Artists-in-Residence • CLAIMING SPACE • Sid Richardson, Samantha Wolf, and Bahar Royaee, with Elizabeth Margolius

Guest Mentor Elizabeth Margolius

Artist Statement: My primary focus is directing contemporary non-traditional music theater, opera and plays as well as re-imagining the classics. I am most drawn to dramatic, multi-layered stories, non-linear work and pieces that lend themselves to exploring, deconstructing and creating visually stunning symbolism through movement as part of the storytelling.

https://elizabethmargolius.com

Artist-in-Residence Sid Richardson

Project Description
Eidolon – for soprano, actor, and mixed chamber ensemble
A fifty-minute work utilizing a mix of live and pre-recorded performance, electronic media and vocalizing instrumentalists that explores the intersections of monodrama, opera, and song cycle. The inspiration for this project is Helen in Egypt (1961) by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), a semi-dramatic lyric narrative, which revisits the myth of Helen of Troy.

Biography
Composer Sid Richardson (b. 1987) writes concert music that imbues modern idioms with emotional grit and wit. His work explores the intersections of music and literature, drawing inspiration from a wide swath of authors, poets, and playwrights. Richardson leverages pre-existing texts to create a metaphorical resonance with the source material in pieces that weave literary elements into formal, rhythmic, and harmonic structures. He is constantly on the lookout to explore new sound worlds, collaborations, and technologies with his music.

http://sidrichardsonmusic.com

Artist-in-Residence Bahar Royaee

Project Description
Displacement and Deployment of Sound
“…The last sonic memory I have or her in her presence is the sound of her walking in the space of Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport…Displacement makes you to be aware to sounds…” This project is a non-linear multimedia form of musical performance art that focuses on space and the interrelationship of bodies in and with space as its central premise. The piece introduces these ideas through investigating individual/communal time-rhythms and transversing memories between different spaces with each displacement of the audience, musicians, and actors. 

Biography
Born and raised in Iran, Bahar Royaee is a composer of concert and incidental music. Her compositions are a mixture of timbral and sound-based atmospheric structures, interspersed with lyrical influences derived from her Iranian background. Her works have been performed worldwide, including Italy, Greece, Germany, Canada, Iran, and the USA. Bahar was recently recognized as a runner-up in National Sawdust’s 2018-19 Hildegard Competition. Other awards include the Roger Sessions Memorial Composition Award, Walter W. Harp Music & Society Award, John Bavicchi Memorial Prize, and the Korourian Electroacoustic Award.

Artist-in-Residence Samantha Wolf

Project Description
Untitled Absurdist Game Show Musical Theatre Piece (working title)
Five women compete for the chance to become the Ultimate Woman™ – complete, content, kicking ass and cutting carbs. But not everything is as simple as getting promoted and skipping dessert. This ironic comedy will take the audience on a surrealist journey through the complex inner world of someone struggling with orthorexia. 

Biography
Described as “haunting”, “enigmatic”, and “inspired”, the music of Australian-born, US-based composer Samantha Wolf blends the classical, contemporary, acoustic, and electroacoustic worlds, while being grounded in the notated tradition. Although she specializes in instrumental and electroacoustic music, her diverse catalogue includes orchestral, vocal, dramatic, electronic, radio, and multimedia works, and theatrical sound design. Current and future projects include scores for two upcoming feature films, major new works for the Brisbane Music Festival and Ensemble Offspring, and her first full-length opera.

https://www.samanthawolfmusic.com

Director of Artist Residency @Longy, Amy Beth Kirsten

Amy Beth Kirsten, “…one of America’s most innovative and visionary composers,” (BBC Music Magazine, March 2019) is known primarily for her for multi-year, multimedia theatrical collaborations. She has cast herself in roles as varied as composer, poet, filmmaker, vocalist, and director. Ms. Kirsten has been recognized with awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020), John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2010) and the Rockefeller Foundation (2009) and has created works for her own ensemble HOWL, musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New World Symphony, Peak Performances, the multi-Grammy-winning eighth blackbird, among many others. An original story written by Ms. Kirsten and Timothy Leopold (trumpet) is the catalyst for her current project, Jacob in Chains, an evening-length work for Alarm Will Sound. Jacob is a present-day Christmas ghost story inspired by the character Jacob Marley, from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. She teaches at the Curtis Institute of Music; is Director of The Artist Residency at Longy School of Music of Bard College; and is Composer Mentor for the Blueprint Fellowship at The Juilliard School.

www.amybethkirsten.com