Carla Kihlstedt (Composer, Lyricist, & Co-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 music 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 for tenor and piano, entirely made of comments by women about their own bodies (commissioned by the New York Festival of Song). 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, and Tom Waits. 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.” He also writes under the name Stellwagen Symphonette for The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, and the new podcast “The Frontline Dispatch.”
Jeremy Flower (Composer, Voice, Guitar, Keyboard, & Electronics) 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 some of the world’s best orchestras as well as with world-renowned electronic producers in experimental, ambient and minimal techno genres. He also writes and tours with Rabbit Rabbit Radio, the song spinning duo of Matthias Bossi and Carla Kihlstedt. Flower has been commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for their Music NOW series, James Sommerville and the Hamilton Philharmonic for their festival What Next?, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute. He wrote the score for Laura Poitras’ 2017 feature documentary Risk, and Monika Navarro’s Animas Perdidas. He is part of David Krakauer’s Ancestral Groove project, which explores the heritage of traditional Jewish music 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) on Deutsche Grammophon.
Mark DeChiazza (Environment/Video Designer & Co-Director) is a director, filmmaker, designer, and choreographer. Many of his projects explore interactions between music performance and media to discover new expressive possibilities. His work can bring together composers, ensemble, and musicians with visual artists, dancers, music ensembles, and makers of all types. Investigating the body and its relationships to space, time, and experience remain vital to his process across all disciplines. Mark DeChiazza conceived and directed Orpheus Unsung, an evening-length music-dance-theater collaboration with composer Steven Mackey, which premiered at Guthrie Theater and was presented this fall at Princeton University. His large-scale music-theater production Quixote premiered this spring at Peak Performances continuing a creative partnership with composer Amy Beth Kirsten begun with their Columbine’s Paradise Theater, produced and performed by eighth blackbird. DeChiazza’s ongoing creative partnership with this multiple-Grammy winning ensemble began in 2009 with his Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and continues with Dan Trueman’s Olagón, now in development. Recent projects include: co-direction, video projection, and set design for My Lai, an opera monodrama by Jonathan Berger featuring Kronos Quartet, traditional Vietnamese instrumentalist Van-Ahn Voh, and actor/tenor Rinde Eckert; Waveguide Model I, a four screen interactive installation for Prism Quartet made in collaboration with Dan Trueman; direction and editing of the film Hireath, which partners with performance of Sarah Kirkland Snider’s 35-minute orchestral work commissioned by North Carolina Symphony and Princeton Symphony Orchestra; staging and design for composer John Luther Adams’ Sila, a massive site-determined piece for 80 musicians commissioned by Lincoln Center. (more at markdechiazza.com)
Performers
Kristin Slipp (Voice / Keyboard) , one of the most adroit and malleable vocalist of today, is “a force to be reckoned with,” (JazzTimes). In the many musical contexts in which she’s engaged, Slipp’s musicianship is powerful and unmistakably her own. As a vocalist, keyboardist, and songwriter in lauded indie pop band Cuddle Magic, Slipp hashoned a love of the ensemble and polyrhythm while touring nationally. As a devotee of The Great American Songbook, Slipp interprets the standard repertoire with pianist Dov Manski, the two of whom released their debut album, A Thousand Julys, on Sunnyside Records in 2013 to critical acclaim. Most recently, Slipp has been cutting her teeth as a producer with her newest collaboration MMEADOWS, a band that’s gearing up to release their first full-length record in 2018. As a sought-after collaborator, Slipp has been honored to share stages and studios with a diverse mix of some of her favorite musicians including Fred Frith, Steve Reich, Jack Antonoff, Ran Blake, Dagmar Krause, Son Lux, and Anthony Coleman.
Ariel Parkington (Voice / Viola) is a violinist, violist, songwriter, and vocalist. After receiving graduate degrees in classical violin and chamber music, she joined creative forces with her four sisters, forming the indie-folk band the Parkington Sisters. There, she has shared the stage with divergent artists such as Bruce Springsteen, Mavis Staples, Dropkick Murphys, Dispatch, Blitzen Trapper, and performed at venues like Radio City Music Hall, NPR’s Mountain Stage, Bonnaroo Music Festival, and Newport Folk Festival. Their music has been premiered by Paste Magazine, American Songwriter, Bitch Magazine, and Magnet Magazine, played on radio stations like Acoustic Cafe, WXPN, KCSN, WFUV, WUMB, and led to collaborations with the Cape Symphony, Newark Boys Choir, and poets like Gary Snyder, Billy Collins, Martín Espada, and Tim Seibles.
Michael Abraham (Guitar) is a guitarist and ex-scientist based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. His work includes performances, recording, and touring with 60’s rock-icon Donovan, the hit Broadway musicals Wicked and American Idiot, Grammy award-winner Mads Tolling (of Stanley Clark), Steve Huffsteter, SFJazz, Mitch Marcus Quintet (Best Jazz Group, San Francisco, SFWeekly 2007), Space Blaster, and combinations and derivations Thereof. Raised in the suburban marshlands of post-industrial Pittsburgh, PA, he first completed a biology degree at Penn State University, then moved to New York. Sidelined in a series of challenging yet bizarre research jobs involving weight-lifting rats, our hero left the laboratories, and the rats, and moved to California.
