OTHER LIFE FORMS is Gordon Beeferman’s avant-jazz quartet, with Stephanie Griffin (viola), Pascal Niggenkemper (bass) and Andrew Drury (drums). OTHER LIFE FORMS combines complex written charts with virtuosic individual and collective improvisation. Their debut album is out on Different Track Recordings (November 2018).
Hailed as “Four Recorder Virtuosos” by The New York Times, QNG—Quartet New Generation mesmerizes its audiences through innovative programming that juxtaposes contemporary and early music, presented with a dynamic and often theatrical stage presence. On this, their first recording, they perform Gordon Beeferman’s Passages, written for them in 2006.
“The Rat Land” is the first operatic collaboration between Gordon Beeferman and librettist Charlotte Jackson. The two-and-a-half hour chamber opera chronicles the disintegration of a troubled and eccentric family in tragi-comic fashion. The plot centers on the adolescent daughter, Karen, coming of age as best she can amidst a post-Cold War American Grotesque. Caught between her nightmarish home life and a near-psychotic fantasy world of her own devising, she faces grown-up problems of violence, isolation, madness, and death. The opera is scored for eight singers and a thirteen-piece instrumental ensemble.
Read more about and listen to excerpts from “The Rat Land”
Scenes from “The Rat Land” were previewed at New York City Opera’s VOX showcase (2009, 2007) and the Improvised and Otherwise Festival (2006), under the direction of Beth Greenberg. Read the NY Times review of the 2007 performance.
Laurie Rubin as Karen
Music by NYU Graduate Composers
Monday, May 5, 2014, 8pm
with members of the Orchestra of the League of Composers
Merkin Concert Hall, 129 W. 67 Street (1 to 66 St.)
Free
program includes RACKET (2014) and LAST WASH (2010/2014) for 13 instruments