Rabbit Rabbit Radio presents Black Inscription
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Thursday October 18, 2018
7:30 pm | The Pit
Black Inscription, from Carla Kihlstedt, Matthais Bossi and Jeremy Flower, is a multimedia song cycle that follows a deep-sea diver on her Odyssean journey. Written with guidance from experts at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and brought to life by a seven-piece band fronted by three singers, the immersive performance is a symbolic, scientific, and emotional plunge into the ocean where wonder, discovery, and reckoning entwine.
About Black Inscription
A free diver, inspired by the late and great Natalia Molchanova, descends into the depths of the ocean, never to resurface. As her terrestrial ties dissolve, she encounters a mystifying underworld with billions of bioluminescent creatures, endlessly inventive structures of coral, gyres of human detritus, and abandoned nets still fishing for no one—sights both awe-inspiring and devastating.
Black Inscription is a multimedia contemporary song cycle written by a team of veteran creators, drawing on the most powerful aspects of rock, classical, and pop music. Through music, sound, and imagery, Black Inscription plunges us into our oceans and fills us with wonder outrage, and hope.
"Black Inscription is not a documentary. It is a series of impressions. But it is our greatest hope that it might inspire you to learn more about the very real issues facing our oceans. And perhaps to take a long walk on the beach."
—Carla Kihlstedt
Listen & Watch
Excerpts from Black Inscription
Read
Huffington Post — Songs from a Changing Sea: A Spiritual Journey Beneath the Waves
About the Artists
Carla Kihlstedt (Composer / Lyricist / Director) is a veteran of folk/pop, contemporary classical, improvised and experimental music. She is a founding member of the bands Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat, Rabbit Rabbit, The Book of Knots, Minamo and 2 Foot Yard. Besides the pieces she's written for her bands, her large-scale pieces include a song cycle for the International Contemporary Ensemble inspired by the language of dreams, a song cycle called Necessary Monsters for eight performers based on Jorge Luis Borges' "Book of Imaginary Beings," and a musical/radio piece for the ROVA Saxophone Quartet about the coming of the Machine Age. Her shorter commissioned pieces include a song about the miraculous life journey of herring for the San Francisco Girls Chorus called "Herring Run," a reflection of the surreal photography of Shana and Robert ParkeHarrison for the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, and a song made of comments by women about their own bodies (commissioned by the New York Festival of Song). She is currently working on a new piece for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. In 2014, her score for the Folger Shakespeare Library's production of "Romeo and Juliet" was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award, and in 2015 she was given the Rising Star Award for violin in Downbeat Magazine's Critic's Poll. She is on the faculty of the Contemporary Improvisation Department of the New England Conservatory, and of the MFA composition program of the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Matthias Bossi (Composer / Voice / Drums) was a member of the seminal bands Skeleton Key, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and Fred Frith's Cosa Brava. As a founder of the recording collective The Book of Knots, he's had the pleasure of collaborating with Mike Patton, Blixa Bargeld, Tom Waits, Mike Watt, David Thomas, and Jon Langford. Studio credits include records with John Vanderslice, St. Vincent, Pretty Lights and The Tiger Lillies. His production company Ridiculon has written soundtracks for the best-selling video game "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth" as well as "Super Meat Boy 5th Anniversary" and "The End is Nigh." Bossi's voiceover work can be heard on the sensational "Little Baby's Ice Cream" commercials, and also on a guided audio tour of Golden Gate Park, produced by SF-based company, Detour.
Jeremy Flower (Composer / Electronics / Keyboard / Guitar / Voice) is a multi-instrumentalist and composer of acoustic and electronic music. His work with electronics has landed him on stage as a guest artist with the Atlanta and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, the Santa Fe Opera, LA Philharmonic, Konzertgebau, Curtist Institute, St. Luke's, and American Composers Orchestra, as well as with world-renowned electronic producers in experimental, ambient and minimal techno genres. Flower has been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for their Music NOW series, James Sommerville and the Hamilton Philharmonic for their new music festival What Next?, and Carnegie Hall's Weill Institute. He has written music for the feature documentary Animas Perdidas. He is part of David Krakauer's Ancestral Groove project, which explores the heritage of traditional Jewish music through the lens of the modern experience fusing Klezmer with hip-hop, jazz, and house music. He has collaborated extensively with Argentine-American composer Osvaldo Golijov, helping to create electronic parts for the Grammy-nominated song cycle "Ayre" (2006) and one-act opera "Ainadamar" which won two Grammys (2007). Both of these works have been recorded for and released by Deutsche Grammophon. Flower and Golijov also collaborated on the film score for Fracis Ford Coppola's 2007 film, "Youth Without Youth," a composition for the opening of WNYC Radio's new performance space, and the score for Coppola's 2009 film "Tetro," and the yet unreleased film "Twixt."