Hannah Silva (Spoken Text) is a British poet, playwright, and performer known for her innovative explorations of form, voice and language. Her solo performances layer up vocal sounds and poetry, creating sonic explorations of meaning and sense. Her latest performance Schlock! splices Fifty Shades of Grey with a novel by Kathy Acker, celebrating ‘the slipperiness of words, reinventing them so that none of them are safe’ (The Guardian). Total Man was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. She has been featured in Wire magazine and on BBC Radio 3. Her poetry collection Forms of Protest (Penned in the Margins) was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. Her debut record Talk in a Bit will be released by Humankind in 2018. Silva won the Tinniswood Award for Best Radio Drama Script with her verse play Marathon Tales (co-written with Colin Teevan for BBC Radio 3); Jump Blue, an Afonica production for BBC Radio 3, about the Russian freediver Natalia Molchanova received a special commendation in the Best Single Drama category at the 2017 BBC Audio Drama Awards, with Fiona Shaw shortlisted for best actress. Her latest work for radio includes The Music Lesson (Sparklab Productions, BBC Radio 4) and Solitary, about a woman in solitary confinement in a British prison (Afonica, BBC Radio 3). http://hannahsilva.co.uk/
Julie Worden (Diver / Dancer) is a PADI certified Scuba Divemaster and has been diving since 1998. She danced with the Mark Morris Dance Group for 17 years and is now a Kundalini yoga teacher, Cranial Sacral Therapist, and teacher with Dance for Parkinson’s. She is truly honored to take part in representing the heroic Natalia Molchanova in her magnificent grace and love for the sea.
Tatyana Gessen (Free Diver’s Voice) was born and raised in the Soviet Union. After graduating from the Moscow Art Theater School, she acted in Moscow theaters for more than a decade in various works by many great playwrights such as Chekhov, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Shakespeare, and Moliere. After getting married she relocated to the United States, where she studied filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. Her passion for theater still lived and she began making documentaries about theater. Her 2005 documentary, Unprotected Senses, about ground-breaking Russian-Jewish theater director Kama Ginkas, won an Accolade Competition Award. She is currently working on her new documentary, Chekhov in Times of Change, about the great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and his influences on theater globally as well as on individuals’ lives. In addition, she teaches acting classes at Stanislavsky Summer School in Cambridge, MA. Tatyana now lives with her husband and two boys on Cape Cod in Falmouth, MA.
George Ban-Weiss (Bass) is a Professor of Environmental Engineering at USC by day, and an upright and electric bass player by night. He is an active live performer, having had the opportunity to play at many high profile venues ranging from Yoshi’s Jazz Club, Herbst Theater, The Warfield Theater, The Great American Music Hall, The Palace of Fine Arts, and The Roxy on the west coast, to the 55-bar and Small’s in New York City. He is also an active session musician, having recorded for Sony Playstation games, Amplive, Ryan Merchant (Capital Cities), Mitch Marcus, Grammy Award winner Mads Tolling, John Vanderslice, and more.
Designers
Quentin Chiappetta (Sound Designer) enjoys an unusually broad creative career as a composer, sound designer, and mixer for the stage, the screen and, the art world. Quentin’s music and sound work has been heard on and off-Broadway, garnering him two Innovative Theater Awards for best sound design and Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk nominations. His original music is included in nearly 100 episodes of the hit series The First 48. His recent design work includes the Netflix series Daughters of Destiny and the original score for the documentary Reaching West on Independent Lens. He also scored and designed sound for Panamarama, a permanent exhibition at the Bio Museo in Panama, and his music provides underscoring at the Theodore Roosevelt Wing of the Museum of Natural History in New York. Quentin’s work is also featured in permanent collection of the National Music Centre in Calgary. The recipient of multiple Meet the Composer grants and American Music Center commissions, Quentin has composed music for many leading choreographers, most recently collaborating with the legendary Yvonne Rainer. For the past 20 years, he has been the primary engineer and sound designer for the artist Christian Marclay, whose groundbreaking work The Clock has been seen around the world. Quentin is the founder and owner of MediaNoise, a post-production studio in New York. www.medianoise.com
Sylvianne Shurman (Costume Designer) has created designs for theater, film, television, dance, and new music. Her work has led her from working alongside Academy and Tony Award winners to creating theater with at-risk youth. Recent credits include: Quixote (Kasser Theater), Orpheus Unsung (Guthrie), Sila: The Breath of the World (Lincoln Center Out of Doors), Colombine’s Paradise Theatre (eighth blackbird), Wingman(Ars Nova), Blind Angels (Theater for the New City), Something Cloudy, Something Clear (Dixon Place).
Lisa Carroll (Visual Artist) is a visual artist who studied painting and drawing at Boston College and received an MFA in New Genre from Stanford in 1998. Her work is paper-based, utilizing sources such as book pages, tracing paper, junk mail and paper clay, ranging from intimate collages, drawings and paintings to larger scaled experiential installations. Her current work is an exploration of her intimate relationship to bodies of water in mountain wilderness. Through the action of intention and ritual, as she inhabits a wilderness place via walking, running, sitting and sleeping within it, she establishes her connection. She weaves herself into the place. It is a process of give and take, of reciprocity. Once her balance is attuned to the place she sits next to a river, lake or stream, in a short meditation until an image is fully formed in her mind. She “takes” only one image at a time, careful to maintain the balance and not be overcome by the seduction of consumption or over- production. Back in the studio she engages with the images through making a series of pen and ink drawings. What emerges are non-representational marks, repeating and layered. It is her experience that the imagery is a kind of translated language that has been communicated to her via the natural world.
Production Team
Rabbit Rabbit Radio (Producer) is the song-spinning duo of Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi. Their music is intelligent and visceral, intimate and powerful. Its appeal is not limited by genre or by age. They weave together the expressive detail of contemporary composition with the visceral power of a rock band. Between them, this husband and wife team are founding members of the iconic bands Tin Hat, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard, Causing a Tiger, The Book of Knots, and Fred Frith’s Cosa Brava.