Reiko Yamada
composer & sound artist
Excerpts (total 6'41") from a live performance at Knafel Center, Harvard University, April 20, 2016
(video by Kevin Grady at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study)
Audio Excerpt from ACT III (1'50")
Mask Your Sonic Story
for female singers and percussion ensemble (2015-16)
performance duration: ca. 60'
Mask Your Sonic Story, an experimental opera, was commissioned by the Lorelei Ensemble and the Boston Percussion Group, with the support of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Rather than the explicit storyline of traditional operas, Mask Your Sonic Story offers its audience a collection of hints in the shape of words, onomatopoeia, movements, and costumes, which are left open to interpretation. Audience members can move freely around the set to follow certain characters during the performance, which allows them to hear the "secret song", prevents them from hearing the songs of others, and forces them to interpret what they see and hear through their individual subjectivity. As a result, Mask Your Sonic Story creates as many narratives as there are audience members.
Concept, music and onomatopoeia, Reiko Yamada
Costume design, Ani Geragosian
Stage direction, Richard Colton
Words, Nicolas Trepanier
Performed at:
Knafel Center, Harvard University, April 20, 2016
Ipswich Hall, Boston Conservatory, May 14 and 15, 2016
Reviewed by: