BAM Presents the U.S. Premiere of Shelter, the Culmination of its Three-Year Commissioning Commitment to New York composers Michael Gordon, , and

The multimedia music-theater event exploring sanctuary, safety, and home—created in collaboration with the innovative Ridge Theater and writer Deborah Artman—features vocal ensemble trio mediæval and German contemporary music group musikFabrik

BAM 2005 Next Wave Festival is sponsored by Altria Group, Inc.

Music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe Libretto by Deborah Artman Film by Bill Morrison, Projections by Laurie Olinder Performed by musikFabrik and trio mediæval Conducted by Brad Lubman Lighting by Matt Frey Sound by Norbert Ommer Set by Jim Findlay Costumes by Ruth Pongstaphone Directed by Bob McGrath

BAM Harvey Theater Nov 16—19 at 7:30pm Tickets: $20, 30, 40, 45 Call 718.636.4100 or visit www.bam.org

BAMdialogue with Bob McGrath, Bill Morrison, and Laurie Olinder Nov 17 at 6pm BAM Rose Cinemas Tickets: $8 ($4 for Friends of BAM)

Brooklyn, October 14, 2005—BAM’s 2005 Next Wave Festival presents the U.S. premiere of Shelter—a music-theater collaboration with New York’s Ridge Theater featuring German contemporary music ensemble musikFabrik and the Scandinavian vocalists trio mediæval. Shelter, the culmination of a three-year commissioning venture with New York composers and co-founders Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, follows the acclaimed productions The New Yorkers (2003 Next Wave Festival ) and Lost Objects (2004

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Next Wave). The piece—created in the same collaborative, multimedia spirit, but conceived on a more intimate scale for the composers’ first work in the BAM Harvey Theater—incorporates a spare and powerful libretto by Deborah Artman (Lost Objects), haunting projections by filmmaker Bill Morrison and visual artist Laurie Olinder (The New Yorkers), and dramatic staging by acclaimed director Bob McGrath (The Death of Klinghoffer, 2003 Next Wave) of Ridge Theater.

Shelter, which received its world premiere in March 2005 in Cologne, was described by Deutschlandfunk as “an event… a gripping engagement… that takes the listener on a sonic and emotional roller-coaster ride—by turns dynamically insistent, ecstatic, and meditative.” The piece explores the physical and metaphoric meanings of sanctuary, safety, and home. With new resonance due to recent natural disasters, Shelter is, at the same time, a musical foreshadowing of current events and a therapeutic response to the environment. “It brings the listener to the heart of a natural disaster,” said WDR Fernsehen, “Dissonant notes, succinct texts, perfectly fitted to ominous images of humanity’s struggle to survive.” The piece consists of seven musical sections, ranging from the delicate to the apocalyptic, with the musicians and singers performing inside an ever-changing environment that recasts them in different physical and emotional situations. The result is a deeply resonant music-theater experience that examines the connotations of the work’s title—from the mysterious exchange between two people, to the physical structures that we build, to the spiritual architecture of our beliefs. “Shelter makes palpable the tension between the need for refuge on one hand and its permanent endangerment on the other.”— Deutschlandfunk

Four performances of Shelter will take place in the BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St.) Nov 16—19 at 7:30pm. Tickets, priced at $20, 30, 40, and 45, may be purchased by calling BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or by visiting www.bam.org.

About the artists

Michael Gordon’s compositions demonstrate a deep exploration into the possibilities and nature of rhythm and the result of layering rhythms to create a glorious confusion. , who has conducted Gordon’s works with the London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Modern, calls these raw and complicated sounds “irrational rhythms.” Gordon’s special interest in adding dimensions to the concert experience has led to frequent collaborations with artists in other media. For example, in Decasia, a multimedia orchestra piece with films by Bill Morrison and staging by Ridge Theater, the audience stands in the middle of a three-tiered, triangular structure, surrounded by an orchestra and large projection scrims. Gordon’s most significant recent project is a new CD for Nonesuch Records, Light is Calling. The music is sonic and sensual, with layers of violins, electric guitars, and voice in counterpoint to studio-based electronic creations. Other recent works include Potassium for the , Trance for Icebreaker, and Weather, written for the young Hamburg-based string orchestra Ensemble Resonanz. Gordon’s music has been presented at BAM, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Royal Albert Hall, the Bonn Oper, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, and the Holland, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, St. Petersburg, and Settembre Musica festivals, and in the choreography of The Royal Ballet, Eliot Feld, and Emio Greco/PC, among others. His other CDs include Decasia (Cantaloupe), Weather (Nonesuch), and Lost Objects (Teldec).

