music director
Photo by Jian Jung
Promenade
I was brought on to music direct the fall 2019 Fisher Center production of this “bizarre and sneakily thrilling” (New York Times) off-off-broadway counterculture classic. Promenade is a zany and charming anti-capitalist musical by two leading artists of the 1960s New York avant-garde — Cuban-American playwright María Irene Fornés and composer Reverend Al Carmines. A cast of lowlife convicts and uptown swells sing a glorious score that blends nostalgic ballads, vaudeville, campy maximalism, and Broadway showstoppers. Our production featured direction by Morgan Green, choreography by Lisa Fagan, lighting design by Masha Tsimring, sound design by Tei Blow, costumes by Alice Tavener, and set design by Jian Jung. We later presented a concert version of this kaleidoscopic, gorgeous, and utterly unconventional work at Mabou Mines in February 2020.
The Gauntlet
I served as assistant music director for the 2019 installation of The Gauntlet at Rockefeller Center, an immersive, site specific choral and movement piece by composer Sxip Shirey and choreographer Coco Karol, presented with National Sawdust.
An intimate experience bathing audiences in waves of harmony, poetry, and gesture, as they are led through musical corridors of sonic architecture created by the human voice. Each performance of The Gauntlet is unique, reflecting the site, community and performers it is created with. Through a series of workshops, Shirey and Karol work with choirs and wider community members to develop gestures, and generate text. Workshops include “movement interviews”, which are inquiries into each participant’s phenomenological experience of “home” and belonging.