Long Beach Opera Announces 2025 Season Of Works By Pauline Oliveros
The four shows announced are performed across multiple venues including site-specific installations at The RMS Queen Mary, The Heritage Square Museum and more.
By: A.A. Cristi Nov. 15, 2024
Long Beach Opera has announced 2024-2025 programming spotlighting the work of pioneering composer, sound artist, and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) opening December 15, 2024 with Earth Ears: A Sonic Ritual at Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro.
The four shows announced are performed across multiple venues (including site-specific installations at The RMS Queen Mary, The Heritage Square Museum and more) online experiences, and premieres of never before seen archival works. LBO's 2024-2025 curation will explore the wide range of innovations – both technological and compositional – that Oliveros developed during her storied life and career. The opening Earth Ears invites audiences to engage in deep listening through an interactive text score.
For more information, please visit longbeachopera.org.
Long Beach Opera is headed by Artistic Director James Darrah. LBO Music Director is Wild Up founder Christopher Rountree.
The programming closes with Oliveros' longtime partner and collaborator, the multi-faceted artist IONE, making her LBO debut directing and leading the West Coast premiere of Oliveros' final composition The Nubian Word For Flowers; A Phantom Opera (2016) Pocket Edition in its United States Premiere on July 26 and 27, venue to be announced. It is composed by Oliveros; the score includes traditional music by Zizo & Nouba Nour Collective El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music, Cairo. The music director is Ross Karre; two collaborators are Monica Duncan and Senem Pirler.
The Nubian Word For Flowers; A Phantom Opera is performed live and featured on the 3rd annual LBO Film Festival, which focuses this year on Oliveros' legacy as a queer artist. The festival will feature two-day screenings of films, digital works, and performances that explore Oliveros' impact on sound, music, and art, while spotlighting queer artists working at the intersection of film, opera, music, and new technologies.
Mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and soprano Brenda Rae make company-debuts in Oliveros' El Relicario de los Animales (1979) is performed at Heritage Square Museum in Montecito Heights on February 15 & 16, 2025. The work is an evocative exploration of human-animal connections.
On April 12 & 13, 2025, the Long Beach RMS Queen Mary will host the premiere of The Library of Maps: An Opera in Many Parts, showcasing an ensemble of diverse performers within its historic setting incorporating traditional music and Oliveros' own sound design.
Long Beach Opera's 2025 program marks a concerted shift away from the traditional “season” format in order to focus on deeper, more curated and more experiential performances – a distinct difference from the standard format for opera companies, and one that lends itself to the boundary-breaking, immersive work of Oliveros.
Alongside this shift, LBO is introducing a simplified and more accessible ticket pricing system to bring this work to larger swaths of the general public, redefining opera's potential and making it more approachable to entire communities. All tickets start with a base price of $75, with lower prices available as patrons purchase more and different operas. With remaining tickets, another new program LBO Access with flexible pricing, is available two weeks before each performance.
Finally, LBO is also launching the LBO Studio initiative, a new wing dedicated to workshopping new works, fostering partnerships in the film & television industries, and cultivating new commissions while investing in the work of emerging artists. More details on this programming is to be announced.
Alongside this season announcement, Long Beach Opera has unveiled a striking new visual identity driven by lauded branding agency Special Offer, Inc – the creative force behind Charli xcx's ubiquitous Brat campaign, as well as eye-catching work for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Nike, Miley Cyrus, Haim, Prada, MoMA, and more.
December 15, 2024
EARTH EARS: A SONIC RITUAL (1982-1985)
ANGEL'S GATE CULTURAL CENTER; SAN PEDRO, CA
February 15 & 16, 2025
EL RELICARIO DE LOS ANIMALES (1979)
THE HERITAGE SQUARE MUSEUM; LOS ANGELES, CA
April 12 & 13, 2025
THE LIBRARY OF MAPS: AN OPERA IN MANY PARTS (2002)
RMS QUEEN MARY; LONG BEACH, CA
July 26 & 27, 2025
THE NUBIAN WORD FOR FLOWERS; A Phantom Opera (2016)- Pocket Edition
U.S. WEST COAST PREMIERE
Award-winning composer, artist and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) expanded the concepts of sound with her potent, genre-defying approach to music, art and composition. As the visionary behind the philosophical approach “deep listening,” her works and practice boldly explored new rituals of modes of music performance, the dynamics of ensembles and profoundly challenged and re-defined the inherited processes of making “new music” for an entire generation. Oliveros composed many new pieces she labeled as “operas” throughout her career – one that "spanned fifty years of making music." (The Pauline Oliveros Trust, IONE, Trustee, currently disseminates Oliveros' work and intellectual property). A Houston, Texas native and queer-identifying artist who engaged in multiple disciplines and styles, Oliveros maintained strong ties to California during her lifetime as a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, was a faculty member at both Mills College and the University of California, San Diego.
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