The Refuse Project

Firesong will present the debut performance of ‘The Refuse Project’ on Saturday May 13, 2017 at the Center for New Music. The Refuse Project pairs the world premiere of a new monodrama ‘Refuse Collection’ (2016/17) by Bay Area composer David Coll with ‘Position Influence’ (2010) for soprano and sound sculpture and “Apparition: Elegiac Songs and Vocalises for Soprano and Amplified Piano” (1979) by Pulitzer Prize winning composer George Crumb. Crumb and Coll cohere new modes of extended vocal and piano techniques with the poetry of Walt Whitman (“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”) and Jeremy Prynne (“Refuse Collection”).
What is the process of preparing and performing chamber music and how can it affect how we view our larger circumstances? In this project Soprano Vanessa Langer, pianist Allegra Chapman and composer/ sound artist Coll investigate extended techniques of the human voice, the piano and its inner workings underpinning extensions of emotions through composition and performance. Outrage, mourning, betrayal, the nature of death and transfiguration are portrayed through a series of vocalizes and bird song. ‘The Refuse Project’ explores all of these topics through a series of performances, educational workshops and Q&A with our artists.
This project is funded in part by the generous support of the Zellerbach Family Foundation whose Community Arts Program has nourished the Bay Area Arts landscape keeping the arts accessible to diverse cultures and communities across the Bay Area for forty years.