Contemporaneous Presents “Day of Imagination” – A Day-Long Festival of World Premieres
Contemporaneous, the ensemble specializing in new projects that take bold artistic risks, presents its inaugural “Day of Imagination” – an eight-hour festival described by the group as “a space for the presentation of ‘dream projects’ – which asks creators to share work they’d most like to be making regardless of traditional constraints on scale and practicality,” on Saturday, September 18, 2021, from 2pm to 10pm at The Space at Irondale in Brooklyn, NY.
The festival features three sets, at 2pm, 5pm, and 8pm, featuring four world premieres: Acts II & III of Contemporaneous Co-Artistic Director Dylan Mattingly’s opera “Stranger Love,” Act I of which was premiered in concert performance at the 2018 PROTOTYPE Festival; Brian Petuch’s “Portrait and a Dream,” an opera about the life, work, and myth of painter Jackson Pollock that weaves in images of his work; Particles and Fields, a multimedia work by composer/physicist Andrés Martínez de Velasco and visual artist Michael DiRosa about scientists’ search for a theory to bridge quantum mechanics and general relativity; and a world premiere arrangement for live musicians of Kara-Lis Coverdale’s Aftertouches, a recording that was selected as one of NPR’s 10 Favorite Electronic Albums of 2015.
Recognized for its “ferocious, focused performance” (The New York Times), Contemporaneous had planned for the “Day of Imagination” to take place in 2020 in celebration of the group’s 10th anniversary, and so it now marks the group’s 11th year. The New York-based 23-member ensemble that brings new music to life with “captivating and whole-hearted commitment” (I Care If You Listen) performs and promotes the work of living composers through concerts, commissions, recordings, and educational programs, has been presented by such institutions as Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, PROTOTYPE Festival, Merkin Concert Hall, MATA Festival, St. Ann’s Warehouse, and Bang on a Can, and has worked with such artists as David Byrne, Donnacha Dennehy, Iarla Ó Lionáird, Dawn Upshaw, and Julia Wolfe. Contemporaneous has premiered more than 200 works; the group champions the creation of large-scale works and “dream projects” which composers might not otherwise find opportunities to realize due to their scale. Contemporaneous was founded in 2010 at Bard College. www.contemporaneous.org