Composer Paola Prestini and vocalist/composer Magos Herrera present Con Alma, an operatic tableau on isolation that will be released as an album recording and live digital experience, featuring original works alongside classic songs from the Mexican and Jazz songbook. Created and recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project explores the question of how we can find communion and shared experience in a time of isolation. The album will be released December 4 on National Sawdust Tracks, and the live digital event will take place December 13 at 7pm ET, in collaboration with the Mexican Ministry of Culture. The event will also broadcast live on the WNET Group's ALL ARTS TV channel in the New York metro area and will be live-streamed on allarts.org and National Sawdust's Digital Stage.
The music for Con Alma was recorded from March to October, as a cross-border collaboration with over thirty musicians from three continents, all capturing their different musical parts in isolation. It brings together longtime friends Prestini and Herrera, each quarantined in their respective countries of the U.S. and Mexico, and unites them with musical partners that include the all-women German-based Ensemble Sjaella, Constellation Chor, the Young People’s Chorus of NYC, Mexico’s top symphony orchestra “Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería”, and guest virtuosos including former Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, Silk Road clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, guitarists Romero Lubambo and Vinicius Gomes, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Gonzalo Grau and arranger Diego Schissi.
Spearheaded by the two genre-defying women, the project takes inspiration from the surrealist paintings of Remedios Varo, with their timely and poignant themes of spirituality, nature, creativity, solidarity and purpose that pulse through the album. The music weaves an overarching narrative from texts by a broad selection of female bards through the centuries, with stories ranging from an ode to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and hope for our environment, to a story about what might have changed if Mary Magdalene had been invited to the table at the Last Supper, to the reincarnation of man, and the human soul represented through the joy of a bird’s song and flight.
The album will be launched via a live streamed performance event on December 13 at 7PM ET/6PM CT, headed by multimedia visionary Ashley Tata (who’s recent online performance of the play Mad Forest was praised by The New York Times as “fervently inventive... deeply moving... emotionally direct and lucid”), and partners Eamonn Farrell and Andy Carluccio. The streamed digital experience will weave together self-recorded music videos that examine isolation and solitude, live-drawings by Kevork Mourad simulcast as animations for songs, and real-time conversations and storytelling with the creators and performers of these works, including Magos Herrera and Paola Prestini. The event will be broadcast on National Sawdust’s live digital stage, in collaboration with The Mexican Government’s Secretary of Culture, and it will also be broadcast live on the WNET Group's ALL ARTS TV channel in the New York metro area and will be live-streamed on allarts.org. In order to provide free, universal access to the event, and as part of Mexico’s Indigenous World 2020 efforts, it will also be streamed on official platforms: screens in key public areas throughout the country, as well as National Public TV and Public Radio, making it accessible as a shared educational and cultural experience to even the most remote communities in Mexico.
As part of the process of creation, Con Alma will incorporate a social media campaign focused on “the sound of isolation," in which participants will share a video of their experience of isolation, and the responses will be incorporated into one of the tracks of the album, giving the creators and this work the opportunity to connect the larger experience during the pandemic to this sonic artifact of a singular moment in our history. The December 13 digital event will also give audience members the opportunity to contribute their voices both before and during the simulcast performance, creating a world-wide chorus, separated by geography and in different languages but joined by intention and spirit.
In a joint statement on the project, Prestini and Herrera said: “Con Alma is a sonic painting representing a 15 year friendship through a collaborative process of writing, telling the story of shared ambitions and triumphs, love, trials, hope, and losses. The artists we worked with form our international musical family, and it’s a joy to be able to connect through this album, leaving an artifact of this time, and our response to the pandemic, alone, but together.”
The album will be released on December 4, 2020 on National Sawdust Tracks, the in-house label of National Sawdust, which has released Pulitzer Prize-winning operas and collaborations with some of new music's great artists. The Con Alma project is commissioned by Jill and Bill Steinberg, with additional support from The Onassis Foundation Exit Grant, Merrill Lynch, and Alexander Sanger.
