ABOUT THE INDUSTRY
The Industry is a Los Angeles-based opera company that expands on the operatic form, challenging its orthodoxies while creating bold, interdisciplinary, and collaborative performances. Led by its Artist Director Cooperative of Ash Fure, Malik Gaines, and founder Yuval Sharon, with Executive Director Tim Griffin, the organization prizes site-specific approaches in dialogue with our cultural landscape, creating new relationships among artist, spectator, and community. During the past decade, The Industry's productions have taken place in locations ranging from Los Angeles Historic Park, where Sweet Land meditated on American mythologies around manifest destiny; to Mt. Wilson Observatory, where Star Choir envisioned a new species whose telepathic powers make possible a new model for society. Such efforts have gained The Industry renown as “the coolest opera company in the world” (KUSC) as it stands on “the leading edge of operatic innovation” (Wired Magazine).
https://theindustryla.org/ | @theindustryopera
ABOUT AMERICAN MODERN OPERA COMPANY
AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), founded in 2017 by Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, builds and shares a body of collaborative work. As a group of dancers, singers, musicians, writers, directors, composers, choreographers, and producers united by a core set of values, AMOC* artists pool their resources to create new pathways that connect creators and audiences in surprising and visceral ways.
Their 2023/24 season proposes a dialogue between neglected histories and uncertain futures, from colonial legacies to today’s climate crisis. With two significant world premieres, a US-tour launch, a new work in Paris, and a continued commitment to developing multidisciplinary works, this season showcases groundbreaking American artistry on an international scale. In December 2023, AMOC* celebrated Latin American poets and the voices of women with John Adams’ El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered, a chamber-music arrangement written specifically for AMOC*. El Niño toured to Opera Omaha, Stanford University, and Yale University before returning to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for a second year. Spring 2024 also marks the world premiere of two AMOC* commissions: Music for New Bodies, composed by AMOC* Co-Founder Matthew Aucoin, is a staged song cycle based on recent poems by Jorie Graham. This new work, co-created with director Peter Sellars, explores humankind’s impact on the planet and the presence of immense cycles beyond our control. The work premieres as a co-commission with DaCamara of Houston and Rice University on April 20th at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. In June, The Comet / Poppea, a co-production with Anthony Roth Costanzo, Cath Brittan, The Industry, Curtis Institute of Music, and Yale Schwarzman Center debuts at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los Angeles. Conceived and directed by Yuval Sharon and composed by George Lewis, with a libretto by Douglas Kearney, The Comet / Poppea juxtaposes W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story The Comet with Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea—framing both a rebuke of opera and a celebration of the form’s radical potential.
Simultaneously, AMOC* continues developing new works, including a multidisciplinary triptych by artistic duo Gerard & Kelly combining music, dance, and film that focuses on Julius Eastman’s life and legacy – in partnership with Los Angeles-based music collective, Wild Up. The first part of this triptych, Gay Guerrilla, premiered in July at the Centre Pompidou (Paris) in partnership with the Opéra national de Paris, & Compagnie, AMOC*, and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, with the support of enoa and the Creative Europe program of the European Union.
https://runningamoc.org/ | @runningamoc
ABOUT CURTIS INSTITUTE OF MUSIC
At Curtis, the world’s most talented young musicians develop into exceptional artists, creators, and innovators. With a tuition-free foundation, Curtis is a unique environment for teaching and learning. A small school by design, students realize their artistic potential through intensive, individualized study with the most renowned, sought-after faculty. Animated by a learn-by-doing philosophy, Curtis students share their music with audiences through more than 100 performances each year, including solo and chamber recitals, orchestral concerts, and opera—all free or at an affordable cost—offering audiences unique opportunities to participate in pivotal moments in these young musicians’ careers. Curtis students experience a close connection to the greatest artists and organizations in classical music, and innovative initiatives that integrate new technologies and encourage entrepreneurship—all within a historic campus in the heart of culturally rich Philadelphia. In this diverse, collaborative community, Curtis’s extraordinary artists challenge, support, and inspire one another—continuing an unparalleled 100-year legacy of musicians who have led, and will lead, classical music into a thriving, equitable, and multidimensional future.
https://www.curtis.edu/ | @curtisinstitute
ABOUT YALE SCHWARZMAN CENTER
Based in New Haven, Connecticut, and located in the historic heart of the Yale University campus, Yale Schwarzman Center is a commons for university life where art, culinary, and wellness experiences converge to build bridges, nurture creativity, and foster kinship and belonging. Positioned at the crux of social cohesion, creativity, and self-expression, the Center includes several flexible spaces in which members of the Yale and New Haven communities engage through free, public programming that ranges from the intimate to the grand. The Center’s iconic building—constructed in 1801, rebirthed in 2022 following a renovation by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, and recognized for excellence by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art—has recently been the site for world premieres and commissions by Nathalie Joachim, Bryce Dessner, and Ash Fure, to name a few. The Center’s impact extends well beyond its walls through programming and programmatic partnerships within its home city and across the country.
https://schwarzman.yale.edu/ | @yale_schwarzman