Composer Marisa Michelson Premieres The Desire / Divinity Project At Judson Memorial Church

Recognized as a leading voice in choral and musical theatre composition, composer/theatre-maker/singer Marisa Michelson is hailed for writing and/or performing profound works with a rich tapestry of complicated choral and musical stylings. Michelson's 2018 season begins February 1-3, 2018, with the world premiere of The Desire/Divinity Project, a two-part musical piece featuring Michelson and her vocal performance ensemble, Constellation Chor, live orchestration, and dance choreographed by #Mamaisamaker's Emma Crane Jaster (Loft Opera). Directed by Ethan Heard (Heartbeat Opera) and originally choreographed by Chase Brock (currently by Emma Crane Jaster), this Project was developed by Michelson while researching mind/body/spirit practices with virtuosic singing as an artist-in-residence at Judson Memorial Church. Part One: Song of Songs of Songs explores the relationship between the sensual and the sacred, the body and the spirit, through an exegesis of the Western world's oldest erotic poem, Song of Songs.

World Premiere of The Desire/Divinity Project is Thursday-Sunday, February 1-3, 2018, at 8:00 p.m. Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, NYC. Tickets: $20 Advance. $25 at Door. To purchase, visit BrownPaperTickets.com or call 347.854.6070.

Featuring an empowered woman at its center it unfolds through three distinct musical movements scored for 15 singers, bansuri flute, melodica, cello, and percussion. Part Two: Sappho Fragments brings to life the spirit of Sappho, an archaic female controversial Greek poet. Through poetry, voice, breath, and movement, the Chor exemplifies Sappho's crackling poetry and its layers of meaning and universality. Collectively, the two Parts engage with the intersection between voice, movement, storytelling, healing, meditation, gesture, inner-development, Oliveros' Deep Listening, and music-theatre.

According to Tony nominee Dave Malloy, who wrote the music, lyrics, book, and orchestrations for Broadway's The Great Comet, "Michelson's inventive and experimental but accessible scores draw on [traditions] vast and positively cosmic, in every sense of the word; aspects of Jewish liturgical music, Islamic azans, European opera, jazz harmonies, African-American gospel, Japanese Noh singing, Balinese monkey chant, Balkan timbres, Pendereckian tone clusters, and Meredith Monkian extended vocal techniques all are kneaded together into something that simultaneously sounds like it came from 7000 years ago and some distant and improbable quantum future."

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