Dory Hayley (Vancouver) – Récitations – Apr. 22, 2023
Saturday, April 22, 2023; 8pm
Artist chat with Matthew Talbot-Kelly at 7:15pm
ANNEX (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) [map]
Dory Halyey, solo soprano; featuring a visual performance and installation by Matthew Talbot-Kelly/A Knobe Dee.
Réctitations by Greek composer, Georges Aperghis, is a solo vocal work divided into 14 separate pieces that are based on a virtuoso combination of phonemes and theatrical sound gestures. The writing is characterized by high speed, repetitions, accumulations and high rhythmic pressure. They solicit the creative participation of both performer and audience, and adapt well to a great versatility of vocal playing modes. An imaginary language is invented here, ambiguous and often funny.
To dialogue with this work and enhance its intrinsic theatricality, we have invited experimental mixed media artist Matthew Talbot-Kelly/A Knobe Dee to collaborate with Dory Hayley’s interpretation of this exuberant and challenging work. Matthew Talbot-Kelly/A Knobe Dee will create a visual performance that is by turns live animated AR loops, live edited digital loops and an installation of physical assemblages.
Written in 1977–8, George Aperghis’ 14 Récitations are among the most challenging masterpieces of contemporary solo vocal writing. The fact that Aperghis originally wrote them for the French comedian and singer Martine Viard offers a clue to their aesthetic. Each Récitation operates in a similar emotional register to a miniature opera, but with a plot that is unknown and a text that at best teeters on the edge of intelligibility (the texts are in French, but cut up into syllables and jumbled, sometimes using homophones borrowed from other languages). Yet their dramatic form – like that of comedy – exists independently of semantic meaning. Like comedy, too, they subvert and demolish stereotypes. Whatever little else we know of her, the woman portrayed in the 14 Récitations is angry, empowered, sexual, violent, scared and glorious. In short, she is – like all of us – messy. – Stephanie Lamprea and Tim Rutherford-Johnson, New Focus Recordings
This event was supported in part by the BC Fairs, Festivals and Events Fund.
PROGRAM NOTES
Dory Hayley
Soprano Dory Hayley is recognized as a leading voice in Canada’s contemporary and experimental music scene. Praised for her “very personal creative power” (Badener Zeitung) and her “amazing coloratura skills” (Opera Canada), she has been a soloist with the Vancouver Symphony, the Vancouver Island Symphony, the Allegra Chamber Orchestra, the Turning Point Ensemble, and Capriccio Basel, appeared in concert across four continents, and commissioned and premiered an expanding catalogue of new works.
An avid and adventurous collaborator, she has performed in festivals such as Sonic Boom, the Modulus Festival, the Happening Festival, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Gulangyu Autumn Festival (China), Performer’s Voice Symposium (Singapore), and Festival Atempo (Venezuela). She is a member of the Erato Ensemble, the Broadwood Duo, and the Hayley-Laufer Duo, and is the Artistic Co-Director of the Blueridge Chamber Music Festival.
Matthew Talbot-Kelly / A Knobe Dee
Matthew Talbot-Kelly, aka A Knobe Dee, is an Irish-Canadian artist, architect and curator. Their wide ranging art practice comprises works in both analog physical (mixed media, collage, assemblage, installations, architecture) and digital time-based (film, animation, interactive, sound, VR and AR, loops) realms. Matthew Talbot-Kelly/A Knobe Dee’s practice foregrounds absurdity, collage, non-linearity, and instability as theoretical, organizational and production strategies.
Photo: Dory Hayley.