Composer Paola Prestini and vocalist/composer Magos Herrera present Con Alma, an operatic tableau on isolation that will be released as an album recording and live digital experience, featuring original works alongside classic songs from the Mexican and Jazz songbook. Created and recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project explores the question of how we can find communion and shared experience in a time of isolation. The album will be released December 4 on National Sawdust Tracks, and the live digital event will take place December 13 at 7pm ET, in collaboration with the Mexican Ministry of Culture. The event will also broadcast live on the WNET Group's ALL ARTS TV channel in the New York metro area and will be live-streamed on allarts.org and National Sawdust's Digital Stage.
The music for Con Alma was recorded from March to October, as a cross-border collaboration with over thirty musicians from three continents, all capturing their different musical parts in isolation. It brings together longtime friends Prestini and Herrera, each quarantined in their respective countries of the U.S. and Mexico, and unites them with musical partners that include the all-women German-based Ensemble Sjaella, Constellation Chor, the Young People’s Chorus of NYC, Mexico’s top symphony orchestra “Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería”, and guest virtuosos including former Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, Silk Road clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, guitarists Romero Lubambo and Vinicius Gomes, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Gonzalo Grau and arranger Diego Schissi.
Spearheaded by the two genre-defying women, the project takes inspiration from the surrealist paintings of Remedios Varo, with their timely and poignant themes of spirituality, nature, creativity, solidarity and purpose that pulse through the album. The music weaves an overarching narrative from texts by a broad selection of female bards through the centuries, with stories ranging from an ode to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and hope for our environment, to a story about what might have changed if Mary Magdalene had been invited to the table at the Last Supper, to the reincarnation of man, and the human soul represented through the joy of a bird’s song and flight.
The album will be launched via a live streamed performance event on December 13 at 7PM ET/6PM CT, headed by multimedia visionary Ashley Tata (who’s recent online performance of the play Mad Forest was praised by The New York Times as “fervently inventive... deeply moving... emotionally direct and lucid”), and partners Eamonn Farrell and Andy Carluccio. The streamed digital experience will weave together self-recorded music videos that examine isolation and solitude, live-drawings by Kevork Mourad simulcast as animations for songs, and real-time conversations and storytelling with the creators and performers of these works, including Magos Herrera and Paola Prestini. The event will be broadcast on National Sawdust’s live digital stage, in collaboration with The Mexican Government’s Secretary of Culture, and it will also be broadcast live on the WNET Group's ALL ARTS TV channel in the New York metro area and will be live-streamed on allarts.org. In order to provide free, universal access to the event, and as part of Mexico’s Indigenous World 2020 efforts, it will also be streamed on official platforms: screens in key public areas throughout the country, as well as National Public TV and Public Radio, making it accessible as a shared educational and cultural experience to even the most remote communities in Mexico.
As part of the process of creation, Con Alma will incorporate a social media campaign focused on “the sound of isolation," in which participants will share a video of their experience of isolation, and the responses will be incorporated into one of the tracks of the album, giving the creators and this work the opportunity to connect the larger experience during the pandemic to this sonic artifact of a singular moment in our history. The December 13 digital event will also give audience members the opportunity to contribute their voices both before and during the simulcast performance, creating a world-wide chorus, separated by geography and in different languages but joined by intention and spirit.
In a joint statement on the project, Prestini and Herrera said: “Con Alma is a sonic painting representing a 15 year friendship through a collaborative process of writing, telling the story of shared ambitions and triumphs, love, trials, hope, and losses. The artists we worked with form our international musical family, and it’s a joy to be able to connect through this album, leaving an artifact of this time, and our response to the pandemic, alone, but together.”
The album will be released on December 4, 2020 on National Sawdust Tracks, the in-house label of National Sawdust, which has released Pulitzer Prize-winning operas and collaborations with some of new music's great artists. The Con Alma project is commissioned by Jill and Bill Steinberg, with additional support from The Onassis Foundation Exit Grant, Merrill Lynch, and Alexander Sanger.
