Meet Onome Ekeh, Video Artist

Onome Ekeh (Video Designer) 
was born and raised on both sides of the Atlantic.
Onome started out as a painter, gravitated toward design and fell in love with cinema. Somewhere in the collusion she went digital… She has produced works for film, theater and radio and is the recipient of several fellowships including the Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation and the Kunstlerhaus Buchsenhausen Fellowship. The co-founder and conceptual gear-machinitrix behind Featurezoo.net, Onome has worked as a dramaturge on projects such as Grisha Colemnan’s “Echo System”, David Thomson’s “Venus”, Okwui Okpakwasili’s “Bronx Gothic’, as well as collaborated with artists such as Knut Asdam, Clarinda Mac Low, Paul Boocock, and Carl Hancock Rux.

Interview with Kevin Malone - MOP Composer Mysterious 44

Grace
Q. As a composer what made you want to get involved with mop?


Kevin
A. I like multimedia: when the senses are stimulated in a coordinated manner to communicate artistic ideas and emotions. For years, I've also composed for theatre, film, museums and galleries as well as the concert hall. But the one art form which has eluded me until now is opera, since it is so expensive to produce one of substantial length. Then Emily's brilliant idea of MOP started to form: a pooling of talents, resources and enthusiasm to create a can-do approach to launching new work with efficiency and to provide experience for singers who can use it for promotion. It's a combination which balances artistic vision with practical needs. That's for me! 

 
Grace
Q. What was your inspiration behind the opera?

Kevin
A. Well, Mysterious 44 came about because I've been haunted by its existentialist story from the pen of Mark Twain ever since I read it at the age of ten. It's an important story for all societies, especially in this age, who favour radical ideology and fundamentalism over tolerance, exploration and curiosity. I've research the three unpublished versions by Twain, compared them to the posthumous novella, and then created my own narrative and libretto. A cathartic experience for me, but I believe it's also one of universal purpose.

 
Grace
Q. Why did you decide to replace the traditional classical instrumental accompaniment with an electroacoustic backing? And was composing in this medium difficult in comparison?

Kevin
A. Mysterious 44 has a character, "44", who is fantastical. There was no effective way to portray him/her on stage. But there are also other surprising things about 44 which I won't reveal here. As a result, I thought it best to make him invisible and we know of his presence only through disembodied voices. Then I realised that, since I'm using loudspeakers and video projection -- and the story is partly about technology -- band of non-diegetic instrumentalists and a conductor would be a distraction. So, like with a film soundtrack, the audience can wholly focus on the visual action yet get a lot of extra stimulation and narrative ideas from the electronic score.
 
Grace
Q. Have you written an opera or anything of the like previously in your career?

Kevin
A. I have been working steadily toward this for years! First there were theatre and film scores, then my concert hall music became quite theatrical, and eventually I started to name pieces after theatrical genres: Opus opera is a recent 50 minute string quartet in the style of an opera, which was followed by the cabaret songs A Clockwork Operetta (for MOP's director Emily) using the recently-discovered pop lyrics of Anthony Burgess' own screen play for A Clockwork Orange. So much of my "purely abstract" concert music is clearly lyrical, and it now naturally follows that the voice -- the source of lyricism -- be fully acknowledged and positioned back into the body from whence I've drawn so much inspiration.
 
Grace
Q. Would you be interested in co-writing with or being shadowed by a less experienced composer, thus helping them develop and gain invaluable experience that is hard for composers to find when just starting out?

Kevin
A. I'm most absolutely interested! It is valuable not only for the music-theatre genres and less-experienced composers, but also for the mentor: they have to be able to articulate why something does or does not work, and that sharpens their ability to communicate. Contemporary composition often has a reputation of "Like it or leave it", but half of the time the problem lies within issues having to do with musical communication within the composition itself. MOP+Mentoring is a brilliant way in which serious imperfections in writing opera can be picked up early on, and yet leave plenty of room for experimentation.



Grace

Q. What tips can you give to any new composers attempting to write an opera?

Kevin

A. Listen to AND attend a LOT of opera. Song cycles by Schumann and Schubert -- yes, the oldies! -- are also vital, because such cycles are about sight-sound pacing and the sense of space, imagery and emotional transformation are all there as well as in staged opera. Some of the good non-pop musical theatre (Weill, Sondheim, Bernstein) is also valuable. Write down in words what you think works and how it works! How is each song or scene different? It is important to analyse the relationship between text, sound and timing, so to start, a composer should write a lot of songs and, for contrast, a lot of recitatives, without having to deal with sustained structures such as complete opera or even scenes. This is something which MOP is considering for future projects: how smaller units of a larger work can be nurtured.



