FULL Pink MooN

Opera Povera presents FULL PINK MOON: Opera Povera in Quarantine, an international durational livestream performance of visionary composer Pauline Oliveros’s open-form The Lunar Opera; Deep Listening For_Tunes.

FULL PINK MOON is a global fundraiser supporting musicians financially affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, administered through the Equal Sound Corona Relief Fund, and also supporting Opera Povera’s Full Pink Moon production expenses.

OPERA POVERA STATEMENT - SEAN GRIFFIN

It is during the full moon that we are at our most flush, vulnerable, predatory, unpredictable and glowing. Who can say what the lunar effects of the first full moon in lockdown will be? We are in a time of isolation but we can be deeply connected right now by that separation we feel by reaching out. It is important to understand that Oliveros’ opera is not a spectator’s opera, rather, it is a vast participatory operatic landscape of moondrunk people in a fictional space of free expression and listening.

Pauline sent the score for The Lunar Opera; Deep Listening For_Tunes (1999) to me on the night of August 13, 2014. We had worked on an opera before and this was something I put in the back of my mind; there was something about the openness, the moonlight and people freezing and moving motivated by inner listening through totally invented personas. I was inspired by her work as a student and later in my career, I had the opportunity to perform with her. The way her work addresses interaction between people is something extremely valuable in contemporary music and perhaps very suited to our current realignment of social engagement.

In 2012, I created an opera from her ground-breaking early feminist composition of sound and light called To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation. Of our collaboration she wrote:

"Such a gift to receive! 1970 was an awakening that shifted my consciousness as a composer. Valerie Solanas' Scum Manifesto contained the structure for To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation. All the players had equal parts with an algorithm that offered individuation yet cohesive musical expression. Sean Griffin picked up on the deep structure and political meaning of the piece in his collaborative integration of operatic elements. It was thrilling to have this expressive understanding in conjunction with the music so that an opera emerged."

Fast forward eight years to March 14, 2020 while feeling the chilling effects of lockdown, I made a comment on social media that received some attention. In the post, I bet there were a few cool Pauline Oliveros pieces we could perform together in quarantine, something quite suited to her benevolent works. A number of people said let's do it; Madeline Falcone from CalArts and Seth Brodsky from the Gray Center chimed in and here we are.

The direction in the score to choose a cue and to conduct yourself in and out suggests a creative investment in ourselves and each other. That is animated by sudden alterations between noise/action and reverie/stillness, shifts that are not cued not by us really, but by the character we are channeling, the one we invented.

The pre-opera discussion is co-hosted by Ron Athey, George Lewis, Sean Griffin, guest curators and artists. Full Pink Moon has a quickly growing roster of international artists. Full Pink Moon is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry and California Institute of the Arts.

“Being conscious of all utterances, everything all of a sudden makes sense—every noise is somebody’s voice. It is a very important moment we find ourselves in because we are forced towards consciousness.”

—Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, on sonic practices and the pandemic in the Full Pink Moon pre-performance discussion

FULL PINK MOON ARTISTS

Full Pink Moon featured over 275 artists from around the world, including a pre-concert talk with Bonaventure Ndikung, Cassils, Dana Reason, George Lewis, IONE, Miya Masaoka, and Ron Athey.

PRESS

“Just a few days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and as California’s public spaces began to shut down one by one, Sean Griffin, a founder of the avant-garde opera company Opera Povera, posted a random thought to Facebook: ‘I’m sure there are a few cool Pauline Oliveros pieces we could all perform together in quarantine.’”

The response from fellow artists and performers, says Griffin, was immediate: ‘A bunch of people said, “We’ll do it!”’

‘…It’s not really a spectator opera, but a participant opera,’ says Griffin. ‘It’s participating with everybody else’s creative interpretation.’”

—Carolina Miranda, LA Times

“Sean Griffin, the director of Opera Povera, no less than Oliveros herself was, is alive to such moments; and as the moon moved towards its near-perigee alignment with Venus and Mercury that terrestrials refer to, more wishfully than accurately, as the ‘Pink Moon’—perhaps more wishful than ever, as most of us are nearly frozen in isolation from one another—Griffin seized on the idea of executing Oliveros’ The Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For_Tunes, as if in reverse:  instead of simply pulling all of the performers and participants through internet and telecommunications to a single place (the original locus was Manhattan’s Lincoln Center), why not make the cloud in effect the actual platform, convening participants and performers by video-conferencing tools (Zoom) into a live-streamed virtual locus that would unfold as the moon appeared and began its ascent relative to the earth.”

—Ezrha Jean Black, Artillery Magazine

“Now, like so many other artforms, opera is adapting. On Tuesday night, performing arts institutions in Chicago and Los Angeles will sponsor Full Pink Moon, a production of The Lunar Opera, in the unlikeliest of venues: a Zoom video conference. It will be the opera’s first large-scale public performance since 2000.

