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AGING MAGICIAN
co-created by
composer
Paola Prestini
director and designer
Julian Crouch
writer and performer
Rinde Eckert
additional design by
Amy Rubin, Mark Stewart & Josh Higgason
with conductor
written for
the Brooklyn Youth Chorus
Diane Berkun-Menaker
In development at the Watermill Center
Park Avenue Armory and Mass MoCA
THE STORY
A new music-theatre work, AGING MAGICIAN is a composite of sonic and visual elements that paints an
allegory on time, youth, and the peculiar magic of ordinary life, and, perhaps, the ordinary magic of
a peculiar life. Accompanied by a string quartet and a choir of young people, Aging Magician moves
us along from the surgical repair of a timepiece to the magic show of time itself, lives and deaths,
appearances and disappearances. The man’s vibrant last adventure is brought to life by a team of
multidisciplinary artists who combine music, theatre, puppetry, instrument making, and scenic design to create
an enduring work for the stage.
The story follows Harold, an amateur clockmaker who excitedly tries and yet struggles to complete the story of
his alter-ego, a magician. As the youth guide Harold through his final adventure along the F train to Coney
Island, they deal with notions of time, our relation to the material world, nostalgia, illusion, faith, and identity.
We are inside Harold’s small clock shop, where the world is exceedingly large, a magic trick in itself.
This work features vocalist Rinde Eckert, a musical set by Mark Stewart, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus
and string quartet.
The aging magician is lost in the wheels and gears of the train, the rhythm of the
wheels and gears, the rhythm of his days, his years. And his time is now, this heaven,
a kind of Coney Island, a trick of light, misdirection, mirrors and illusion. He is
sound. He is light. He is weight and color, or simply the way something warms in the
hand. Watch him vanish, Harold, into the heart of the clock, into time.
THE MUSICIANS
BROOKLYN YOUTH CHORUS
Combining the talents of composer Prestini’s sonic world, Crouch’s visuals and puppetry skills, with
Eckert’s writing and multi-faceted performance practice, a children’s youth chorus is woven into set and
story. They begin as spectators in the operating theatre, tending to the transformation of the room into
the Coney Island of the protagonist’s mind. They then follow him on the F train to Coney Island. By using
traditional Greek chorus techniques of consoling, chiding and commenting on the protagonist's journey,
the chorus heightens the overall experience; additionally, they add to the interdisciplinary fabric by
interacting with the various set pieces, film, and puppetry.
Inspired by RINDE ECKERT, the composer Paola Prestini, created a work to specifically illuminate his
multi-disciplinary talent. And, as the artist can brilliantly depict the own work he wrote, this Doris Duke
Artist Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist also takes on the role as the Aging Magician.
AGING MAGICIAN features a string quartet from the new music ensemble ACME.
"The Aging Magician is grandly, even venerably, operatic...[from the
composer] who wrote the acclaimed Oceanic Verses." WQXR
THE TEAM
DESIGNERS
Stewart and Crouch/Rubin’s set is an immersive installation that can be played like an instrument—blown, struck, whistled, plucked, and bowed. The scenery’s surfaces come alive through the kids interplay who help it become
the canvas for projection design, installation and puppetry. The set will slowly illuminate throughout the arc of the
story to reveal Coney Island: a city in full glory that will carry the magician into the afterlife, all the while as elements
of his fantastic dream remain in the real world. PARTNERS
Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and VisionIntoArt (VIA) are developing and producing Aging Magician for the
eventual world premiere in 2016. Work-In-Progress showings have taken place at the 21C Liederabend, op.2 in 2011 (produced by BMP, VIA, and Opera On Tap) at The Kitchen, at PROTOTYPE Festival (produced by BMP and HERE) in
January 2013, and in subsequent workshop performances at the Watermill Center, Park Avenue Armory and MASS
MoCA. Aging Magician was a recipient of a NEFA Touring grant and will premiere at the Walker Art Center, the Krannert
Center, and at Arizona State University.
