Press

LOST OBJECTS

"At the start of Lost Objects ... a choir chants a catalog of things one might lose, from a sock or an umbrella to weight, memory and sight, or a son, daughter or wife.
  The crucial and the inconsequential mingle on this list, as do the physical and conceptual, the things one can own and the things one can be. It is so perfect a way to introduce a meditation on loss that it nearly renders the rest of the 70-minute staged oratorio superfluous.
  But not quite. Working with a libretto by Deborah Artman, a writer and poet, the composers who founded Bang on a Can — Michael Gordon, Julia Wolfe and David Lang — have produced a score that examines loss as an inevitable consequence of historical development and as an enduring subject of human fascination."

"Perhaps the most effective aspect of the production is Peter Flaherty's projections, almost all devoted to artfully scrawled text that highlight Deborah Artman's breathtaking libretto....
  ...[B]uy the CD, because the work's true beauty lies in the music that Bang on a Can made together."

"At its heart, Bang on a Can's recent, large-scale creation, Lost Objects, is an elegant if at times aggressive meditation on the implications of absence, whether trivial or life altering. The opening movement sets up this simple yet compelling concept with a cool eight-minute catalog of things that can go missing in our ephemeral modern existence: an earring, a father, a sock, a desire, a key, a memory.
  ...The music strategically envelops Deborah Artman's libretto, resulting in a work distinct from anything the [composers] have created individually.
  ...The effect is haunting, an aesthetic match for the misty void of misplaced things nearly forgotten."

"Beneath the surface beauty of Lost Objects lurks a textual journey of wrenching emotions.... It's a remarkable achievement, especially attractive in its fusion of old and new — a blend that reflects the work's origins."

"Librettist Deborah Artman's list of everyday and more profound losses is expanded to include a leg, her wits, her parents, her sight, her way, her business and her language. It's a wonderfully intriguing opening, sung a cappella by Barainsky on a simple two-note figure.... [An] intelligent, imaginative and perceptive libretto."

"Lost Objects, a collaborative music work in 14 parts by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe with a libretto by Deborah Artman, ...was easily one of the most exciting evenings of performance in recent memory. It promises great hope for a modern Jewish music.
  ...[A] deeply engrossing narrative of loss and Jewish content.... What is so striking about Lost Objects is the expansion of our understanding of loss into the realm of presence and absence, tragedy and, finally, navigating human affairs."

SHELTER

"Shelter is something impermanent: a skin holding the outside, barely, out; an illusion of security. That's the message of Shelter, an allegorical piece of music theater.... It deals with the man-made and the ephemeral in seven vignettes made poetic by their fusion of image, sound and word...."

"Artman has found a way of using her edge-on sense of language to provide a mechanism for making the adventurous and often challenging music of these three composers more readily accessible."

ACQUANETTA

"Michael Gordon's Acquanetta was inspired by a 1943 cult-classic horror film, 'Captive Wild Woman.' With a libretto by Deborah Artman, the opera turns the story of that campy film's star into a somberly ritualistic meditation on public versus private identities."

"Like Lost Objects, Gordon's opera Acquanetta draws its irresistible appeal above all from the continual ecstasy of vital, forward chasing, metrical patterns copied over one another.... There is no dull second in this thrilling, entertaining work."

"A fascinating experience of modern psychological theater."

"The theatregoer who is prepared for a transposition of familiar elements into a new conception will hardly be able to pull himself away from the entertaining density of Acquanetta.... Without ever losing inner momentum, the musicians of the orchestra plumb the contrasting depths of meditative calm and powerful energy with precision and technically based self-confidence."

THE MEMOIRS OF GLUCKEL OF HAMELN

"The remarkable 17th-century woman who was Gluckel of Hameln has returned to life with lore and lessons in [this] engaging and stylish Great Small Works production.... [An] unusual and highly creative excursion into autobiography, history, music, art and language."

"A play you won't soon forget... Gluckel's story of perseverance and survival within an environment hostile to Jews has much resonance as we look back on a century that saw its share of prejudice and repression. The creative team's trueness to the theatrical traditions of Gluckel's time, the bravura performances and the apt musical choices add up to a theatrical experience that is emotionally universal, avant-garde but accessible to all theatrical tastes.
  This show...belies all those who say the theater is an art form that is no longer alive and valid."

"Yet more than depicting Gluckel's world of commerce and communal commitment, the creators of the production ... are also, with their own sense of communal commitment against a tide of rapacious commerce, forging a new Yiddish culture.... The aesthetic ... is direct, smartly self-conscious, and proudly poor."

MUSIC FOR GRACIOUS LIVING

"This parody of the explanatory music-appreciation recordings of the 1950's imposes a narrative by Deborah Artman on a puckish, Minimalist quartet. Ms. Artman's text, delivered with a fine balance of frustration and willful disengagement by Charles McIver, captures the futility of seeking a story line in abstract music by having the narrator try several plot possibilities before deciding that the music was meant to convey the details of his risotto recipe."

ORGANDY FALSETTO

"Last weekend...I happened to see a piece of regular performance art (a little dance, a little theater, a little night music) that I found to be both moving and uncanned, uncaulked, and all the rest.
  Laurie Carlos's Organdy Falsetto builds like a tone poem, with highly stylized language, no plot, no linearity.... Organdy Falsetto gave me that buzz I only get from something that is not artificial at all.... The unsettled, the uncherished ... often have political significance. And sometimes artistic significance."

ABOUT Deborah Artman

Smart, Paul. "Words for Music," The Woodstock Times, December 8, 2005. View
Smart, Paul. "Strange Bedfellows," The Woodstock Times, September 16, 2004. View
Smart, Paul. "The Brevity of Clarity," The Woodstock Times, June 19, 2003. View