Ione suggests Full Pink Moon’s digital venue underscores what’s most essential to The Lunar Opera: uniting artists from around the globe, under the same full moon.”

—Hannah Edgar, Chicago Magazine

NOTES ON LUNAR OPERA: DEEP LISTENING FOR_TUNES

Pauline Oliveros Foundation produced Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For_Tunes on Thursday, August 17, 2000.

The production was commissioned  by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts for Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival at New York City. Composed by Pauline Oliveros with story and direction by IONE, it is dedicated to tolerance and freedom. The inspiration was seeded in a Deep Listening Retreat at Rose Mountain Retreat Center in the Sangre de Christo Mountains of New Mexico on a full moon day July 28, 1999.

Lincoln Center Plaza was transformed into a country named Lunarus on the far side of a moon, named Anomaly, that orbits a planet very much like our own, named Hetrae. From time to time, as the universe continues to expand and dimensional realities shift and slide, Lunarus and her nine Lunar cities become visible to beings of other worlds. August 17th, 2000, the time of a full moon in New York City, was just such a moment. 

ABOUT PAULINE OLIVEROS

”Deep Listening is my life practice" 

Pauline Oliveros' (1932—2016) life as a composer, performer, and humanitarian was about opening her own and others' sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary-dissolving music making. In the '50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960's she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual. She was the recipient of four Honorary Doctorates and among her many recent awards were the William Schuman Award for Lifetime Achievement, Columbia University, New York, NY, The Giga-Hertz-Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music from ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany, and The John Cage award from from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. Oliveros was Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College. She founded "Deep Listening ®," which came from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics. She described Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. 'Deep Listening is my life practice," Oliveros explained, simply. Oliveros founded Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation, now the Center For Deep Listening at Rensselaer, Troy, NY. Her creative work is currently disseminated through The Pauline OliverosTrust and the Ministry of Maåt, Inc.

OLIVEROS’ SCORE

Each performer creates their own character with costume and props.

A performance area is designated.

Each performer decides on what sound to listen for and when the sound is perceived it is the cue to perform. The same sound or another sound can be used to stop performing and freeze until the cue comes again.

Each performer is responsible for their own character, costume, props and what or how to perform in response to the chosen cue.

The Lunar Opera; Deep Listening For_Tunes © 2000 Pauline Oliveros
Original libretto and story by IONE
Courtesy of IONE, The Oliveros Trust, and The Ministry of Maåt
Members ASCAP | PoPandMoM.org

SAMPLE CHARACTERS

“Two characters I am evoking for the event are ones that appeared in the Opera Povera production of To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation and I freely interpret the structure around finding things for them to do.” —Sean Griffin

GIRLY CHEW

The ghost of an Arizona bank teller I saw on a TV show in 2011 

I. 6–8pm Wax
Girly’s chatty interviews with invisible people and very long drones
lip-syncing to Mexican Regional Hits
dream sequence: fake interviews with participants 
very slow things: seven slowed down glissandos by women

II. 8–10pm Glow
Slow motion murder mystery tea party with Girly’s dog (my chihuahua)
overhearing a phone call: the tragic mystery of Girly Chew
dream sequence: Girly Chew phone interview with Girly Chew
DJ archival recordings during fake interviews with participants 

III. 10–12pm Bay
Girly’s German forrest dance
Girly Chew shows up to her own funeral
dream sequence: time snags and loops during a make up tutorial for over an hour
Girly Chew disappears into the pink D and E Major moon

MARILANDY MONROHOL

A cross between Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol that manifests as a shape-shifting pop art star who has been dead for years and requires the blood of young people to live.

I. 6–8pm Wax
Marilandy Monrohol paints in the pink moon
Paper opera performance (characters cut out from magazines)
dream sequence: fake interviews with fictitious movie stars 
backwards masking dance party 1

II. 8–10pm Glow
Slow and short: 20 spontaneous celebrity-themed songs
overhearing a phone call: Marilandy Monrohol learns of the tragic mystery of Girly Chew
dream sequence: Marilandy Monrohol paints Girly Chew
backwards masking dance party 2

III. 10–12pm Bay
Marilandy Monrohol makes a snack
Marilandy Monrohol  creates a portrait of Girly Chew with food
Marilandy Monrohol eats a snack
dream sequence: time snags and loops during an opera collage for over an hour
Marilandy Monrohol disappears into the pink noise moon

THANK YOU

Full Pink Moon is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry and California Institute of the Arts.

We would like to acknowledge the generous efforts of the following individuals and institutions who are making Full Pink Moon possible:

a very special thanks to IONE
George Lewis
Susan Silton
Arlene and Larry Dunn
DominantArts.Design

Matt Johnstone Publicity:
Matt Johnstone

The Gray Center for Art & Inquiry:
Sabrina Craig
Seth Brodsky
Zachary Cahill

California Institute of the Arts:
Ravi Rajan
Chebon Marshall
CalArts IT