I will be presenting a free concert performance of my one act opera The Wild Men at The OFF Center on May 17 (8pm). Come on out for a glass of wine and a taste of the future of opera.

But Balenciaga is offering up some competition

I’m researching Dove for my work LOST ANGELS

I drive my work from the inside as a singer-composer-artist.

I cultivate the talents of a committed collaborative team of musicians, dancers, producers, managers, and designers.

Pop opera is my generation’s version of grand opera. I study the history of opera and trace it through pop culture.

I compose works that move through performance (stage presence, persona), music (voice and accompaniment), and design (costume, set). My scores include specifications/provocations for all components.

The scores provide the potential for theater to happen.

My presentation style is androgynous. It is of the earth, and thereby both common and decadent. Androgyny is a proclamation of my openness to the spaces between. To the unknown.

I begin by listening. I listen to my skin tingling with warmth or cold. I listen to the pulse of my heartbeat.

My listening then reaches into my environment. To the trees. To the man-made things. To the stones.

I have friends that aid my listening. Friends that activate my surroundings. Wind is one of my dearest friends, and was a trusty companion during my residency at Playa.

The sheer volume of sound that roared through the trees just past the chicken coop will remain in my memory forever.

I am friends with the birds. The birds at Playa were particularly helpful allies in the process of making music. Each day they sang the melodic dictionary. They also sang to me the contours of space, placing me on the map. The Sand Hill Cranes trumpeted their arrival from places far, far away. They remained in residence throughout the month of my residence. Their commitment to each other inspired me to commit to my work.

To be so small in a land so vast. How do you render that in sound? How low would we have to tune the contrabasses to mirror a fraction of the high desert’s profundity? Oddly enough, alone in my cabin, so far from my life in San Francisco, I found that electronic sounds could be used to approximate and suggest vastness in ways I had not encountered with acoustic instrumentation. This came as a shock to me, yet is is precisely the kind of discovery that can be made when one strips back obligations and allow themselves to be fully engaged with their work for days on end.

I was attracted to Playa because of the solitude I knew I would find there. It provided the perfect context to complete the score of my song cycle The Wild Men – a tale of a man who gets lost in the woods and is forced to confront his own animal nature. I was able to let my mind drift deeply into his world. I could live into his reality.  In the end I found a sound I wasn’t anticipating at all. It is smoky. Somewhat jazzy. It is sparce. It is filled with strings. And it feels absolutely right for this work. I have Playa to thank for the sound I found. For brokering my relationship with a landscape so powerful, so full of mystery.

The places that shape us are embedded in our work. If you hear me sing of wind in future songs, you’ll know which wind I’m referring to.

My mother sent me a super thoughtful care package to welcome me home, and in it was a black and white photobook of Martha Graham’s set collaborations with Noguchi. She bought it at a library sale in Raleigh. Aren’t library sales the best? It stirred me up. I’ve been playing with blocks in my studio, imagining architecture that would complement the sonic landscapes I’m exploring, and I was reinvigorated to seek out potential collaborators to partner up on some of these upcoming performances.

I like how the bold simplicity of Noguchi’s forms and SPACE (so much space) allows for the resonance of Martha’s epic visions to swim around and reverberate. Resonant minimalism is my jam.