SATURDAY

SEPT 21

FROM HISTORY OF LIFE—ACT I

CONTEMPORANEOUS

5:00 PM

$40 General | $50 Premium

Mountain Stage, OUTDOORS

New Music ensemble Contemporaneous brings an early look at Act 1 of their upcoming work, History of Life, by composer and Co-Artistic Director, Dylan Mattingly, and librettist Thomas Bartscherer. The piece invites the audience to experience music and storytelling in the Homeric oral tradition that created the Odyssey as though it had been passed down continuously from parents to children for the last 2700 years, picking up stories and sounds with each generation. The singer Isaiah Robinson serves as a bard and is accompanied by a ragtag band of 12 musicians who play hurdy-gurdies, harp, toy piano, harmonium, strings, and percussion. Sung and spoken in over 14 languages, History of Life offers a wild ecstatic musical vision that resurrects the ancient form of the epic—a massive musical poem weaving together a story collection of our world, forming a new mythology of ourselves and our place in history.

Contemporaneous is an ensemble of 25 musicians whose mission is to bring to life the most transformative music by living composers through performances, commissions, recordings, and educational programs. Described as “exact and detailed, but also lively and openly dancing” (The New York Times) and “leading new music towards its better self” (I Care If You Listen), Contemporaneous particularly champions the creation of large-scale works and “dream projects,” which composers might not otherwise have opportunities to realize due to scale.