“There is no name yet for this kind of music,” writes The Los Angeles Times, but audiences around the globe are hearing more and more of David Lang’s work: it has been performed by such organizations as the Santa Fe Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Kronos Quartet. His music has been presented at BAM, Tanglewood, the BBC Proms, The Munich Biennale, the Settembre Musica Festival, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, and the Almeida, Holland, Berlin, and Strasbourg Festivals; and performed in theater productions in New York, San Francisco, and London. Lang’s music has been used by numerous choreographers/dance companies including Twyla Tharp, La La La Human Steps, Nederlands Dans Theater, and the Paris Opera Ballet, as well as in Susan Marshall’s The Most Dangerous Room in the House …more

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(1998 Next Wave), for which he received a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) in 1999. Lang is composer-in-residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Recent projects include the dark and meditative amplified orchestra piece The Passing Measures; The Difficulty of Crossing a Field—an opera for the Kronos Quartet with libretto by Mac Wellman and direction by Carey Perloff; the critically acclaimed opera Modern Painters about the curious and tragic life of art critic John Ruskin; and the evening- length piano solo Psalms Without Words. Recent and current projects include Anatomy Theater, an opera with visual artist Mark Dion, director Bob McGrath, and the Ridge Theater; as well as a piece for Sting and orchestra commissioned for the opening of the Sage Gateshead Music Centre in England that premiered in June 2005. The recording of The Passing Measures was named one of the best CDs of 2001 by The New Yorker. Other recordings include the introspective chamber work Child (Cantaloupe) and CDs on the Sony Classical, Teldec, BMG, Point, Chandos, Argo/Decca, Caprice, CRI, and Cantaloupe labels.

Julia Wolfe’s music is muscular and kinetic and experienced throughout the body. Wolfe’s work is distinguished by an intense focus on sound, the power of sound, the ways in which sound is related to memory and experience, the possibilities for new harmonies between familiar chords and microtonal tunings or sounds found in nature and the urban world. With a care and attention to detail that is both masterful and highly respectful, Wolfe’s music celebrates the extraordinary qualities contained within something as specific as a gesture or an inflection. Julia Wolfe’s music has been heard in performances at the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival, Settembre Musica (Italy), the Holland Festival, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), the San Francisco Symphony, and the BBC Proms, among others. Recent works include a string quartet concerto for Kronos Quartet, a new work for the Munich Chamber Orchestra, a new work for music with film for the Asko Ensemble, and an accordion concerto commissioned by the Miller Theater. Recent collaborations include the provocative theater piece House Arrest with playwright and performing artist Anna Deavere Smith, The Carbon Copy Building with comic book artist Ben Katchor; collaborators include the Ridge Theater Company, and composers Michael Gordon and David Lang. For The Carbon Copy Building, she received the 2000 Village Voice OBIE Award for Best New American Work. Wolfe received a 2001 OBIE award for the music to Jennie Riche, a collaboration with playwright Mac Wellman and the Ridge Theater. Her recent recording Julia Wolfe - The String Quartets was released on the Cantaloupe label. Chosen as one of the top ten CDs of the year, The New Yorker stated, “Her powerful one-movement works, which combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity, use the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes.” Her music has also been recorded on Teldec, Universal, Sony Classical, and Argo/Decca.