Composer Paola Prestini and vocalist/composer Magos Herrera present Con Alma, an operatic tableau on isolation that will be released as an album recording and live digital experience, featuring original works alongside classic songs from the Mexican and Jazz songbook. Created and recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project explores the question of how we can find communion and shared experience in a time of isolation. The album will be released December 4 on National Sawdust Tracks, and the live digital event will take place December 13 at 7pm ET, in collaboration with the Mexican Ministry of Culture. The event will also broadcast live on the WNET Group's ALL ARTS TV channel in the New York metro area and will be live-streamed on allarts.org and National Sawdust's Digital Stage.
The music for Con Alma was recorded from March to October, as a cross-border collaboration with over thirty musicians from three continents, all capturing their different musical parts in isolation. It brings together longtime friends Prestini and Herrera, each quarantined in their respective countries of the U.S. and Mexico, and unites them with musical partners that include the all-women German-based Ensemble Sjaella, Constellation Chor, the Young People’s Chorus of NYC, Mexico’s top symphony orchestra “Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería”, and guest virtuosos including former Kronos Quartet cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, Silk Road clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, guitarists Romero Lubambo and Vinicius Gomes, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Gonzalo Grau and arranger Diego Schissi.
Spearheaded by the two genre-defying women, the project takes inspiration from the surrealist paintings of Remedios Varo, with their timely and poignant themes of spirituality, nature, creativity, solidarity and purpose that pulse through the album. The music weaves an overarching narrative from texts by a broad selection of female bards through the centuries, with stories ranging from an ode to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and hope for our environment, to a story about what might have changed if Mary Magdalene had been invited to the table at the Last Supper, to the reincarnation of man, and the human soul represented through the joy of a bird’s song and flight.
The album will be launched via a live streamed performance event on December 13 at 7PM ET/6PM CT, headed by multimedia visionary Ashley Tata (who’s recent online performance of the play Mad Forest was praised by The New York Times as “fervently inventive... deeply moving... emotionally direct and lucid”), and partners Eamonn Farrell and Andy Carluccio. The streamed digital experience will weave together self-recorded music videos that examine isolation and solitude, live-drawings by Kevork Mourad simulcast as animations for songs, and real-time conversations and storytelling with the creators and performers of these works, including Magos Herrera and Paola Prestini. The event will be broadcast on National Sawdust’s live digital stage, in collaboration with The Mexican Government’s Secretary of Culture, and it will also be broadcast live on the WNET Group's ALL ARTS TV channel in the New York metro area and will be live-streamed on allarts.org. In order to provide free, universal access to the event, and as part of Mexico’s Indigenous World 2020 efforts, it will also be streamed on official platforms: screens in key public areas throughout the country, as well as National Public TV and Public Radio, making it accessible as a shared educational and cultural experience to even the most remote communities in Mexico.
As part of the process of creation, Con Alma will incorporate a social media campaign focused on “the sound of isolation," in which participants will share a video of their experience of isolation, and the responses will be incorporated into one of the tracks of the album, giving the creators and this work the opportunity to connect the larger experience during the pandemic to this sonic artifact of a singular moment in our history. The December 13 digital event will also give audience members the opportunity to contribute their voices both before and during the simulcast performance, creating a world-wide chorus, separated by geography and in different languages but joined by intention and spirit.
In a joint statement on the project, Prestini and Herrera said: “Con Alma is a sonic painting representing a 15 year friendship through a collaborative process of writing, telling the story of shared ambitions and triumphs, love, trials, hope, and losses. The artists we worked with form our international musical family, and it’s a joy to be able to connect through this album, leaving an artifact of this time, and our response to the pandemic, alone, but together.”
The album will be released on December 4, 2020 on National Sawdust Tracks, the in-house label of National Sawdust, which has released Pulitzer Prize-winning operas and collaborations with some of new music's great artists. The Con Alma project is commissioned by Jill and Bill Steinberg, with additional support from The Onassis Foundation Exit Grant, Merrill Lynch, and Alexander Sanger.
