April 2012
Sunken Garden – Michel van der Aa and David Mitchell’s film opera collaboration
Michel van der Aa
We are pleased to announce details of Michel van der Aa’s new opera, Sunken Garden.
A truly international endeavour, Sunken Garden will be a five-way co-production between English National Opera, Toronto Luminato Festival, Opera de Lyon, Holland Festival and London’s Barbican Centre.
The opera is the first collaboration between the composer and stage and film director Van der Aa, and the celebrated English novelist David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas).
After One (2002), The Book of Disquiet (2008) and the acclaimed opera After Life (2005–2006), Sunken Garden is Van der Aa’s fourth work for music theatre. Like its predecessors it employs a distinctive combination of live action and video projections to tell its story, and for the first time includes 3D film.
Mitchell’s libretto tells an “occult mystery” story involving a software engineer, a glamorous young socialite, a neurotic film-maker and a gullible patroness of the arts. Each shares a dream of a “walled garden” between life and death in which there is no guilt or grief. Might this place be real? And what is the cost of cheating mortality?
Sunken Garden will be given its world premiere by English National Opera on 12 April 2013 at the Barbican Theatre. It will be sung by Roderick Williams (baritone), Katherine Manley (soprano), Claron McFadden (soprano) and Jonathan McGovern (baritone). The performances in the UK and the Netherlands will be conducted by André de Ridder.
After seven performances in London, the opera will tour through 2013 and 2014, with performances at the Holland Festival (June 2013), Toronto Luminato Festival (July 2014) and Opera de Lyon (2014-15).
April 2012
Van der Aa in Washington, DC
International Contemporary Ensemble
Audiences in Washington, DC, will be able to hear the music of Michel van der Aa at the world-renowned Phillips Collection art gallery on 9th and 10th May.
On 10th May the International Contemporary Ensemble will perform a concert of the composer’s chamber music. The evening will include works with and without soundtrack and video, three of which will be receiving their US premieres. On the 9th May the composer will be at the gallery to present a talk about his music theatre works.
The event marks Van der Aa’s first collaboration with ICE, one of America’s leading new music ensembles.
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April 2012
Up-close DVD winning rave reviews across Europe
Sol Gabetta, Vakil Eelman
The UK’s Gramophone magazine this month made Up-Close its “must see” DVD of the month, describing it as “undoubtedly the most impressive yet” of Disquiet Media’s four releases so far. “The way these worlds [of film and concert platform] constantly alternate on the way to their climactic superimposition … turns an outwardly abstruse conception into an engrossing and unsettling experience.”
This rave review follows others elsewhere in Europe. The Dutch magazine Luister has also given the disc a perfect 10 out of 10, and the German web magazine Klassik.com wrote a five-star review earlier this year, praising the work, its interpretation and recording quality.
The Amsterdam Sinfonietta will return to Up-Close in November in two Van der Aa portrait concerts. The first is in Amsterdam on the 8th; the second takes place in Den Bosch on the 11th and will be the closing concert of the November Music Festival.
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March 2012
3D film opera Sunken Garden – advance details released
David Mitchell
Advance details have been released of Michel van der Aa’s new opera Sunken Garden. Composed with the novelist David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet), the opera is for three singers, chamber ensemble and electronics, and will make use of 2D and 3D film. An “occult-mystery” story, it explores truth and hoax through its protagonists’ dreams of a heaven-like walled garden between life and death.
More details and the opera’s official announcement will come at the end of April.
November 2011
'Up-close' released on DVD and Download
Sol Gabetta
The fourth and latest release on the Disquiet label is Michel van der Aa’s concerto for cello, string ensemble and film, Up-Close. It is performed on the recording by its dedicatees, the Argentinean cellist Sol Gabetta and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, who have already played the piece to great acclaim around Europe. The role of the elderly lady in the filmed segments is played by Vakil Eelman.
Up-Close has been released on DVD and HD movie download, and is available to order from your local record shop, or from the Disquiet web-store.
During its premiere tour in March this year, critics in six countries described it as “brilliant, sensuous and virtuosic”, “riveting”, and “hautingly beautiful”. See what they were talking about through this trailer:
Sol Gabetta, cello. Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Candida Thompson. Vakil Eelman.