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Posts tagged 'Erin Lesser'

Kate Soper Closes 2015's Resonant Bodies Festival with Members of Wet Ink

Since its founding in 2013, The Resonant Bodies Festival has been the premiere venue for the performance of new vocal works in New York. Tonight at Roulette, the festival concludes with a trio of vocalists performing repertoire from around the world, and across the spectrum of contemporary compositional styles. Our very own PSNY composer Kate Soper is featured in tonight's performance, closing out the festival with selections from Ipsa-Dixit (2010-2015), a musical theater piece that "explores the treachery of language". Accompanied by members of the Wet Ink EnsembleErin Lesser, flute; Josh Modney, violin; Ian Antonio, percussion—Soper's work uses texts from sources as varied as Plato, Lydia Davis, Wittgenstein, and Freud. Two sections from Ipsa-Dixit are available from PSNY, both duets between voice and another instrument: Cipher, for voice and violin, and Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say, for voice and flute. 

For a preview of tonight's festival-closer, check out Soper performing Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say with Erin Lesser at EMPAC: 

Kate Soper: Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say from Kate Soper on Vimeo.

 

Kate Soper in the New York Times

The New York Times' "In Performance" series is a regular feature of their Culture section's video archive. Recently they've chosen to feature composer Kate Soper performing a section of her own work, "Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say," along with flutist Erin Lesser. A three-part piece based on texts by Lydia Davis, it explores tensions and serendipities between written text, spoken text, the human voice, and the voice as played through instruments. Soper writes, "Lydia Davis' words suggested an unhinged virtuosity and idiosyncratic, multi-layered musical reading that took me from screwball comedy to paired musical gymnastics: the flute becomes a kind of Iron Man suit for the voice, amplifying it to new planes of expressivity, intensity, and insanity as the two players struggle, with a single addled brain, to navigate the treacherous labyrinth of simple logic."

Click below to see the video at the New York Times.

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