UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Olivier Messiaen’s HARAWI produced in collaboration with Ojai Music Festival on Friday, Oct. 4, at 8 p.m. at Campbell Hall.
HARAWI, an American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) production, realizes Olivier Messiaen’s deeply-affecting song cycle for voice and piano in a newly physicalized and dramatized version directed by Zack Winokur that features acclaimed soprano Julia Bullock; pianist Conor Hanick; and dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber.
Over the course of a dozen interconnected love songs in HARAWI – the first installment in a series of song cycles known as the composer’s Tristan trilogy – dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber bring Messiaen’s romantic surrealism to life through their original choreography. All four artists – Smith and Schraiber, plus pianist Conor Hanick and soprano Julia Bullock – are contributing members of AMOC, an adventurous, enterprising collective of artists that has been called “blindingly impressive” and “preternaturally talented” by The New York Times. By incorporating dance, this unique production of HARAWI opens up Messiaen’s song cycle, adding a new dimension and greater intensity to its portrayal of love and loss…