Workinfo Duo Aperture | helmutoehring

e d g e

dramma per musica
for violin + viola + SignMimoChoreography / visual language + preproduced audioplay

commissioned by Aperture Duo

It's the edge of the world and all of Western civilization…
from: Califonication by Anthony Keidis + Chad Smith + Flea + John Frudciante / Red Hot Chili Peppers

The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment …
We have come so far, it is over.
from: Edge by Sylvia Plath

Arioso 1
Verismo 1 Recitativo 1
Lamento 1
Cabaletta
Scena 1 Aria 1 Mimesis / SignMimoChoreography violin
Arpeggio Arioso 2
Verismo 2 Recitativo 2
Secco Recitativo
Arioso 3
Scena 2 Aria 2 Mimesis / SignMimoChoreography viola
Verismo 3 Recitativo 3
Scena 3 Accompagnato Recitativo 4 / SignMimoChoreography duo
Lamento 2 / preproduced audioplay

durytion: ca. 25 minutes

Helmut Oehring is CODA – the child of deaf parents. His mother tongue, sign language, with its spatial syntax and grammar resembling abstract poetry, is the DNA of his scores, choreographies and productions, which he abstracts into the parameters of his audiovisual compositions through various transformation processes. His ‚dramma per musica‘ edge, created for Duo Aperture, is a audiovisual response to Sylvia Plath's last poem, Edge, which she wrote a few days before her suicide – a poem that transforms the power relations between art, life and death, between power and powerlessness, necessity and futility into poetic form. As an echo of despair beyond words, Oehring transforms his answering poem as component of the score both into instrumental and vocal composition (performed in Secco Recitativo) and into archaic sign language as the mother of all languages, realising a special form of SignMimoChoreography based on transcription/notation systems for body languages.

e d g e

You where ?
me They tear apart
entrence allowed ? 

very dark inside

 You do me for what ?

 be lost You like this 

You Man, your MyAbove so.
I shine
mine ever there 

on love body 

You happy Me

 yours in my signs

 hate behind my back 

...

 house inside You me

 sadly Yours which were 

words forgotten 

word fire
there were
edge 

...

 signing heaven

...

 as blowing

 light glow from dark

...

seeming like undulations
which in long eye 

...

aus: EDGE von Helmut Oehring

Violinist and visual artist Adrianne Pope is a chamber musician and new music promoter who is a member of the Grammy-nominated new music collective Wild Up in Los Angeles and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, with whom she has performed with legendary artists such as Diana Ross, Violent Femmes, Earth, Wind & Fire, Randy Newman, Kool & The Gang and Cyndi Lauper.

Violist Linnea Powell is a member of the new music collective Wild Up and an orchestral, chamber and studio musician and performer of new chamber music. As a music educator, she directs the Conejo Valley chapter of the Junior Chamber Music School and was a founding member of the LA Philharmonic's Youth Orchestra at the Los Angeles County High School of the Arts.

Aperture Duo curates fearless programs that explore new sounds, voices and techniques through the lens of violin and viola chamber music. It has been praised by the music press for its “precision and interpretation” as well as its “strong sense of unity and independence”. Equally at home performing early and new music, it actively commissions new works to expand the repertoire for violin and viola duos. Aperture Duo has been invited to perform at the California Institute of the Arts, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Las Positas College, Black House SoCal New Music Workshop, Eureka! Musical Minds of California Graduate Student Conference, and educational concerts with Grammy-nominated new music collective Wild Up and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. His performances include Tuesdays @ Monk Space, the Carlsbad Music Festival, Music at Boston Court, L.A. Signal Lab, LA Downtown Art Walk, Brooklyn's Home Audio Concert Series, UC Santa Barbara Summer Music Festival, Window Concert Series at the Craft in America Center, and Hear Now Music Festival. www.apertureduo.com

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