Excerpts from Coincidents: A Multimedia Opera by Leroy Jenkins, Mary Griffin, Hisao Ihara

Friday, January 6, 20127:00 pm

Coincidents is the final opera by renowned composer, improviser, and violinist/violist Leroy Jenkins. Through song, documentary footage, interviews, and video art, the opera explores whether two people from radically different worlds — Jenkins, a son of the Great Migration who grew up in the hustle of Chicago, and Griffin, who grew up in Wales during the German air raids of WWII — could possibly be related.

Jenkins and Griffin use the lens of personal biographic details to look at universal issues of human identity and the great diasporas of history and the present day, the assumption or infliction of a new identity as a necessary adaptation to place, and the search for sustaining connections – to our ancestors and to each other.

Coincidents, A New Opera

Music: Leroy Jenkins
Libretto & Video: Mary Griffin
Graphics, Video & Video Design: Hisao Ihara
Musical Direction/piano: Myra Melford
Vocal Direction: Chris Berg
Singers: Diana Solomon Glover, Steven Herring, Robert Hughes, Peter Stewart

Excerpts from Coincidents: A Multimedia Opera by Leroy Jenkins, Mary Griffin, Hisao Ihara

Friday, January 6, 20127:00 pm

Coincidents is the final opera by renowned composer, improviser, and violinist/violist Leroy Jenkins. Through song, documentary footage, interviews, and video art, the opera explores whether two people from radically different worlds — Jenkins, a son of the Great Migration who grew up in the hustle of Chicago, and Griffin, who grew up in Wales during the German air raids of WWII — could possibly be related.

Jenkins and Griffin use the lens of personal biographic details to look at universal issues of human identity and the great diasporas of history and the present day, the assumption or infliction of a new identity as a necessary adaptation to place, and the search for sustaining connections – to our ancestors and to each other.

Coincidents, A New Opera

Music: Leroy Jenkins
Libretto & Video: Mary Griffin
Graphics, Video & Video Design: Hisao Ihara
Musical Direction/piano: Myra Melford
Vocal Direction: Chris Berg
Singers: Diana Solomon Glover, Steven Herring, Robert Hughes, Peter Stewart

 

Excerpts from Coincidents at Roulette 2012 (Day 2 of 5)