Cosmicomics
Richard Carrick
About this work:
Cosmicomics Introduction
Cosmicomics is a multi-media collaboration between composer Richard Carrick and video projection designer Peter Nigrini. It is based on four magnificent fables from Italo Calvino’s novella of the same name. Calvino’s main character exists throughout time and space, experiencing scientific phenomena such as the universal singularity before the big bang, the curvature of space caused by massive objects, and the threshold beyond which light from the universe will never be able to reach earth. Quirky, inspired, and endlessly inventive, Calvino’s stories humanize these phenomena by spinning out absurd tales of frustration, love, insecurity, and loneliness.
Carrick and Nigrini have scored these four stories as a 25-minute work for narrator, chamber ensemble, multi-channel video and electronics. As a multi-media concert piece where live performance is paramount, the video is interactive and controllable in real-time, allowing the performance all the freedoms normally afforded in a traditional concert.
Cosmicomics is a collaboration of sound and image that equally blend all aspects of music and the moving image. It does away with the hierarchy of one media leading the other, creating a meta-work consisting of light, timbre, color, harmony, image and gesture.
The world premiere was presented by the “perfect ensemble” for theatrical music (Time Out New York) the Sequitur Ensemble of New York City at Merkin Concert Hall on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 at 8pm.
This piece can also be performed with only ensemble and narrator, without video and electronics.
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Program notes:
Cosmicomics, based on four stories from Italo Calvino's novel, scored for narrator, ensemble, multiple projection, and electronic sounds.
I. The Form of Space
II The Light-Years
III All at One Point
IV A Sign in Space
We chose four chapters of the Calvino text, Cosmicomics, because their illustrative style and abstract content they were particularly suited to our endeavor of integrating a sonic and visual experience. Unfullfillment, insatiate desires, and the longing for the unobtainable are the staples of our unnamed characters diet. He spends each chapter frustrated with the limits imposed on him by the impersonal realities of science, as in: I. the inability of parallel lines to converge, II. waiting for a sign 200 million light-years away, III. the cramped existence within the singular unity before the big bang, and IV. the fading comfort of empty space as it develops into the modern day.
Our adaptation provides the barest minimum of the original text: replacing much of the prose with the artifacts and impressions Cosmicomics left in our music/video creation.
Year composed: 2005
Duration: 00:30:00
Ensemble type: Voice, Solo or With Chamber or Jazz Ensemble:Voice with Chamber/Jazz Ensemble, 6-9 Players
Instrumentation: 1 Flute, 1 Oboe, 1 Clarinet, 1 Trombone, 1 Percussion (General), 1 Violin, 1 Viola, 1 Cello