On October 30th, DACAMERA Editions released the world premiere recording of Matthew Aucoin’s vocal symphony Music for New Bodies. The recording is performed by Grammy-nominated ensemble Sandbox Percussion and the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), and features an all-star cast of soloists under Aucoin’s baton. Created in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, and based on poems by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham, the piece explores the tension between embodiment and disembodiment, individual and collective existence, the human and the post-human. The Boston Globe has hailed Aucoin’s work as “…revolutionary, an uncategorizable vocal symphony that represents a major departure—not just for Aucoin, but perhaps for operatic music more broadly.”
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Music for New Bodies unfolds over the course of five movements that each seeks to grapple with the most pressing questions of today. What does it mean to live an embodied human life in a moment when we are handing the keys of human intelligence to artificial systems that we barely understand? What does it mean to live on a planet whose ecosystems we have ravaged? What would our planet have to say to us, if we knew how to listen? What are we, as a species, on the verge of becoming?
The piece begins with “Cryo” where voices from the imminent future on the path to being cryogenically frozen mingle with voices from the past, and is followed by “I [know myself],” which explores the complexity of finding yourself different than what you once were. The third movement, “Deep Water Trawling,” takes the form of a dialogue between a number of human “questioners” and a formidable ocean-spirit emanating from the polluted depths of the Atlantic. “Prying,” first takes on the voice of a person undergoing an invasive medical treatment, but seems to morph into others: the doctors in the operating room, or even the medical chemicals themselves. The final movement, “Poem,” according to Aucoin, “features the voice of the earth itself, a voice that’s singular in its serenity... a voice that knows it will outlive us.”
“I am so moved by the beautiful performances that my colleagues in AMOC* and Sandbox Percussion gave on this album. Everyone played and sang with soulfulness, virtuosity, and power. I’ve never been more excited to release a piece of music into the world." – Matthew Aucoin
Music for New Bodies is a co-commission of AMOC, DACAMERA, Los Angeles Opera, the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, and the Aspen Music Festival and School. Its world premiere was produced and presented by DACAMERA and the Shepherd School of Music at the Brockman Hall for Opera, Rice University, Houston, Texas, on April 20, 2024.
For more information, please contact Andrew Stein-Zeller.
