Transtromer as opera: Sweden/USA collaboration

The shot above is of composer Ellen Lindquist and me on a break from our development workshop at Ängsö Castle in 2009. 

As preparations for the premiere continue we wanted to take this time to share a bit of history about this project:

What began as a song cycle commission in 2001 has become, in 2015, dream seminar/drömseminarium: a Swedish/American opera project.  I first met Ellen Lindquist while working on a doctorate at Stony Brook University. Admiring her work when singing a Samuel Barber song she had arranged for orchestra, I commissioned a song cycle for bass and piano using poems of Tomas Tranströmer. A busy performance career outside Stony Brook as well as work on my doctorate delayed our work together for several years but we kept meeting and discussing our ideas for a new kind of song cycle.  I began work on Kagel’s Fürst Igor, Strawinsky which led us to the idea of a music theater piece. As we talked about our plans for the Tranströmer piece with other colleagues, several of them asked to participate and the idea for this new opera began to take shape. I founded Companion Star in 2005.  We met Tranströmer in 2006, andshortly thereafter connected with Mälardalans Högskola and Västmanlands Musiken in Sweden. In 2007 we connected with the Gateway Theater in New York (where Companion Star is now in residence) and began development workshops to explore Tranströmer's poetry and our artistic voices/instruments/expression to see where it would lead. From 2007-2011 these workshops alternated between Sweden in the summer and New York in the winter.

To date 47 artists from 9 countries have participated in this exploration and lent their creativity to this project.  Many have spoken of the personal growth they experienced from working on this project, how it has created greater depth of expression for them in their own projects.  Three of the artists have since started their own companies to create and explore contemporary music and its performance.

Companion Star is a living laboratory for the creative process. We provide an environment that challenges and allows artists to express their ideas. dream seminar/drömseminarium is a shining example of this work. 

Thank you for your past support, we could not have gotten this far without you. Please consider an additional donation to help us launch this piece. Share this appeal with your friends and help us build our network. 

The picture below is just one of the magical sunsets we experienced in 2009 at Björnögården. May the remainder of your summer be wonderful!

Michael

Tomas Tranströmer died March 26, 2015. The link below will take you to him reading his poem, Schubertiana. To music, the melting pot that is New York, Schubert and on being human. Oh my dear Tomas we shall miss you.

We are extremely fortunate to have had his attendance and advice during our Swedish workshops for dream seminar/drömseminarium. We are committed, more than ever, to the premiere of this piece to honor his memory and to share the work we did together. 

In the 17^th century, the philosophy of space and time emerged as a central issue in epistemology and metaphysics. Gottfried Leibniz, the German philosopher-mathematician, argued that space could not exist independently of objects in the world because that implies a difference between two universes exactly alike except for the location of the material world in each universe. Leibniz held that space is no more than the collection of spatial relations between objects in the world: "space is that which results from places taken together."

This truly plays into the ideas in Tranströmer’s poetry - the duality of things existing together: places taken together/ideas taken together/ images, colors and materials taken together - all used to define each other. The idea of space and objects that mutate and are malleable; this was the starting point for our stage director and design team.

Throughout the periodic design meetings, all four of our designers (video, costume, set and lighting) collaborated in an open forum. They provided each other with solutions to their own design puzzles in a way that  informed each other’s work.This work was aided by the stage director, the composer, the scenario creators and myself, at intermittent times. Your donations have helped make this work continue.

In our past reports we have talked about costume and lighting design. Currently our video designer, S. Katy Tucker, is at work on the projections that will take us into Mats' dream world.  Attached below are some of the images from which she has drawn inspiration.

For helping us fund this part of the project we thank you most sincerely.

For the construction phase of our designs, we need your continued support. Please consider an additional donation to help us reach the current goal of $25,000.00 and make the premiere in 2016 at the Gateway Theatre in Bellport a reality. Forward the link to our project page to others who might have interest in our project. Contact us for more information or just to say hello or give a comment. We'd love to hear from you!

Michael

Links:

• Tomas Transtromer-Schubertiana