical concept of counterpoint—the relationship between two or more musical lines or voices, used by composers spanning the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th Century. The evening includes the world première of a multimedia version of Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint, commissioned by La Jolla Music Society for SummerFest, the Synergy Initiative, and Lincoln Center, which will feature clarinetists from all of the Lincoln Center performing ensembles.

Point Counterpoint

As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Ruckus and Davóne Tines invite us to reflect: What is your hand in this? Through a bold reimagining of songs, hymns, and ballads spanning four centuries, this arresting program confronts the tensions and aspirations at the heart of the American experiment. With Ruckus—“the world’s only period-instrument rock band” (San Francisco Classical Voice)—and the “immense power and fervor” (Los Angeles Times) of boundary-breaking vocalist Davóne Tines, the performance channels the spirit of revolution to pose timeless questions of justice, compassion, and community.

Ruckus Davóne Tines, bass-baritone

Sixth & I

Bass-baritone Davóne Tines isn’t just a powerhouse vocalist—he’s a force of nature. Hailed as “a singer of immense power and fervor,” and “[one] of the most powerful voices of our time” (Los Angeles Times), he brings more than just breathtaking sound to the stage. With boundless curiosity and razor-sharp intellect, Tines delves into the stories that connect us, exploring themes of perseverance, identity, and the connections that shape our lives.

Bassist

Doug Balliett

Events

Upcoming events

Jan 28, 2026

Ruckus Davóne Tines, bass-baritone · Washington Performing Arts

Jan 31, 2026

Ruckus and Davóne Tines · Celebrity Series of Boston

Past events

Aug 7, 2025

“Music for New Bodies” at Tanglewood · AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

Jul 13, 2025

“Rome Is Falling” – Run AMOC · AMOC / American Modern Opera Company

About

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