BMOP/sound Releases Matthew Aucoin: Orphic Moments Album featuring Davone Tines, Conor Hanick, and More

Matthew Aucoin: Orphic Moments

Composer: Matthew Aucoin (b.1990)

Release Date: November 9, 2021

TRT: Disc One 62:20 Disc Two 49:01

Works: Disc One: Exodos for Tony (2015, arr.2021), Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (2016), The Orphic Moment (2014), Disc Two: Its Own Accord (2016), Dual (2015), This Earth (2015), Gallup (Na'nízhoozhí) (2021)

Performers: Paul Appleby (tenor), Conor Hanick (piano), Anthony Roth Costanzo (countertenor), Keir GoGwilt (violin), Coleman Itzkoff (cello), Doug Balliett (bass), Davóne Tines (bassbaritone), Emi Ferguson (flute), Miranda Cuckson (violin), Jonny Allen (percussion), American Modern Opera Company led by Matthew Aucoin (conductor/piano), Boston

Boston, MA (For Release 11.09.21) — Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, Grammy Award-winning BMOP/sound, in collaboration with AMOC (American Modern Opera Company), today announced the release of the two-CD set Matthew Aucoin: Orphic Moments. Featuring seven works, each in their debut recording, this album is a record of progression—a musical discovery of Aucoin’s early artistic personality and voice that he continues to explore today. The album features the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), fresh off its 2021 Special Achievement Award win from Gramophone, and 11 artists from AMOC, co-founded by Aucoin. AMOC company members and some of today’s leading artists are featured as soloists, including singers Anthony Roth Costanzo (Musical America’s 2019 Vocalist of the Year), Paul Appleby (Met Opera), and Davóne Tines (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Fire Shut Up in My Bones), as well as musicians such as instrumentalist/poet Doug Balliett and pianist Conor Hanick.

This double CD marks the start of a long-term performance and recording collaboration between these two organizations known for their relentless pursuit of fresh musical and artistic perspectives. "It's a dream come true to bring together two stellar ensembles—BMOP and my own artistic family, AMOC—for a double album of music that I wrote over a span of seven years,” says Matthew Aucoin, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and LA Opera’s first-ever Artist in Residence (2016-2020). “In addition to being a portrait of my evolution as a composer, this album is a snapshot of the deep musical relationships that have been forged between these astonishing performers. Their chemistry is explosive—you'll hear the sparks fly!" Says BMOP Artistic Director Gil Rose: “Collaborating with Matt on this album revealed exciting creative possibilities, and we can’t wait to see what future collaborations it will yield.”

According to contemporary pianist Conor Hanick, the album’s second work Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is a profound consolidation of Matt's compositional language and it glows with a beautiful, knowing awareness of what's to come. “Although the Piano Concerto is absent a libretto, a singer, or a set, it nevertheless feels like an opera to me -- dynamic, dramatic, layered with meaning. The piano often assumes a sort of orator role in the piece – ‘the top layer of consciousness’ as Matt describes it -- under which the more veiled intentions, motivations, and meanings of that speech are heard in the orchestra. Other times, the piano turns inward, like a character alone on a vast stage whispering intimacies to no one.”

Hailed as “one of the most sought-after young voices in classical music” (Wall Street Journal), Aucoin is known for engaging a range of poetic texts, even in wordless music, and his literary leanings informed the album’s eponymous work The Orphic Moment, inspired by the story of Orpheus. When it premiered at National Sawdust in 2016, The New York Times claimed, “in Mr. Aucoin’s pulsing, fitful score, the orchestra simmers with rattling ostinatos and darting lines. The vocal writing is impassioned and fiery.”

About AMOC
Founded in 2017 by Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, the mission of AMOC (American Modern Opera Company) is to build and share a body of collaborative work. As a group of dancers, singers, musicians, writers, directors, composers, choreographers, and producers united by a core set of values, AMOC artists pool their resources to create new pathways that connect creators and audiences in surprising and visceral ways. Current and past projects include The No One’s Rose, a devised music-theater-dance piece featuring new music by Matthew Aucoin, directed by Zack Winokur with choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith; EASTMAN, a performance piece contending with the life and work of Julius Eastman; a new arrangement of John Adams’s El Niño, premiered as part of Julia Bullock’s season-long residency at the Met Museum; and Bobbi Jene Smith and Keir GoGwilt’s dance/music works With Care and A Study on Effort, which have been produced at San Francisco’s ODC Theater, Toronto’s Luminato Festival, and elsewhere. Conor Hanick’s performance of CAGE, Zack Winokur’s production of John Cage’s music for prepared piano, was cited as the best recital of the year by The New York Times in 2018. Additionally, AMOC will serve as the Ojai Music Festival’s 2022 Music Director, only the second ensemble, and first explicitly interdisciplinary company, to hold the position in the festival’s 75-year history.

About BMOP/sound 
BMOP/sound, BMOP’s independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a platform for BMOP’s extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, top-quality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today’s most innovative composers. BMOP/sound has garnered praise from the national and international press. It is the recipient of a 2020 Grammy Award for Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as eight Grammy Award nominations, and its releases have appeared on the year-end “Best of” lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Time Out New York, American Record Guide, DownBeat, WBUR, NewMusicBox, and others. Admired, praised, and sought after by artists, presenters, critics, and audiophiles, BMOP and BMOP/sound are uniquely positioned to redefine the new music concert and recording experience. Launched in 2019, BMOP's digital radio station, BMOP/radio, streams BMOP/sound's entire catalog and airs special programming. BMOP.org