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Lower East Side Performing Arts, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization, aims to improve the quality of life in New York City by organizing programs to preserve and develop culture in all of its forms, with special attention to women, minorities and ethnic diversity; to counteract the negative effects of rising real estate prices on communities and to prevent the current exodus of New York artists by encouraging new work; as an alternative to high-priced profit-driven entertainment, to offer free/low-cost cultural programs that are enlightening, educational and appealing, with a degree of depth that effectively addresses the complexity of our time.

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Excerpts of The Death of Don Juan on Youtube

 

Spring 2011 Season

Cast and crew of The Death of Don Juan 3 weeks at Theater for the New City, May 2011
Photo by Joe Bly

THE DEATH OF DON JUAN

Music, Libretto and Digital Imagery by
ELODIE LAUTEN
Directed by ROBERT LAWSON & HENRY AKONA

Premiere May 5 at 8pm, May 6, 7 at 8pm
Sunday May 8: Presentation by Elodie Lauten at 2pm, performance at 3pm
May 12, 13, 14 at 8pm, May 15 at 3pm
May 19, 20, 21 at 8pm, May 22 at 3pm
Information: 212-388-0202
elauten@yahoo.com
Tickets: $15 / $10 Seniors / Students / Guests 212-254-1109
www.elodielauten.net
www.theaterforthenewcity.net

Performed by:
ARIANNA ARMON, ALISHA DESAI,
MARY HURLBUT, COURTENAY SYMONDS
as Death Multiples
DOUGLAS MCDONNELL, as Don Juan
JONATHAN HIRSCHMAN, Guitar
ELODIE LAUTEN, Synthesizer & Electronic Orchestra

PROGRAM

May 8 Review by Nicholas Birns - The Tropes of Tenth Street Blog

Quote: "a riveting, intense, catharticexperience that will not just absorb you,
but make you think and feel."

May 18 Review by Mark Greenfest - Sequenza21

Quote: "a brilliant and moving piece, entertaining and thought-provoking."

Get tickets now

Acknowledgements: Made possible in part by a gift from the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, and public funds from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, State Senator Daniel Squadron, the Fund for Creative Communities, supported by New York State Council on the Arts and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Materials for the Arts, and the support of Theater for the New City as a presenter. Sponsored by Lower East Side Performing Arts, Inc.

 

Premiere

The Death of Don Juan’s premiere at Theater for the New City (TNC) in May 2011 is proof that opera is accessible to women as composers, and acknowledges the emancipation of women in general as it stages a Don Juan in the modern world, facing Death as a Woman in a shattering power reversal, as the social, emotional and spiritual aspects of the Don Juan myth and the nature of seduction are explored from a gender-free perspective. There was 25-year interval between the opera’s inception and its New York premiere. The Death of Don Juan was Lauten’s NYU Master’s thesis, realized through the revolutionary technology of one of the very first music computers, the Fairlight. The project received an NEA opera award, had a workshop in Boston, and the original LP was on WNYC’s Top Ten. Then Lauten moved on to other projects, and the piece fell into oblivion until, in 2005, director Robert Lawson who had come across the original LP at a friend’s house, staged a production of it with 30 students at Franklin Pierce University where he is on faculty. Later, the piece appeared on the internet on a Minimalist Top Ten list, and was recently rediscovered as “a long-overlooked masterpiece of new music” (Other Music) after its CD reissue on Unseen Worlds in 2008.

Lauten’s The Two-Cents Opera ran at TNC for 3 weeks in 2009, so The Death of Don Juan is her second production at TNC. It will be staged by Robert Lawson, with digital imagery by Lauten. It will feature baritone Douglas McDonnell as Don Juan, sopranos Courtenay Symonds, Arianna Armon, Mary Hurlbut and Alisha Desai as Death multiples, with an expanded score (2010) programmed for a state-of-the-art electronic orchestra.