FINAL EVENT
The entire stage will be a living breathing instrument, with the Magician’s head-sculpture as the
centerpiece. Flanked by Brooklyn Youth Chorus’ 40 singers judging, playing and consoling, Harold will be
surrounded by his own thoughts transposed into song and text. This journey will bring the audience into
Harold’s uncertain world as he grasps to find meaning in a mind-scape of imagination while living in a
world of constraint.
Model of AGING MAGICIAN designed by Julian Crouch and Amy Rubin
LISTEN & WATCH
Visit
bethmorrisonprojects.org/agingmagician
for audio, video, and other media from this project.
Aging Magician is Commissioned by Beth Morrison
Projects, VisionIntoArt, the Walker Art Center, and the
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Aging
Magician has been developed with support from
National Endowment for the Arts, and Repertoire
Development Grant support from Opera America, and
the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, with
additional funding by the New England Foundation for
the Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding
from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the
Opera America Opera Fund.
Aging Magician has received residency support from
Mass MoCA, Park Avenue Armory and The Watermill
Center’s Artist Residency Program.
LEAD ARTISTS
PAOLA PRESTINI is “the enterprising composer and impresario” (New York
Times) whose interdisciplinary vision is helping to shape the future of new
music. Named one of the “Top 100 Composers in the World under 40” (NPR),
her music has been commissioned by and been performed at Carnegie Hall,
by the Chicago Symphony (Music Now), the New York Philharmonic (Biennale),
New York City Opera, and the Kronos Quartet. Her compositions have been
performed worldwide, from the Kennedy Center, BAM, and the Park Avenue
Armory, to London’s Barbican Centre. Prestini serves as “visionary-inchief” (Time Out New York) of VisionIntoArt (VIA), the non-profit multimedia
production company she co-founded as a student in 1999. Last fall Prestini
Prestini
"an
intoxicating
presided over the launch of VIA Records, hailed as “an essential new voice in
profusion of seemingly
the future of American classical music” (Q2 Music). She is also the Creative
unrelated impressions...
and Executive Director of National Sawdust, a nonprofit Brooklyn-based
Straightforward melodicism
augmented with electronic
space for arts incubation, performance, and recording, where VIA is in
resonance - a happy adaptation residence. Frequent collaborators include Helga Davis, Beth Morrison, Hila
of minimalism's more sensual Plitmann, Ian Rosenbaum, Royce Vavrek, Julian Wachner and Jeffrey Zeigler.
effects."
-Steve Smith
"...Prestini’s emotional
landscapes share a mournful,
dreamlike quality with
expansive harmonies that still
gravitate to a tonal center.
These pieces reward careful
listening."
-Casual Listening Blog
“Spellbinding Music”
-The Washington Post
Incorporating powerful visual and dramatic components, Prestini’s multimedia
creations address such extra-musical issues as conservation, astrophysics, and
politics. Her current and recent projects include works for Los Angeles
Philharmonic’s 21c Liederabend concert; Epiphany, a choral installation for
BAM’s 2015 Next Wave Festival with the Young People’s Chorus; The Hubble
Cantata, an evening-length collaboration with astrophysicist Mario Livio,
soprano Jessica Rivera and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street to celebrate the
silver jubilee of the Hubble telescope; The Colorado, a new eco-cantata for
Roomful of Teeth, with film by Murat Eyuboglu and text by conservationist
William deBuys, developed at MASS MoCA and to premiere at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and Houston’s Da Camera series; Aging Magician,
written for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Rinde Eckert, with direction and
design by Julian Crouch, which will premiere at the Walker Arts Center and
the Krannert Center; Labyrinth, a cello and violin installation concerto to
premiere at the Isabella Gardner Museum and National Sawdust in 2016; and
a reprise of her multimedia opera Oceanic Verses (premiered in 2013 with the
BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Hall), which will return for
Watermill Center’s 10th anniversary with Choir of Trinity Wall Street
conducted by Julian Wachner in 2016. Works in development include The
Ribbon Project for Mass Re-Imaginings commissioned by Choir of Trinity Wall
Street with text by Brenda Shaughnessy and visuals by Anne Patterson; a new
opera, Gilgamesh, (commissioned by Friends of Madam Whitesnake) directed
by Michael Counts with libretto by Cerise Jacobs, which begins development
at the New England Conservatory and Boston University in 2015 and
premieres in Boston in 2016 at the Cutler Majestic Theatre; and Two Oars, a
new work with Robert Wilson (based on Old Man and the Sea) recently
workshopped at the Watermill Center for Opera Australia’s participation in
the Commonwealth Games.and Carnegie Hall, and the Sundance Institute.
