Who: Du Yun, International Contemporary Ensemble, Satomi Matsuzaki
What: New stagings of Du Yun’s A Cockroach’s Tarantella and Zolle
Where: NYU Skirball, 566 La Guardia Pl.
When: Friday, April 29, and Saturday, April 30, $35, 7:30
Why: Shanghai-born, NYC-based composer, performer, Grammy nominee, Pulitzer Prize winner, Guggenheim fellow, and advocator Du Yun is teaming up with the International Contemporary Ensemble and Deerhoof singer Satomi Matsuzaki, in her operatic debut, for new stagings of two earlier works dealing with issues of home and migration, memory and reality. A founding member of ICE, Du Yun will present 2010’s A Cockroach’s Tarantella and 2005’s Zolle, both reconfigured for NYU Skirball; the former features Matsuzaki and Du Yun, the composer, librettist, and sound designer, as the narrators, with violinists Josh Modney and Pauline Harris, violist Hannah Levinson, and cellist Mariel Roberts, while in the latter Du Yun is the Wander Woman Ghost, Matsuzaki is the Same Wander Woman Ghost, assistant director eddy kwon is the Land-Watcher, and Ziad Nehme is the recorded tenor Land-Watcher, with Alice Teyssier on flute, Ryan Muncy on saxophone, Nathan Davis on percussion, Modney on violin, Levinson on viola, and Roberts on cello. The direction, costumes, and video are by Roscha A. Säidow, with lighting by Nicholas Houfek; Kamna Gupta conducts.
Zolle “was scored for the female voice and a narration — two voices of the same character which both embody who she is,” Du Yun, who was an international student when she wrote the work, said in a statement. “When I’m creating, it feels that the ideas and emotions are very heightened but then the words fail at that total expression. A character that has both narration and singing embodies what I think most immigrants are experiencing — ‘How can you manifest these complex emotional subtleties with both entities, with words and with music?’ . . . This piece is about belonging and also questioning about belonging. That was what propelled me to write this story and it really holds a very dear place in my heart.” Kicking off ICE’s twentieth anniversary season, the shows will lead to “Sound Is an Opening,” a series of community events curated by kwon.