lily [bloom in my darkness]: an electroacoustic opera

Abstract

Lily [bloom in my darkness] is a 35-minute electroacoustic opera for voice, live electronic processing, pulse sensors, two violas, saxophone doubling clarinet, electric harp, piano, and dance with an original libretto by poet felicia klingenberg. Lily explores the psyche and heart of Lily Isabel Bunny, an orphan who fled England at the start of WWI in 1915, alone, 25, female. She took a ship to Montreal and then a train, which she rode to the end of the railroad, arriving at Cascade Tunnel east of Everett, WA. Through imagining a dream Lily may have had her first night sleeping in a cabin in the Pacific Northwest wilderness, this work explores her transformation upon entering a new world, and thus explores the experience of migration and displacement that unites our species. The live electronic processing, sensors, dance, and live instruments explore this interconnectedness through constantly influencing one another, transforming the role of each force throughout the work. As an abstract work, this piece does not outline a linear, temporal narrative, but rather uses sound and language to unearth the unconscious and visceral feelings that result from displacement. Using recorded language as social documentary, sensors as portals to the unconscious, improvisation as a reflection non-linguistic expression, and other forms of machine listening and live processing, Lily is as much a retelling of a particular emotional story as it is the revelation of our immediately contemporary social situation.