RINDE ECKERT is a writer, composer, librettist, musician, performer and director.
His Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America and
to major theater festivals in Europe and Asia. With a virtuosic command of
gesture, language, and song, the total theatre artist moves beyond the
boundaries of what a 'play,' a 'dance piece,' an 'opera' or 'musical' might be, in the
service of grappling with complex issues. Eckert describes many of his characters
as "little men with big ideas whose consequences of their hubris are often
disastrous." Sometimes tragic and austere, sometimes broadly comedic, entirely
grounded by presence, his work is alchemical: moving from rumination and
distillation to hard-won illumination, or its lack.
“gives a dazzling
performance that includes
not only brilliantly original
acting, but also brilliantly
original singing” in Eckert’s
original AND GOD
CREATED GREAT
WHALES
-LA Times
“Every element of Eckert’s
play is masterly – his
performances as a grown
man becoming a child is
poignant, his music varied
and lovely, his dancing
divine, his musings
profound.” -The New Yorker
In April 2012 The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation named Rinde Eckert as one
of 21 inaugural Doris Duke Artists. Each performing artist in the first class will
receive an unrestricted, multi-year cash grant of $225,000. Rinde was the 2009
recipient of The Alpert Award in the Arts for his contributions to Theatre and was
the finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Rinde Eckert began his career as a writer/performer in the 1980’s, writing
librettos for Paul Dresher (Pioneer, Power Failure, Slow Fire, Ravenshead). He
subsequently composed dance scores for choreographers Sarah Shelton Mann
and Margaret Jenkins, including the evening-length Woman, Window, Square for
The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. In 1992 Rinde began composing and
performing his own music/theater pieces with The Gardening of Thomas D, an
homage to Dante which toured the United States and to France. His staged
works for solo performer include An Idiot Divine - two one-act plays, Romeo Sierra
Tango and Quit This House. Shoot the Moving Things and Four Songs Lost in a Wall
are written for radio.
Theatrical writing credits and awards include Highway Ulysses and Four Songs
Lost in a Wall (The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein
Award); Horizon (2007-2008 Drama Desk Nominations: Best Play, Best Director;
Lucille Lortel Award: "Unique Theatrical Experience"); Orpheus X (2007 finalist for
the Pulitzer Prize in Drama); And God Created Great Whales (OBIE Award: Best
Performance, Drama Desk Nomination: "Unique Theatrical Experience"). Three of
Rinde Eckert’s plays - And God Created Great Whales, Horizon and Orpheus X - have
had successful off-Broadway runs.
Eckert’s theatrical work has been produced in New York City by The Foundry
Theatre, Culture Project, Theater for a New Audience and the New York Theatre
Workshop. Outside of New York, American Repertory Theatre, Center Stage in
Baltimore, Dobama Theatre Company, REDCAT at the Roy and Edna Disney/
CalArts Theater in Los Angeles, and Berkeley Repertory Theater have produced
his work, which has been directed by Robert Woodruff, David Schweizer, Richard
ET White, Tony Taccone and Ellen McLaughlin. Eckert has directed his own and
others’ plays and operas for The Asia Society, Juggernaut Theater, Opera Piccola
and the Paul Dresher Ensemble.
JULIAN CROUCH was a founding member of Improbable Theatre and was codirector and co-designer of the international and West End phenomenon
SHOCKHEADED PETER. Other shows for Improbable include SATYAGRAHA in a coproduction with the English National Opera and The Metropolitan Opera, SPIRIT,
which Julian directed, and which was a co-production with The Royal Court, COMA,
which he co-devised and co-designed, STICKY, THE HANGING MAN, COMA and 70
HILL LANE. He designed and was associate director on the multi award-winning
JERRY SPRINGER: THE OPERA at the National Theatre, West End and UK tour. “a dazzling production” for
the Metropolitan Opera’s
production of THE
ENCHANTED ISLAND
-NY Times
Other recent productions include CINDERELLA for The Dutch National Ballet, DR
ATOMIC for The Met / ENO, THE MAGIC FLUTE for Welsh National Opera, THE
ADDAMS FAMILY for Broadway, and THE ENCHANTED ISLAND for The Met. His
most recent production was THE DEVIL AND MISTER PUNCH which he devised,
directed and designed, for the Philadelphia Arts Festival and the Barbican.
