ADDDDDDDDD
ADDDDDDDDD
an opera by thingNY
Friday, Oct. 15, 2010 – 8pm
Part of the Joan Chambers Concert Series
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
Campana Chapel
150 Finoli Drive
Greensberg, PA 15601
FREE and open to the public
Focus. The composers of thingNY will tell you stories, sing you songs, scream in your face, try to sell you stuff and rant recklessly to themselves, filling your ears with the sweet sounds of excess. This new experimental opera by NYC’s freshest avant-garde band highlights the everyday excesses of our lives (workaholism, the thrill of consumption, the joys of gluttony, the elation of libation) and turns them into a suite of attention-deficient songs, monologues and infomercials.
For four years, new music ensemble thingNY has fused fluxus-esque experimentation with theatrically-charged chamber music. For its first album, this “creative new music cabal” [Time Out New York] has chosen to release a comic book + CD package of their experimental opera, ADDDDDDDDD.
With influences from Robert Ashley, Berg, Boulez, Braxton and Bjork, thingNY’s collaboratively-composed ADDDDDDDDD is an opera exploring the sweet sounds of excess. In a poetically verbose blend of noise, song, and spoken word, the five composer/performers highlight the everyday excesses of our lives as told through chants, rants, and advertising jingles.
The opera opens with the both earnest and absurd prologue, “Stories by Interesting People” but quickly becomes a montage of numbers, appointments, peeves, dreams and commercial interruptions in five-part harmony.
The album is now available, and its accompanying comic book libretto features artwork from various artists and musicians, including some of the band.
The New Yorker’s Alex Ross listed thingNY as part of the city’s burgeoning avant-garde classical music scene “striking an attitude of resistance to mainstream culture.” Comprised of composer-performers from the NYC metro area, thingNY revels in creating and performing unrelenting experimental new works with passion and enthusiasm, oscillating between the “sweeter sounds” and the “punishingly loud.” Since its first performance in October 2006, thingNY has produced four seasons of experimental music including a radio play by Beckett, a collaboratively-created opera and over a hundred premieres.
http://www.thingNY.com/opera
For more information, please contact Chris Bartley,
Music Director, University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg
clb200@pitt.edu
(724) 836-7120
CHICAGO SERIES Opener! Featuring Kris Covlin, saxophone