The Red Act Project arose out of a text that Reynolds assembled from the works of Aeschylus and Euripides. The Red Act text portrays the mythic conflict between Agamemnon (subject of pride and of the state) and Clytemnestra (ruled by natural imperatives and personal loyalty), yet it is strikingly of our time. There are six principals: Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Iphigenia (the compliant victim who rationalizes her fate), Cassandra (the defiant visionary), Menelaus, and Hecuba. This dark but intensely lyrical drama has imbedded within it several complementarities: individual needs as contrasted with collective values, and, more fundamentally, the singular in relation to the multiple.
The Project will include a family of responses to the three-part text, some dramatic, others reflective, some requiring massive forces, others that are soloistic. All carry forward in their ways the lyrical sweep of The Red Act as a tale and respond, as well, to its uniquely resonant language. The long-term goal is to draw upon the accumulating group of Project compositions in shaping an evening-long theatrical experience.
1. The first work in the set is The Red Act Arias (for chorus, orchestra, narrator, and 8-channel computer processed sound), commissioned by the BBC and premièred at their '97 Proms Festival.
2. The Red Act Arias Suite is an 8-channel electroacoustical work.
3. JUSTICE (soprano, actress, percussionist, real-time computer sound spatialization, and computer processed sound) was premièred at Director Tadashi Suzuki's 2nd Theatre Olympics in Shizuoka, Japan in May of 1999. It is focused on Clytemnestra's primary scenes from the text and was commissioned by the Julian E. Berla and Freda Hauptman Berla Fund in the Library of Congress for the celebration of the Library's Bicentennial, with further support from the 2nd Theatre Olympics.
4. A Crimson Path (cello and piano) draws on the material of Ariadne's Thread (string quartet and computer generated sound), but is also a gloss on the interaction between Agamemnon and Iphigenia, mirroring her dawning awareness of a sacrificial destiny. This work, commissioned by Rencontres d'ensembles de violoncelles, was premièred by Rohan and Druvi de Saram in May of 2000.
5. ...brain ablaze...she howled aloud (for 1, 2, or 3 piccolos, computer processed sound, and real-time computer spatialization) was commissioned by the June in Buffalo Festival and premièred by Rachel Rudich and John Fonville in June of 2000. It portrays, in metaphoric extremity, the behavior of the visionary Cassandra.
6. ILLUSION is the projected complement of JUSTICE, concerned with the interaction of Agamemnon, Iphigenia, and Cassandra. As JUSTICE requires multiple media (singer, actress, percussionist, computer sound, and real-time computer processing), in order to portray the composite nature of Clytemnestra and her relation to the dramatic whole, ILLUSION too will involve multiple elements in its portrayal of each of its principals.
* JUSTICE will be reprised at the Library of Congress' Great Hall in Washington, DC on 30 November [Friday] and 1 December [Saturday] 2001.
* Commenting on the première of The Red Act Arias in 1997 at the Royal Albert Hall, Rick Jones wrote for the Evening Standard of London, "...I can understand an audience's nervousness about the piece. After all, it heralds the end of music as we have known it for 400 years. ... The last change was around 1600 when old lutes, viols and recorders began to be replaced by new well-tempered instruments capable of playing in any key." In The Sunday Times, Paul Driver wrote, "...the analogy that kept occurring was with Schoenberg's sacred opera Moses und Aron, in which the chorus is true protagonist and speech figures alongside song. Like that unfinished masterpiece, The Red Act Arias is a kind of anthropological brooding; a secular oratorio in which the theme is the dark forces at the foundation of civilised society. Leonard Slatkin directed a spectacular first performance of a deep, demanding work."
Credit is due to the following who have been involved in supporting the continuing Red Act Project:Peter Otto, System Development and Project Management in relation to computer spatialization
Tim Labor, Principal Technical and Musical Assistance for The Red Act Arias
Michael Theodore, Source Preparation, Editing and Balancing for The Red Act Arias
Chris Mercer, Musical and Technical Assistance for JUSTICE and ...brain ablaze...
F. Richard Moore, Author of cmusic, the project development environment
Miller Puckette, Author of Max, principal real-time audio software environment
Josef Kucera, Audio Standards and Engineering throughout
Chris Stuart, Ron Quillin, Patrick Rost, Kathryn Martin, Don Gillespie, Ralph Pitt, Carol Hobson, Technical and Production Assistance
Karen Reynolds, Text and Score Preparation and Editing throughout
Eric Dries, Copyist, with Jeffrey Nevin, Nathaniel Phillips, Eric Simonson
Simon Joly, Conductor for BBC Singers and Orchestra source recordings
Philip Larson, Carol Plantamura, Juliana Snapper, Orin Tanabe, source recordings for JUSTICE
BBC Singers for choral materials
Rachel Rudich, source recordings for...brain ablaze...
Silicon Graphics, Inc., Project support, and the new 02 Silicon Graphics Workstation
The facilities of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts and of the Department of Music, both of the University of California, San Diego.
Questions? ping@rogerreynolds.com
This page was last modified on 22 August 2001.