Basement Hades: Songs of The Underworld

Created by The Ensemble

with Original Music by Daniel Schlosberg

and Text by Justin Taylor

Directed by Ethan Heard

THURSDAY, March 22nd at 8pm

FRIDAY, March 23rd and

SATURDAY March 24th at 8 and 11 pm

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Basement Hades: Songs of the Underworld

Blue-gray light. The sound of water lapping against a waiting boat. A musician arrives at the river’s edge, instrument in hand. Can he convince the ferryman to take him across? He will have to play like he’s never played before.

Brought to you by the director of last season’s sold-out Trannequin!, Basement Hades transforms the Cabaret into the realm of the dead, reimagining the Orpheus myth through music and text – old and new. A unique ensemble of performers from the Yale School of Music, including the contemporary chamber music group New Morse Code, composer/pianist Dan Schlosberg, and mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen weave together a virtuosic tapestry of song and poetry, blurring the boundaries between concert, play and multimedia event.

Bios/Videos/Clips/Links below…

Mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen has been called an “excellent vocal soloist” by the New York Times and praised by OperaNews for her “dulcet, sweetly phrased” singing. This season she appears with Yale Opera as Dorabella in Così fan tutte and with the Yale Baroque Opera Project as Penelope in Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria. Recent roles include La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi and La Marchande in Les mamelles de Tirésias with Central City Opera; Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Yale Opera; Hansel in Hansel and Gretel with Opera Theater of Connecticut; and Alessandro (cover) in Tolomeo with Glimmerglass Opera. This summer she will join the Apprentice Artist program of Santa Fe Opera. Recent concert appearances include Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the New Haven Symphony, Britten’s Phaedra with the Yale Recital Orchestra, and Bach’s Mass in B minor with Cappella Cantorum of Connecticut. She is a 2011 District Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She earned her B.A. with distinction in music from Yale College and her M.M. in vocal performance from the Mannes College of Music, where she was awarded the Shoshana Foundation’s Richard F. Gold Career Grant in 2010. She studies with Doris Cross at the Yale School of Music.

Annie Rosen, who recently starred as Dorabella in Yale Opera’s Cosi fan tutte, is one of nineteen semi- finalists in the 2012 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She is the New England Regional Winner.

http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/auditions/national/index.aspx

A fierce advocate of contemporary music, New Morse Code violist Anne Lanzilotti has premiered both solo and chamber music works across Europe and the United States. Recently, she performed the UK premiere of Dai Fujikura’s “prism spectra” for viola and electronics at Village Underground in London. While living in Berlin, she performed with new music groups such as ensemble interface and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, as well as with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin as a fellowship violist. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at the Manhattan School of Music under Karen Ritscher.

For a complete bio, visit: annelanzilotti.com

Percussionist Michael Compitello is guided by his passion to create new art through collaborations with composers, performers and artists in all mediums. He has worked with composers Helmut Lachenmann, Nicolaus A. Huber, David Lang, John Luther Adams, Alejandro Viñao, Marc Applebaum and Martin Bresnick on premieres and performances of new works, and has performed as a chamber musician and soloist in diverse locations such as the Darmstadt Summer Course, Frankfurt’s ROT Neue-Musik festival, The Kurt Weill Festival, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and the Banff Centre. From 2009 to 2010, Michael performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ensemble Modern and the International Ensemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt, Germany on a Fulbright Grant from the US Department of State. Michael earned a BM in Percussion from the Peabody Conservatory and an MM from the Yale School of Music, where he is pursuing an MMA degree.

Cellist Hannah Collins has been the recipient of several prizes including the Presser Foundation Music Award and De Linkprijs 2010 for contemporary interpretation. Hannah has commissioned and premiered many works including Monologue (for singing, speaking, and acting cellist) by Dutch composer Patrick van Deurzen which she premiered in The Hague in May 2011. She has participated in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Creative Dialogue Workshop, the Britten- Pears Programme Contemporary Performance Workshop and the Aldeburgh Festival Young Composers Concerts. Hannah recently completed a graduate degree with Michel Strauss at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and also holds degrees in biomedical engineering and music from Yale University where she studied cello with Ole Akahoshi and Aldo Parisot.

Pianist and composer Daniel Schlosberg has written music for a wide variety of ensembles, including the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, counter)induction, the Lorelei Ensemble, and New Triad for Collaborative Arts. He has also written a chamber opera based on Kafka's "A Country Doctor," which was premiered at Yale in 2009. He has won awards from ASCAP and NFAA for his work. As a performer, he has been a soloist with many orchestras, most recently with the Yale Symphony Orchestra in Scriabin's "Prometheus." He is currently a first-year master's student in composition at the Yale School of Music, studying with Christopher Theofanidis.