London, He is currently designing BIG FISH for Broadway, THE MERRY WIDOW for
the Met, and JEDERMANN for the Salzburg Festival.
Joshua Higgason has designed video, lights, and sets, in different combinations,
for four productions with Jay Scheib (Bellona: Destroyer of Cities; World of Wires;
Platonov, Or the Disinherited; Powder Her Face). He has also worked with The
Builders Association, Big Dance Theater, Sufjan Stevens, Radiolab, Julian Crouch,
Jim Findlay, Salzburg Festival, BAM, and others. He has taught video design and
interactive workshops at MIT, NYU, Bennington College, LIU, Duke, and Princeton.
He also designs interactive technology and concerts. www.joshuahiggason.net
MEET THE PRODUCERS
CREATIVE & TOUR PRODUCER BETH MORRISON PROJECTS identifies and
supports the work of emerging and established composers and
their collaborators through the commission, development, and production of
their work, taking the form of opera-theatre, music-theatre, and multi-media
concert works. Relying on the core values of collaboration, exploration,
experimentation, artistry, and excellence, BMP provides a nurturing structure
that allows artists to push the boundaries of their art form. Founded in 2006, BMP rapidly developed a
reputation for “envisioning new possibilities and finding ways to facilitate their realization” (New York Times). In
6 years, BMP has commissioned, developed, and produced more than 24 operas and music-theatre pieces that
have premiered or been performed in New York, across the country, and around the globe. The Wall Street Journal
said, “Ms. Morrison may be immortalized one day as a 21st-century Diaghilev, known for her ability to assemble
memorable collaborations among artists.” BMP’s ability to recognize emerging talent, invest in the vision of
living composers and their collaborators, and partner with presenters to bring new work to life has allowed it to
become vital in the landscape of new music and opera. The New York Times recently said, "The production of
new [opera] works in the city still falls mostly to the tireless Beth Morrison and her Beth Morrison
Projects...” BMP is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts,
the Department of Cultural Affairs of New York City, Meet the Composer, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the
ART NY/ JP Morgan Chase Fund for Small Theaters, and The Map Fund, a program of creative Capital supported
by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. ASSOCIATE PRODUCER, V I S I O N I N T O A R T is “always intriguing and
frequently beguiling”, is a multimedia production company that “facilitates
flamboyant, confounding and enticing collaborations” (New York Times).
With the belief that collaboration sustains artistic innovation, VIA creates and
commissions works that involve various disciplines, presented around the
world for the general audience, and forged from the most exciting emerging
and established artists living today as well as interdisciplinary experts including scientists and conservationists.
We are a one-stop-shop for artists in many disciplines – we incubate, produce, and disseminate.
Since Paola Prestini co-founded the company in 1999 at the Juilliard School, VIA has created and performed
over seventy original works as well as produces through their self titled record label.
Support for VIA comes from the National Endowment of the Arts, Cary Trust for New Music, the Trust for Mutual
Understanding, the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, ASCAP, the BMI Fund,
the Kenan Institute, Nathan Cummings Foundation, National Video Resources, the Council on Foundations, the
Amphion Foundation, Morgan Stanley Foundation and individual donors.
VIA is a proud to be an Opera America Professional Member and participant in DeVos Institute of Arts
Management Professional Development Program with The Kennedy Center and Brooklyn Academy of Music. We
have received support from the New Music USA Cary’s New Music Performance Fund for the 2014-15 season.
VIA is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership
with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and
the New York State Legislature.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
BETH MORRISON PROJECTS
666 Ocean Ave, #D1
Brooklyn, NY 11226
(646) 682-7181
[email protected]
www.bethmorrisonprojects.org