A Circle is a space of connection across disciplines, practices, and aesthetics. It is a structure for incubation, performance, and documentation for artists, performers, and scholars convened by singer and collaborative artist, Andrew Munn.
Performance Ready
Berlin Verses
with, Jacob Greenberg, Adam Rothenberg, Jordan Freeman
Adaptations of Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht's Hollywooder Liederbuch. A political transposition of their reflection on fascism, capitalism, exile, and war into the complex web of complicity, privilege, and oppression at the heart of contemporary ecological and social questions.
for voice, piano, and projections.
Michelangelo and the Moderns
with Julia Modes, Bálint Zsoldos, and Seoyon MacDonald
Composed in 1974, Shostakovich set eleven sonnets of Michelangelo to create a song cycle that meditates on art, love, power, legacy, and mortality. In this program of music and discourse, the cycle is framed by an art historical lecture by Julia Modes, tracing the themes of Michelangelo's poems and art as they reappear in the abstract visual art of the American artist Cy Twombly.
for voice, piano, art historian, projections
Unname
with Ira Hadžić
A voice-gong-being band of improvised non-linear sound creations that escape the definition of words.
for gong, voice, time, space
In Development
postWinterreise
with Kat Austen, Jacob Greenberg
Schubert's Winterreise and its story of individual loss and transformation becomes a duet with an evolving soundscape of a changed climate and ecology, composed by Kat Austen.
for voice, piano, electronics, projections, ice
Anthropocene
by and with Nina C Young
A meditation on the Anthropocene, composed by Nina C. Young on texts by Andrew Munn and Antonio Stoppani. Part ritual, cycle, drama, an intimate reflection on the geologic scale of the human footprint.
for voice, electronics, TBD
Cycles
by and with Conrad Winslow
Cycles is the working title for a song cycle by the Alaskan composer Conrad Winslow. Winslow set the poem A Certain Kind of Eden by Kay Ryan, for Andrew and Jacob in 2023. A song cycle in cyclical time and growth began.
for voice, piano
Exile
with Alla Gutnikova
Exile is the working title for a song cycle on the poetry of Alla Gutnikova. Imagined as a companion/counter-piece for Shostakovich's Suite on Verses by Michelangelo, the cycle deals with exile, power, political violence and identity.
Rupture
with Andile Khumalo and Ishion Hutchinson
a song cycle on the poetry of Ishion Hutchinson, exploring the legacy of white supremacy's construction of racial hierarchies within colonized populations.
for voice and chamber ensemble
In Collaboration
Toxic Temple
with Kilian Jörg
Toxic Temple is an invitation to reflect on the darker aspects of our ecological conundrum in a novel and unexpected way. By establishing a speculative religious cult of waste and pollution, we try to cultivate and make thinkable new perspectives and paradigms of action in this very dire time.
for voice, humans, computers, micro-plastics, shrines