CalArtians in NYC’s Prototype Festival

From Jan. 8-17, New York City’s Prototype Festival brings three world premieres and two workshop pieces to its one-of-a-kind opera and music-theater event. In this, the festival’s third year, several CalArtians’ works and performances are featured, including two experimental theater performances and one opera band.

Aging Magician

Herb Alpert Award winner Rinde Eckert is the writer and performer behind the opera Aging Magician, composed by Paola Prestini. Based on If the Aging Magician Should Start to Believe, a short story by Jonathan Safran Foer, the work follows Harold, a reclusive older man who goes on a train ride to Coney Island on what will prove to be his final trip. Aging Magician takes the audience on a journey of uncovering one’s legacy, brought to life through theater, music and puppetry.

Performances of Aging Magician (trailer above) run from Jan. 11-13 at Park Avenue Armory.

Timur and the Dime Museum

The West Coast dark-glam opera band Timur and the Dime Museum returns to Prototype Festival for a one-night-only show at Joe’s Pub on Jan. 11. The band brings its unique fusion of pop, avant-garde and vaudeville sounds to the stage as they perform songs from their upcoming album Collapse, a post-ecological requiem for the planet.

Timur and the Dime Museum is led by CalArts faculty Timur Bekbosunov, with CalArts alumni Daniel Corral (Music MFA 07), Andrew Lessman (Music BFA 09), Matthew Setzer (Music MFA 08) and David Tranchina (Music MFA 08) rounding out the group.

Below is a video excerpt from Collapse.

Winter‘s Child

Composer Ellen Reid’s (Music MFA 11) and librettist Amanda Jane Shank’s (Theater MFA 13) Winter’s Child plays Jan. 13-14 at St. Paul’s Chapel.

In this opera, the character, Child, must deal with promises made and broken before she was born. On the eve of her 15th birthday, she is visited by the ghosts of her three older sisters, all taken before their 15th birthdays by bath, by wash and by rain. She learns of the deal that Mama made with The Lake by their house and the fatal consequences of her forgetfulness.

Reid first started work on the opera in her final year at CalArts and has continued its workshopping and development after graduation. With performances by Kalean Ung (Theater MFA 12) as Child and faculty member Mary Lou Rosato as Mama, Winter’s Child reveals a world where nature holds power and a family must confront it to change a youngest daughter’s fate.

Listen to an excerpt from Winter’s Child.