Elodie Lauten is a composer, performer and media artist. As a leading exponent of post-minimalism, she was listed among the most influential composers of the last three decades (Sequenza 21). Her piano, electronic, orchestral compositions and five operas have had 30 releases on different major and independent labels in the US and Europe. Her music had venues at Lincoln Center Festival, the New York City Opera, The Whitney Museum, throughout America with performances and university residencies, and in Canada and Europe, notably at the Paris Museum of Modern Art. About her multimedia work shown as part of the Women Forward movement, James Baldwin Cohen said: “Her highly sophisticated use of today’s advanced technology has opened a new dimension in the art world.” She received a Bachelor’s in Economics from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris and a Master’s in Composition from New York University and has been on faculty at NYU and CUNY.

The Death of Don Juan on CD - Press Quotes

Synopsis

The Death of Don Juan addresses the myth rather than the actual story of Don Juan: heis an archetype, a symbol of the human desire for transcendence. The opera takesplace within Don Juan’s consciousness. The other characters are visions and projections of his own mind. In the modern world, he is faced with the newly acquired independence and power of women, and this shattering role reversal transforms him.How he comes to terms with this explosive revelation is the basis of the action.At the beginning of Act I, Don Juan reflects on the events of his life and begins toquestion himself. He has a strange vision: Death appears to him in the form of several women. These female spirits speak to him in different languages, and overwhelm him. But Don Juan falls in love with the vision, and an ambiguous seduction develops between him and Death: Don Juan is seduced by Death… or is Death seduced by DonJuan? For a moment, Death is on hold, and Don Juan is enlightened: he realizes that inhis lifelong search for pleasure, he has not experienced real love – until now. In Act II he duets tenderly with Death as a Shadow, but he misbehaves and the duetbecomes a duel. He is left in despair, as he struggles with thoughts of unfulfilled love and self-destruction. Death voices are repeating random words, mentally deconstructing him until he becomes temporarilty insane and he loses is ego-self which becomes his path to enlightenment, before makes his final exit. The mantra concluding the opera expresses compassion and forgiveness.

CAST
Don Juan: Baritone
Death as a Woman: Coloratura Soprano
Death as a Lover: Soprano
Death as a Spirit: Mezzo-Soprano
Death as a Shadow: Alto
__________________________________________________________________________________________

The Death of Don Juan: Composer's Notes

The Death of Don Juan was composed over a long period of time. It brings together operatic drama and new technology. The singing style combines operatic and natural voice techniques. It began as a series of 7x7 grids (inspired by correspondence tables between pitch, color, body parts, planets, metals, etc.) in which each of the 49 squares contains a pattern of pitch and rhythm. These “macros” were programmed on the Fairlight music computer. At first, the music was represented only as a computer program and a series of visual scores, and in a recording where vocal and instrumental improvisations were overdubbed to the programmed material. There was no ‘score’, so to speak. In preparation for the New York premiere at Theater for the New City, in 2010-11, I wrote the first score in traditional notation, creating new material based on the original concepts, and developed the libretto to extend the role of Don Juan. It is arranged for harpsichord, organ, dulcimer, flute, oboe, violin I&II, viola, cello, contrabass and electric bass. The most striking element in this orchestra is the unusual combination of electronically enhanced dulcimer and harpsichord. Once the piece was programmed in the Finale notation software, I exported the data as midi files into Reason, a digital audio workstation software. At that point, a complex programming took place in order to create the electronic orchestra, and to mix and produce the audio to accompany the singers. I created the digital imagery for projection in the theater, using a combination of fractal, photography, and video animation software to make new images and collage found images referring to inherited cultural elements addressed in the piece.

Elodie Lauten
2011

Download high-resolution press photo (it takes a few seconds)

More Composer's Notes

 

Come to the free Presentation on Sunday, May 8 at 2PM at TNC just before the performance at 3PM to find out more about the composition of The Death of Don Juan from its conception inspired by ancient correpondence systems and Pythagorean diatony, and recently re-programmed using state-of-the-art technology to coordinate notation with its electronic rendition through various software programs and workarounds, and participate in a discussion of its spiritual, emotional and social subtexts.

