Release Date: July 1, 2013
Catalog #: NV5905
Format: Digital & Physical
21st Century
Opera
Stage Works
Electroacoustic

Architect

A Chamber Opera

Lewis Spratlan composer
Jenny Kallick composer
John Downey composer

Julia Fox soprano
Jeffrey Lentz tenor
Richard Lalli baritone
Lauren Basney violin
Amelia Clingman viola
Jonathan Lewis cello
Yasuke Suzuki bass
Ellen Redman flute
Kirsten Lipkens oboe
Mary Joy Patchett saxophone
Jean Jeffries horn
John Andress percussion
Mark Lane Swanson music director

Composed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lewis Spratlan with librettist and electroacoustic composers Jenny Kallick and John Downey, ARCHITECT is an exploration of the relationship between the aural and visual, how they interact, intertwine, and define each other. Based on the life and work of renowned twentieth-century architect Louis I. Kahn, the opera portrays the powerful emotions that inspire his creative journey as he seeks to discover the principles that will guide his life’s work, namely, the relationships between sound and space, connections between the past and present, and the incorporation of a material’s innate characteristics into a larger whole. Deftly blending instrumental and vocal music with electroacoustic segments drawn from recordings created onsite at Kahn’s buildings, Spratlan, Kallick, and Downey unfold a sprawling, powerful, and evocative landscape that brings his work to life and demonstrates the architect’s assertion that “to hear a sound is to see a space.” ARCHITECT includes a full audio album; an Enhanced DVD featuring the critically acclaimed Architect film with original watercolors by Michiko Theurer; the complete performance materials and guidelines; and extensive background on the project history, including essays, biographies, source recordings, and much more.

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Artist Information

Lewis Spratlan

Composer

Lewis Spratlan was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2000. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Massachusetts Artists Foundations, the NEA, the Tanglewood Festival, and the MacDowell Colony. Recent commissions include Earthrise, for the San Francisco Opera; Streaming for the Centennial Celebration of the Ravinia Festival; Wonderer for pianist Jonathan Biss; Shadow for cellist Matt Haimovitz; a concerto for a consortium of 30 saxophonists; A Summer's Day for BMOP (Boston Modern Orchestra Project), and Process/Bulge for Wet Ink. His opera Life is a Dream received its world premiere at Sante Fe Opera in July 2010. Apollo and Daphne Variations, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, and A Summer's Day are currently in preparation for a BMOP CD, as is his Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano for Albany Records.

Jenny Kallick

Composer

Jenny Kallick has created two original music dramas prior to ARCHITECT: WinterReise (based on Schubert's song cycle) in 2001 for soprano, baritone, string trio, and piano with director Jeffrey Lentz; and The Death of Victor Hartmann (Incorporating songs and piano music of Musorgsky) in 2003 for bass, violin, clarinet, and cello with director and designer John Conklin.

John Downey

Composer

John Downey studied musical composition with Lewis Spratlan and electroacoustics with Eric Sawyer at Amherst College. During medical school at Stanford, John continued his involvement in music as a collaborator with Jenny Kallick and Lewis Spratlan on ARCHITECT. John's most recent work for orchestra, The Tides at Golden Gate, had its world premiere at Stanford University and its east coast premiere in 2010 at Amherst College. Dr. Downey is currently a resident radiologist at Stanford University hospital.