By Michael Douglas Jones | Founder & Director
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
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