Immersive Song Cycle
“A breath of pure creative power.”
“Ms. Birrittella gave an exposed, intelligent, and earnest performance in what was essentially a one-woman show.”
“One of the more moving artistic experiences I’ve had in recent memory.”
Produced by BETH MORRISON PROJECTS & PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL
SONNETS TO ORPHEUS
"Words and music are integrated into an ethereal multi-dimensional sensory exploration that is sonically and visually immersive…Birrittella infuses it with a sense of wonder.” – Fabrik Magazine
Sonnets to Orpheus is a multidisciplinary song cycle for voice, string quartet, ukulele and harmonium, set to Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s cycle of poems which has been called an “utter acceptance of everything that is alive and earthly… the wholeness, the transfigured body of these poems, is a return to the simplest human experiences of seeing and breathing, beyond thought.”
The cycle is scored by 13 composers: Aoife O’Donovan, Jherek Bischoff, Ellen Reid, Qasim Naqvi, Christopher Rountree, Andrew Rowan, Bobby Halvorson, Tim Carr, Danielle Birrittella, Greg Uhlmann, Kyle Sanna, Sheena Wenger, Areni Agbabian, and Derek Stein.
Only in a city such as Los Angeles would we be able to conceive of a project that holds space for exploring the lines between theatre, film, and concert. We are creating an immersive sonic and visual environment that transcends the form of the song cycle.
Produced by LOS ANGELES PERFORMANCE PRACTICE & LAX FESTIVAL
SENTINEL
Image: Hana Kim
SENTINEL is a new chamber opera which tells the story of an agoraphobic woman who constructs a virtual reality in an attempt to cope with life after traumatic loss. Through the use of a psychedelic she is able to reconstruct her memory and find healing. Over the course of the opera, the Heroine traverses a kaleidoscopic journey through the warm depths of human connection while also facing the brittle cold of great loss and loneliness. The opera navigates a manufactured digital world, the natural world, and the psychedelic realm voiced by triangulated characters. An accompanying chamber ensemble comprised of swirling saxophones, strings, and percussion captures these sonic landscapes of contrast and contradiction to reside in a multitude of colors, volumes, inflections, and textures which wind themselves around the vocalists—supporting them, wrestling them, and ultimately guiding them to heal.
Created by Danielle Birrittella
Music by Annika Socolofsky
Libretto by Claressinka Anderson
Commissioning Partner PEAK PERFORMANCES
SONGS OF THE SCORPION
Scorpius by Claressinka Anderson
The sky will make itself known to my body
—find me with its light.
I collect the moon,
turn it to blue, to green—
my entire torso an eye,
watching us.
Do my limbs glow
so bright I must stow
away in the shadows?
In my chest,
even the stars are dying
—my sorrow a constellation
as I birth this skin.
A suite of songs for soprano, viola, and cello.
Installation by Fay Ray
Poetry by Claressinka Anderson and music by Danielle Birrittella
Commissioned by CANDLEWOOD ARTS FESTIVAL
HAIKU DREAMS
An aleatory music project born from a clinical psychology thesis which explores how chance operations supports a healing function in the creative process of expressive arts.
The question is asked: How do constraints in an artistic practice, provided through chance operations, facilitate art-making as a process of individuation and healing?
The work investigates the importance of synchronicity and numinosity in art-making through a Jungian lens. The transcendent function becomes a source or guide within the framework of the creative practice. Dice, dreams, and time restrictions are used to produce a range of work, including poetry, songs, recordings, and watercolors.
Haiku Dreams is offered as both a lecture and live performance in which art is made cross-disciplinarily with artists and/or audience employing chance operations practices.
PAST PROJECTS
THE ABORTION
Trailer
A short film inspired by Anne Sexton’s 1962 poem, The Abortion. Two women retrace their steps years after having abortions. Rather than locate their exact paths, they find themselves in parallel landscapes in which each woman’s memory is narrated by the other.
Events of the past are represented through abandoned interiors: a hospital waiting room, a grocery store, a bedroom. Each character explores the present through engagement with her environment. The misplaced use of voice with character contemplates choice and its resulting echo.
ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES
A devised performance project between a dancer, musician and fine artist that contemplates the expectation of motherhood, the reality of daughterhood. and the actuality of mothers not being able to be “mothers. The piece explores the elastic relationship of roles between parent and child, the memory and presumption of intimacy, and the reality of distance.
We explore how new technologies play a role in creating invisible walls that offer the guise of connection but may, in fact, be the architecture of control and separation in the rapidly shifting landscape of family dynamics.
We juxtapose personal text messages and email exchanges with lullaby, materials of domesticity, and those of ephemeral reflectiveness, the loss of physical versus emotional control, and the adaptive relationship to the mother through movement. Working across mediums of dance, music, and theatre, we explore the universal themes of memory, history, and inheritance through the lens of our personal stories.
K L O W D E N M A N N
Performance Stills from Klowden Mann Residency
THEA
A mysterious musical adventure exploring the secret life of a mother, her son, and his psychologist. Mistaken identities, ancient swallowed planets, and auto-fiction collide on a cataclysmic journey through memory, loss, and reclamation.
Original music and performance by Xander Duell & Danielle Birrittella.