 

 

Fall 2010 Season

The “Hear Now” Series
of New Music for Solo Piano
Presented by Lower East Side Performing Arts
Hosted by Faust Harrison Pianos
207 West 58 Street - $10 Donation

Friday, November 12 ,2010, 8 PM: Anna Shelest &  Elodie Lauten

Anna Shelest will perform an international program of new works composed for her by Ronen Landa (USA), Xavier Beteta (Guatemala) and Gregorio Smirnoff (Russia). Her career began at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris when she was eleven years old, and her orchestral debut with the Kharkov Symphony Orchestra the following year in a performance of Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto. Hailed as the “female reincarnation of Liszt” and “a piano lioness,” she has performed throughout the world as both a soloist and chamber musician, including appearances with the Cincinnati, Montreal, and Netherlands Symphony Orchestras and St. Petersburg Philharmonic. This year marked her debuts at Alice Tully Hall and Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. A native of Ukraine, Ms. Shelest recently received her Master’s degree from The Juilliard School. Her discography includes recordings of works by Rachmaninoff, and a CD with Cristian Ganicenco, principal trombonist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Elodie Lauten will perform her compositions for solo piano from recent releases Piano Works Revisited (Unseen Worlds) and Piano Soundtracks (4Tay) including Variations on the Orange Cycle, (listed in Chamber Music America among the Best Works of the 20th Century).  On the piano, Ms. Lauten has developed her own distinctive improvisational style called “Universal Mode Improvisation” combining free form with modal, bitonal and polytonal structures. 30 releases on both major and independent labels in the US and Europe feature her piano music, electronic works, chamber music and opera. Lincoln Center, Theater for the New City, the Whitney Museum, and the Paris Museum of Modern Art are among her list of presenters. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, ASCAP, the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, and chamber and orchestral commissions. She is currently on the faculty of CUNY’s New York City College of Technology.

Friday, November 19, 2010, 8 PM:  “Blue” Gene Tyranny & Joseph Kubera

Joseph Kubera will perform Piano 2 by Julius Eastman, The Drifter by Blue Gene Tyranny and Phase 3 by Elodie Lauten. Hailed by Village Voice critic Kyle Gann as one of “new music’s most valued performers,” he has been recognized as a leading interpreter of contemporary music for the past 30 years, as a soloist with the Berlin Inventionen, the Warsaw Autumn, Prague Spring, Miami’s Subtropics Festival and Berkeley’s Edgefest, and as a pianist in residence at the Ostrava Days New Music Festival since its inception in 2001. He has been awarded grants through the NEA Solo Recitalist Program and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts.  Mr. Kubera has had a long and committed relationship to John Cage and his music since the early 1970s. One of the few pianists performing the difficult chance-based, post-1950 works, he has recorded the complete Music of Changes and the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and has toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Cage’s invitation. In recent years, he has championed the music of  Julius Eastman, reviving little-known piano works and directing performances of his multiple-piano pieces. He has recorded for Wergo, New Albion, New World, Lovely Music, and other labels.

“Blue” Gene Tyranny will perform his composition George Fox Searches from his latest album, Detours for Unseen Worlds Records. A description of his work appears in Nicole Gagne's Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Music (Scarecrow Press). He is a composer and pianist who created over 50 works for various electronic and acoustic instruments and voices. He recently presented the New York premieres of several works for violin and piano at Roulette with violinist Conrad Harris.  George Fox Searches attempts to draw a parallel between musical improvisation and the spontaneous revelation of spirit that occurs in Quaker meetings: "Stand still in that which is pure, after you see yourselves; and then mercy comes in."   George Fox (1624-1691) struggled toward an authentic experience of spirit through prayer and meditation. Wandering through England and eventually America, he inspired the founding of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers or Shakers. The material used for this improvisation is based upon the song How Can I Keep From Singing? written in 1860 by Robert Lowry, a Baptist minister.

 

 

OP ON SCREEN FEST
A SERIES OF FREE VIDEO SCREENINGS
AT THE TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK NEWYORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
331 East 10th Street between Aves A and B
Saturdays 2-4PM September 25, October 16, 23, 30

Download program details

OP ON SCREEN FESTIVAL 2007
Screenings of new musical theater with Barbara Benary, Lisa Karrer, Johnny Reinhardt, Marshall Coid, Frank Oteri, Stefan Weisman

THE TWO-CENTS OPERA
A surreal tale of our time composed and directed by Elodie Lauten, Theater for the New City, March 2009

 

Fall 2009 Season

Op on Screen Interactive Programs & Documentation

Two generations of women artists collaborate on interactive projets