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And Flowers Showered

Sunday, February 25, 2018 | 4:00 pm
Sunday, February 25, 2018 | 7:00 pm
National Sawdust
80 North 6th Street | Brooklyn, NY
$29 in advance | $34 at door | Tickets and information

And Flowers Showered is an immersive concert length exploration of the self through music, movement, and architecture. Commissioned by Contemporaneous and created by visionary Latvian composer Krists Auznieks, And Flowers Showered asks us to examine the nature of the voice within the self. Through words, music, and the transformation of the beautiful and malleable space of National Sawdust, Auznieks allows us to investigate the constituent parts of the indigenous voice — what is the self, and what makes us each an individual?

And Flowers Showered offers three segments, each approaching these questions from different angles, and presenting a different alignment of musicians and audience members.

Part I introduces a scientific approach to the construction of the self. This is a demonstration of how we arrive to consciousness, with text drawn from German philosopher/neurobiologist Thomas Metzinger. In Part I there are no chairs in the room — the audience and musicians are ambulatory, free to move however they please.

Part II uses the words of a koan by 13th century Japanese monk Muju Ichien. An exercise in “learning to perceive nothingness,” Part II now re-examines the constructed self. Seating is brought into the room, and the audience faces a wall with the musicians behind them. Auznieks’ music emerges as the “voice in the back of the mind.”

Part III features the words of Wallace Stevens, presenting language now as a mantra and questioning the role of repetition in the foundation of the self. The audience and musicians now lie down together, experiencing a reconciliation of language and music in physical space. The work ends with an optimistic vision of a communal self.

Show run time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

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John Corigliano's 80th Birthday

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March 17

Beth Morrison Projects: Next Generation