The Strange Child: A New Opera
Friday – Saturday, June 17 – 18, 2022
7:30pm
KST’s Alloy Studios | 5530 Penn Ave.
Tickets: $25 in advance; limited pay-what-you-want tickets available at the door
Kamratōn, Quince Ensemble, Shana Simmons Dance, and a fabulous cast of vocalists, including Robert Frankenberry and Eugene Perry, unite to premiere The Strange Child, a new opera by composer Julia Werntz and librettist Kim Adrian. Based on a fairytale by ETA Hoffman, The Strange Child takes place in a bucolic village, where the lives of siblings Christlieb and Felix are upended by the arrival of two strangers: a cruel tutor named Master Inkblot, and a mysterious sprite who lives in the woods. Weird and magical happenings culminate in a violent struggle in which imagination itself is at stake.
This project is presented with support from the Heinz Endowments, the Opportunity Fund, and the Pittsburgh Foundation.
ABOUT KAMARTON
When a group of frequent collaborators founded Kamratōn in 2015, we strived to offer something vital and original to Pittsburgh’s new music community, and we’ve developed an aesthetic and a practice that is both experimental and collaborative. We are committed to presenting women-created and women-curated new music in regular programming and through our annual She Scores series, and we continue to work toward diversity and inclusivity in our programming.
Now in our seventh season, we have premiered over 50 new works, including a fully staged operatic production, and Erin Roger’s “On View,” commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition. Our 2021-2022 season features the premiere of a new work by flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell as part of our inaugural “Composer of the Year” project, the premiere of our second chamber opera, “The Strange Child” by Julia Werntz, and performances in Brooklyn, NY and Johnstown, PA. kamraton.org
ABOUT QUINCE ENSEMBLE
Singing with the precision and flexibility of modern chamber musicians, Quince Ensemble, an all-female vocal quartet, is changing the paradigm of contemporary vocal music. Described as “the Anonymous 4 of new music” by Opera News, Quince continually pushes the boundaries of vocal ensemble literature.
As dedicated advocates of new music, Quince regularly commissions new works for voices, providing wider exposure for the music of living composers. In 2019, they launched the Quince New Music Commissioning Fund, a fund to grow the repertoire for women and treble voices. Quince has released four studio albums, Realign the Time, Hushers, Motherland, and David Lang’s love fail, all available on iTunes, CD Baby, Spotify, Bandcamp, and Amazon.
Quince has been featured on many festivals and series like KODY Festival in Lublin, Poland in collaboration with David Lang and Beth Morrison Projects, the Outpost Concert Series, the Philip Glass: Music with Friends concert at Issue Project Room, University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium, and the SONiC Festival in New York, to name a few. During the 2021-22 season, they can be seen with The Chicago Symphony Orchestra/MUSICNOW, University of Chicago Presents, University of Florida, University of Miami, Frost School, and more!
Comprised of vocalists Liz Pearse (soprano), Kayleigh Butcher (mezzo soprano), Amanda DeBoer Bartlett (soprano), and Carrie Henneman Shaw (soprano), Quince thrives on unique musical challenges and genre-bending contemporary repertoire. quince-ensemble.com
ABOUT SHANA SIMMONS DANCE
Shana Simmons Dance (SSD) was founded in 2009 by Artistic Director Shana Simmons to create unique and engaging contemporary dance. Since its founding, Simmons has used dance as a means to express other people’s opinions as well as her own: to interpret and create. She takes inspiration from the immediate world in which we are living, and her choreographic expressions are created from the ways in which our society is changing, the need for intimate connections to people and objects, and providing the viewer a unique perspective, if not participatory action. The result for the viewer is an emotional reaction or a thought process about the work. SSD projects aim to draw audiences into modern dance in new and creative ways and highlight current societal topics for project-based work.
SSD began its project history in 2009, following Simmons’ graduation from LABAN in London, England. Their first collaboration was with Artmongers, an artistic company focusing on community murals and led by Patricio Forester. The company’s first two projects involved a site-specific Tea Party for the local Deptford community, next to Greenwich, and a Hospital Project for the newly revamped children’s hospital wing at St Thomas’s Hospital, located in London proper. Both performance events utilized the sites in creative and entertaining ways, engaging the audience into the performance and encouraging dance as an accessible and fun form of expression. The goals of both of these performances were to bring new life into places that otherwise seem desolate or scary.
Since their relocation to Pittsburgh, PA, SSD has produced three major productions through the support of the Heinz Small Arts Initiative. Relative Positions (2012) was a building take over involving over twenty artists who performed/presented their works in site specific locations throughout. Over 250+ attendees were documented and it boasted “Pittsburgh as a vibrant arts scene.” Jane Vranish, Pittsburgh Post Gazette. PASSENGER (2014) honored the hundred year anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, once the most numerous bird in North America. Presented at the National Aviary, five dancers swept, leapt, and careened through space, transforming the center of the aviary into a feathered nest of movement. Objective I (2015) was a collaboration with NYC based company, The Moving Architects, experimenting with editing in dance. Based on an article written by Judith Mackrell, both choreographers created and edited each other’s work. Presented as a two step project, Objective I was presented in both NYC and Pittsburgh. Discussions ensued with audiences; topics of artistic voice, entertainment value, and the true nature of a choreographic work were debated.
Along with these three productions, Artistic Director, Shana Simmons, has created more than twelve choreographic pieces since 2009. Her works have been seen in London, Belgium, New York City, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. SSD also has a long standing collaborative relationship with The Eclectic Laboratory Chamber Orchestra, producing four separate works to date.
SSD strives to maintain excellence in choreographic quality, create experiences for audiences highlighting current topics, and views performance as an exchange between audience member and performer. shanasimmonsdance.com