Third Angle opens their Studio Series with Atmospheres, a multi-sensory display of solo flute, wind synth, video, and electronics starring Artistic Director Sarah Tiedemann. The program evokes the sky, exploring the illusory nature of life and the transcendental nature of death through Keiko Devaux’s Hōrai and newly commissioned works by local composers. The performance at New Expressive Works begins promptly at 7:30pm on January 25th and 26th and runs approximately 70 minutes without intermission.
“The universe whispers to us all in a way that can be puzzling in the moment and strikingly nonlinear, '' Tiedemann writes. She began planning this show in Spring of 2023, and immediately, “It just spoke to my bones. Then over the summer John Heiss, my teacher, my mentor, my friend, and the person who 20 years ago first enveloped me in contemporary music, passed away, and it all became clear. This show is a healing gift about the air and the way we flow through it. It is about the souls who linger both before and after their candle glows, about the seeming darkness from which we emerge. It is
about our life as tangled stardust and wind, the hallowed colors of the sky, the immense space in the atoms of our bodies pretending through eyes to be solid.” Sarah Tiedemann has served as Artistic Director of Third Angle since 2018, designing Sanctuaries, 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, and other shows that continue to define Third Angle’s vision. She has also performed with Third Angle as a flutist for over a decade, but Atmospheres is unique in that she is a soloist for the entire program.
The centerpiece of the musical program is Hōrai, a work for solo flute with electronics, video, and smoke machine, written by composer Keiko Devaux. Devaux was inspired by a connection to her own ancestry through Buddhism and by the story "Hōrai" as it appears in Kwaidan, an anthology of Japanese ghost stories. The story depicts the mystical mountain land of Hōrai as a surreal atmosphere made up of ancient souls where “whatever mortal man inhales that atmosphere, he takes into his blood the thrilling of these spirits; and they change the sense within him, reshaping his notions of space and time.”
Tiedemann will also present world premieres of new works by Portland composers Daniel Vega and Elaina Stuppler. Daniel Vega wrote Heart of the Siskiyou in memory of his father, whose ashes he spread in the Youngs Valley of the Siskiyou Wilderness.
Inferno by Elaina Stuppler (age 15) is inspired by the eerie, orange sky above Portland in 2020, clouded with smoke and ash from wildfires. The program also includes Prismatic Wind by Chloe Upshaw, Pray by Allison Loggins-Hull, and Nicholas Denton Protsack’s In the Refuge of a Cave, which Tiedemann will perform on Electronic Wind Synthesizer (EWI).
Atmospheres is the first show in Third Angle’s 23/24 Studio Series, which also includes Glitch, featuring music of Nicole Lizée; and Rabbit Rabbit Radio, featuring Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi of avant-rock band Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Traditionally the Studio Series shows have been ‘incubators’ where Third Angle experiments with new ideas in the company of an intimate audience.
DATE & TIME: THU-FRI, JAN 25-26 / 7:30 PM
TICKET PRICE $30 / $25 / $20 ($5 Arts for All)
FOR MORE INFO: https://www.thirdangle.org/23-24season