Fri

10/21/2011

7:00pm

Edgefest

James Cornish’s Short Opera Project

7:00 pm

• $10 James Cornish's Short Opera Project - General Admission
• $5 James Cornish's Short Opera Project - Student

• James Cornish, baritone horn/trumpet
• Deanna Relyea, mezzo soprano
• Piotr Michalowski, bass & contra alto clarinets/baritone & sopranino saxophones
• Abby Alwin, cello
• Marko Novachcoff, bass/bassoon
• Christopher Skebo, bass

Event Details

James Cornish's Short Opera Project a completely improvised and uniquely stylized project that began in gritty urban art galleries in James' native Detroit. Adapting contemporary Detroit poetry as libretti, and set in the musical context of adventurous improvised chamber music, the poems assume their own distinct, tonally driven territory. What is created is an esoteric blending of genre and text. Most of the poems are written by authors who deal with life in what some sociologists refer to as "America's first third-world city." Taking a somewhat different turn, Dark Sounds also recently performed at the Detroit Institute of Arts, creating a setting for a poem celebrating Gudea, and ancient Mesopotamian king who ruled more than four thousand years ago. For Edgefest, the ensemble will sculpt a musical setting for the poetry of Phillip Levine, our country’s new poet laureate, who was born and raised in Detroit, not more than a mile away from the neighborhood that James Cornish grew up in. Performed by the Dark Sounds Ensemble, featuring mezzo-soprano Deanna Relyea.

James Cornish has been a pioneer on the Southeast Michigan improvising music scene, broadcasting on the radio, playing a variety of instruments, and as a leader who has has collaborated not only with other musicians, but also with poets, dancers, and visual artists, creating new environments for the arts in Detroit and Hamtramck. Deanna Relyea has performed in many contexts, singing lieder, oratorios, the symphonies of Mahler, as well as cabaret and operetta. Dark Sounds also includes cellist Abby Alwin, who gravitates easily between the worlds of classical music, creative improvisation, as well as Balkan and Klezmer genres. Christopher Skebo plays bass, but he is also well known as a composer and teacher; he performs with equal skill on trumpet, guitar and flute, in addition to the bass. Marko Novatchkov is a master of dozens of instruments, who studied woodwinds under Sigmund Rascher; in this group be alternates between the double bass and the bassoon. Saxophonist and clarinetist Piotr Michalowski rounds out the ensemble.All of these musicians lead their own ensembles as well as playing in Dark Sounds.

Tickets to Edgefest are $10 - $30 for individual ticketed events, with a limited number of student tickets available for most performances. An Edgepass ($135) is available, which allows for admission to all events, as well as a special dinner with our Edgefest artists. A Saturday daypass is available for $50.

Edgefest is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.