Photo by Steven Pisano
Where does music come from? This darkly comic opera, a collaboration between composer Nick Hallett and filmmaker Josh Thorson, looks at the nature of inspiration, originality, and illusion to attempt an answer to this question.
Through the cautionary tale of a fictional composer’s social media behavior, To Music investigates the creative process and its distractions—a portrait of the artist on Facebook. Sonic worlds collide as pure vocalise, glossolalia, poetry, and profanity weave through German lieder, mobile phone ringtones, Modernist dissonance, and Top 40 radio.
Nick Hallett, music and libretto
Josh Thorson, video design
Featuring vocalists Mellissa Hughes, Peter Alex Stewart, and Amelia Watkins and instrumentalists Jeanann Dara, Melinda Faylor, and Sarah Bernstein.
A workshop of To Music was co-produced by Experiments in Opera and Gut City.
"Gorgeous, heartfelt vocalises...it's a genius solution to expressing the inner lives of characters while keeping the action moving forward...most successful"— Opera News
"The best of the operas juxtaposed wildly contrasting musical styles. Hallett’s dark comedy To Music was the most elaborate collage”— Pitchfork
"Most engaging...Hallett craftily worked ringtones into the score and scripted a glitching and stalling streaming internet ad for soprano" — New York Classical Review
About the Artist
Nick Hallett is a Brooklyn-based composer, vocalist, and cultural producer working between the worlds of sound, art, and performance. "He draws on a wide range of seemingly contrasting musical genres to deploy the voice as an instrument." (Art21). Hallett recently completed a trilogy of scores for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, and received a 2017 New York Dance & Performance "Bessie" award for Variations on Themes from Lost & Found, a re-imagining of work by choreographer John Bernd (1953-1988), directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez. His first opera, co-authored with artist Shana Moulton, Whispering Pines 10, is currently being adapted for the internet.
Performance Program