Grace Gladston is currently studying for a BMus in Music at the University of Manchester and is an intern at MOP

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Meet Emily Howard Cobley, Mezzo Soprano

Emily Cobley (nee Howard) has sung and recorded works by many composers; among them Steven Gerber, Kevin Malone, Michael Rose, Peter Susser and Alexandra Vrebalov. Most recently in 2012, she sang the American and British premieres of Kevin Malone’s A Clockwork Operetta with members of the Kronos Quartet (American premiere at the PEN American World Voices Festival) Of her PEN performance, Jane Ciabattari of NPR said (Emily) “blew the roof off” she was-appropriately-raucous, raspy and spell binding”. Other singing highlights include working as a Valkyrie at the Metropolitan Opera, her debut at Carnegie Hall in Mozart's Mass in C Minor, a performance of the Laudamus Te from the same work for Bill and Hillary Clinton and singing excerpts from for thousands as “The Queen of Opera” in the Extremely Hungary Festival's Opera Night in 2009 (as part of Target First Fridays at the Brooklyn Museum). Favourite roles performed include Azucena in Il Trovatore, Amneris in Aida and Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd.

Meet Steven Griffin, Baritone

Steven Griffin’s performances range from bass soloist with the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra in Haydn’s Seven Last Words to principal roles including La Fauteuil and L’Arbre in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, David in Barber’s A Hand of Bridge and Cameriere in Ward’s Roman Fever. Recent performances include the bass soloist in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio,  performed with members of the Bergen Philharmonic and the Collegium Musicum choir. 

Steven has participated in a number of young artists programs including Opera NUOVA, where he sang the role Melisso in Handel’s Alcina, Halifax Summer Opera Workshop, where he performed the role of Starveling in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and the Center for Opera Studies in Italy (COSI) where he performed the role of Publio in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito.

Steven is originally from the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia where received his Bachelor of Music degree in Voice Performance from Memorial University of Newfoundland .He is currently studying for his Master of Music with Quentin Hayes at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester, UK.
 

Meet Tim Langston, Tenor

British tenor Timothy Langston read Music at the University of Manchester where he studied voice under Andrew Heggie. He achieved First Class Honors and was awarded Proctor Gregg Fund awards for Composition and Recital.  In September 2012 he began his studies on the MMus course at the Royal Northern College of Music, studying with Peter Alexander Wilson. At the end of his first year he was awarded the Anne Ziegler Award by the RNCM.  

Timothy is an enthusiastic performer and director of opera. He has sung roles in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg Act 3 (Zorn) with the Halle/Sir Mark Elder, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (Eumete/Ulisse), In March 2013 sang with the European Opera Centre in A Beggar’s Opera (Wat Dreary) with Richard Farnes and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Timothy’s concert experience includes performances with Halle, Psappha, The Gabrieli Consort, Gewandhaus Orchestra, Simon Bolivar Orchestra, Birmingham Festival Orchestra, Constella Orchestra and the Anthony Burgess Foundation. Timothy appeared on the Halle recording of Elgar’s The Apostles, which won the BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year and the Gramaphone Award for Best Choral Recording in 2013.

Introducing Emily Mowbray, Mezzo Soprano

Emily Mowbray, Mezzo Soprano

Born in Nottingham, England, Emily attended a specialist school for music where she was awarded the Elizabeth Nall Music Prize. She continued her vocal studies at the University of York with Lynne Dawson and graduated with a BA (Hons) in 2011. She is currently training at the Royal Northern College of Music with Nicholas Powell after receiving the Dame Isobel Baillie Performance Award for Vocal and Opera Studies. She performed in the UK première of Narcisus & Echo by Djordjevic in 2011 and performs in numerous solo recitals with a variety of repertoire. She recently performed in the Leeds Lieder Festival with a new piece 'Forgotten Memory' (2013) by Katie Chatburn. With the same composer she also worked on a collaboration to win the Rosamund Prize in 2013.  She has performed many new works in both the RNCM Concert Hall and the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall and in Contemporary Music Festivals by composers such as James Whittle and Nelson Bohorquez Castro. Emily also has a strong interest in Latin American and Spanish song, including art song, Argentine tango music and the traditional pasillo.