Librettist Deborah Artman is also a fiction writer, playwright, and poet who most recently completed Acquanetta—a new opera with composer Michael Gordon, which premiered at Theater Aachen in Germany in June 2005—and directed The Pork Chop Wars, a performance novel by Laurie Carlos, presented by the University of Austin at Texas in September. Artman worked previously with Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe on the oratorio, Lost Objects, directed by François Girard in a beautiful staging that premiered at BAM’s 2004 Next Wave Festival. Past projects include Keeper, a choral piece by Wolfe (BAM, 2000), The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, a theater piece with puppet-artist/chanteuse Jenny Romaine (La MaMa, 2000) and, in 1997, Music for Gracious Living, a music-theater piece for actor and string quartet with music by Lang (Merkin Concert Hall). In the 1980s, Artman worked on numerous theater projects in New York with performance artists Laurie Carlos, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, choreographer Jawole Zollar and others. Among her awards are a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the MacDowell Colony. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous national journals, including, most recently, The New York Times Sunday Magazine. She is editor of the literary-theater-arts magazine, the Lincoln Center Theater Review. Her CD Lost Objects is available through Teldec Classics. Currently, she is working on a novel to be published next year by Shaye Areheart Books, a division of Random House. …more

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Bob McGrath has directed theater and opera at venues including Lincoln Center, The American Repertory Theater, Carnegie Hall/Zankel Hall, and Arts at St. Ann’s. He is the recipient of three OBIE awards. He has collaborated with composers and writers including John Adams, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Susan Sontag, Mac Wellman, and Julia Wolfe. He is the co-founder and artistic rirector of Ridge Theater and has taught at NYU and The Eugene O’Neill Theater Festival.

Award-winning filmmaker Bill Morrison has eight titles in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, including Light Is Calling, Decasia, and The Film of Her. Decasia, the acclaimed collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, was named one of the ten best films of 2003 by the Village Voice. His work has been featured at MoMA, the Tate Museum, Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum, London’s ICA, MassMOCA, Carnegie Hall, the Wexner Center, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, and most recently in a solo show at the Maya Stendhal Gallery. His films have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, and Arté, and have been featured at international film festivals worldwide, such as Sundance, Rotterdam, San Francisco, and Edinburgh. His projected set work with the acclaimed performance ensemble Ridge Theater has been recognized with two “Bessie” awards for excellence in theatrical design (1993, 2003) and a Village Voice OBIE for collaborative design (2001). Morrison has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, the 2004 NEA Creativity Grant, NYSCA, NYFA, and Creative Capital.

Laurie Olinder is an OBIE and Bessie award-winning visual designer for Ridge Theater. Her work can be seen in theater, films, and paintings internationally. Most recently she made a film for The New Yorkers. Recent and upcoming projects include a re-mounting of Mac Wellman’s Jennie Richee in Darmstaadt Germany and Gotham.

Credits

BAM 2005 Next Wave Festival is sponsored by Altria Group, Inc. Programming in the BAM Harvey Theater is endowed by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Shelter was commissioned as part of the national series of works from Meet the Composer Commissioning Music/USA, which is made possible by generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and the Target Foundation. Additional support for Shelter is provided by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.

BAM thanks its many donors and sponsors, including: Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York City Council, Brooklyn Delegation of the New York City Council, Brooklyn Delegation of the U.S. House of Representatives, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, New York State Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, The Estate of Richard B. Fisher, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Starr Foundation, Skirball Foundation, Time Warner, Inc., Bloomberg, The Kovner Foundation, and Robert W. Wilson Foundation. JPMorgan Chase is BAM’s Lead Corporate Partner. New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge is the official hotel for the Next Wave Festival. Yamaha is the official piano of BAM. R/GA is the sponsor of BAM.org.

General information

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, BAMcafé, and Shakespeare & Co. BAMshop are located in the Peter Jay Sharp building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (between St Felix Street and Ashland Place) in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located two blocks from the main building at 651 Fulton Street (between Ashland and Rockwell Places). BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn’s only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. BAMcafé, operated by Great Performances, also features an eclectic mix of spoken word and live music on Friday and Saturday nights. A $21 three-course dinner at BAMcafé is available Thu-Sat for BAM Rose Cinemas ticket holders (day of screening only). BAMcafé is open Thursday-Saturday from 5pm-closing. Additionally, BAMcafé is open two hours prior to all Howard Gilman Opera House and Harvey Theater performances.

Subway: 2, 3, 4, 5, Q, B to Atlantic Avenue; D, M, N, R to Pacific Street; G to Fulton Street; C to Lafayette Avenue Train: Long Island Railroad to Flatbush Avenue Bus: B25, B26, B41, B45, B52, B63, B67 all stop within three blocks of BAM Car: Commercial parking lots are located adjacent to BAM For ticket and BAMbus information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit www.bam.org.