SEASON NEWS:
Dear friends,
I would love to share some season news with you. I recently returned from the Sound Res residency in Lecce, Italy, where our team finished the visual bank of my opera, Oceanic Verses. The images below are from my long time collaborator, filmmaker Ali Hossaini. I am thrilled to be working with writer Donna Di Novelli to complete the libretto; the work will premiere at the Kennedy Center, and River to River with the Washington Chorus conducted by Julian Wachner summer 2012.
This year will see two more premieres of House of Solitude written for Cornelius Dufallo at the Harare Festival in Zimbabwe, Africa, and at Suny Fredonia. I have been awarded a Hermitage Retreat for the projects aforementioned, and below (all Beth Morrison Projects and VisionIntoArt productions).
This Fall, I begin my LMCC residency at Governor's Island, and this month, my works will be featured on September 18th at Galapagos Art Space and September 21-24 at BAM's Next Wave festival on the Kronos Quartet's Awakening concert. Hope to see you there!
On September 19, at 4pm, tune into Q2 New Canon Chat with Olivia Marlowe-Giovetti tied to the Kronos Awakening concert at BAM; I'll be talking with cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.
Lastly, I am thrilled to be a Carnegie Hall featured artist this year as part of their Musical Exchange Project. I will be leading a project in January and will be traveling to Mexico shortly thereafter.
Thanks for listening, and happy Fall!
yours,
Paola
www.paolaprestini.com
www.visionintoart.com
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UPCOMING PERFORMANCES:
 a scene from Armenia from Kronos' Awakening at BAM 
On September 18 at 8pm, Composer/Author Daniel Felsenfeld curates latest installment of popular Opera Grows in Brooklyn series, based on texts by Brooklyn writers.
Two Brooklyn opera companies, American Opera Projects (AOP) and OperaOn Tap (OOT), in association with The Brooklyn Book Festival, present Opera Grows in BOOKlyn at Galapagos Art Space, an evening of vocal music based on texts by renowned and up-and-coming Brooklyn writers. Opera Grows in BOOKlyn will feature works by David Lang, One Ring Zero, Paola Prestini and Donna Di Novelli (excerpts from De Deo with the fabulous Amy Shoremount-Obra and David Adam Moore), and other composers based on poems, short stories, plays, and even cookbooks with Brooklyn origins.
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The following images are from Oceanic Verses, starring Helga Davis, Claudio Prima and the dance company, Fabbrica dei Gesti.
Oceanic Verses includes direction by Kevin Newbury, libretto by Donna Di Novelli and film by Ali Hossaini.
You can see our promo, here:
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Aging Magician premiered at this years 21c Liederabend at the Kitchen. Deemed "an enigmatic detente" with "soulful" and "potent" performances" by the NY Times, the work is now being expanded to include the vision of the amazing Julian Crouch, with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and ETHEL string quartet with Rinde Eckert and Gabriel Kahane and instrument design by Mark Stewart.
S. Katy Tucker, is the video artist and projection designer--her beautiful work can be seen at left (Photos by Jill Steinberg of the production with direction by Ali Hossaini, and guest performances by Melvin van Peebles and John Buffalo Mailer) can be seen here:
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House of Solitude premiered at River to River Festival this summer and was written for Cornelius Dufallo.
House of Solitude takes place within a house where three different walls house separate channels of video. The film and sound world hover between the poles of the essential human predicament: the frailty and folly of everyday existence on one hand (at one point in the electronics, a drumset made of found sounds plays a washing machine and an EKG), and the attempt to attain enlightenment and divinity, on the other. This tension throws the poet into nature as inspiration, and solitude as the context of life.
This piece tightly incorporates sound and lighting design, and projected visuals by my longtime collaborator Carmen Kordas, with the musicians’ performance through the use of the K-Bow, (Keith Mc Millan's sensor bow that can wirelessly transmit detailed real-time information to a computer). This level of integration was inspired by the concept of solitude within the labyrinth of life; the physical performances will be the sole and direct cause of all that occurs onstage. Photos by Jill Steinberg.
The video can be seen here:
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