Your Call…
Leaky Boat Productions
Saturday 8 & Sunday 9 August, 2015
Kings Place Hall 2, 90 York Way, London, N1 9AG.
Genesis
YOUR CALL… grew out of my work with the CreST (Creative Speech Technology) research project at the University of York. CreST was a collection of people from industry, science and the arts, all with an interest in the voice. We have shown concert and semi-‐staged workshop performances of YOUR CALL… at the Woodend Gallery, Scarborough (as a part of Articulate, the first ever concert of music for human and synthetic voices), the National Centre for Early Music, York (as a part of the York Festival of Ideas), Harvestworks Digital Media Arts, NY and the University of North Texas, Denton. Part 1 of YOUR CALL… was presented as a part of the Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2014.
Synopsis
YOUR CALL… is a music-‐theatre work that explores the intersection of humans and technology. Using synthetic voice technology, this piece pits one woman, played by two mezzo-‐sopranos, against a gaggle of synthetic voices on her phone. Lost in a comically surreal digital world where truth and meaning are always in flux, she struggles to understand and be understood.
Her phone rings. She answers. Another annoying automated call, a synthetic voice jabbering away. But the voice seems to know more than it should. Then there are more and more voices, and she finds herself plunged into a horde of synthetic characters with an agenda all their own; if only she can figure out what that is. YOUR CALL… uses technology to explore the rocky terrain of our relationship to that technology and the ways in which it is an ever more intimate, sometimes intrusive presence in our lives.
Music & Words: Kevin Jones
Director: Kevin Jones
Choreographer: Joy Kellman
Video Projection Maker: Hannah Wasileski
Technical Advisor, Audio Operator: Bruce Balentine
Production Assistants: Drou Constantinou, Nora Perone
The Woman: Hai-‐Ting Chinn (mezzo-‐soprano), Lisa Coates (mezzo-‐soprano)
The Voices: Cereproc Text-‐to-‐Speech
Music & Words: Kevin Jones
Director: Kevin Jones
Choreographer: Joy Kellman
Video Projection Maker: Hannah Wasileski
Technical Advisor, Audio Operator: Bruce Balentine
Production Assistants: Drou Constantinou, Nora Perone
The Woman: Hai-‐Ting Chinn (mezzo-‐soprano), Lisa Coates (mezzo-‐soprano)
The Voices: Cereproc Text-‐to-‐Speech
Kevin Jones has written and directed numerous music/performance works, which have been presented throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and Canada, and broadcast internationally. His fiction has been published in the Minetta Review and the Portable Lower East Side, and his text/sound works were included in the anthology Texts/Sound Texts.
Joy Kellman’s choreography has been presented across Europe and the U.S., and at venues such as The Joyce Theater, Central Park’s SummerStage, 92ndStreet Y, Harkness Dance, Dance Theater Workshop and WAX.She’s received grants/commissions from Harkness Foundation, The Yard, DTW and Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Foundation, among others.
Hai-‐Ting Chinn (American mezzo-‐soprano) was featured in Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach and The Wooster Group’s La Didone, and has appeared with New York City Opera, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Israel
Philharmonic, Orchestra of St Luke’s, the Waverly Consort, at Carnegie Hall, the Edinburgh Festival, the Verbier Festival and London’s West End.
Lisa J Coates (mezzo-‐soprano) recently performed roles with Co-‐Opera, #Opera CO and Associated studios, and was a soloist for Duruflé’s Requiem, Bach’s B Minor Mass and Handel’s Messiah. She’s recorded for Boreas and Touch, and featured on BBC Radio 3. As Artist-‐in-‐Residence for Timeline Songs, she recently recorded an album of renaissance Christmas works.
Hannah Wasileski is a video artist whose work spans opera, music, theatre and installation. Recent designs include: La Celestina (Manual Cinema – Opera Erratica, Metropolitan Museum of Art), The World is Round (Obie Award, BAM) and La Prose du Transsiberien (Yale Beinecke). Her works have been exhibited in London, Brighton and Glasgow.
Bruce Balentine, composer and multimedia artist, has interests in electroacoustic, theatrical and projected light media. Following a professional career in speech technology, he now uses artificial voice technologies to explore boundaries between music and language. Balentine holds two degrees in music composition from the University of North Texas.