In Series Opera Presents John Adams and June Jordan’s I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky, First U.S. Staging Since 1995 Premiere

WASHINGTON – In its first U.S. staging since the 1995 premiere, IN Series Opera presents John Adams and June Jordan’s operatic masterpiece: I was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky for seven nights only April 14-30 in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Tickets start at $20 and can be purchased at www.inseries.org/post/ceiling-sky  
 
Adams uses Jordan’s buoyant poetry to travel through a host of diverse American musical vernaculars (gospel, rock, jazz, pop, etc) with his distinctly personal musical language that has since become famous. 
 
Adams is America’s, and one of the world’s, most acclaimed and performed composers of opera (Nixon in China, Dr Atmoic, The Death of Klinghoffer). In 1995, he, director and longtime collaborator Peter Sellars, and poet June Jordan collaborated on a uniquely-new form of musical drama - part opera, part musical, part concert. They called this “songplay” I was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky.  
 
The new work depicted events of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake with its searing, compassionate, and prescient exploration of broken justice and migration systems, police violence against young Black men, family border separation and the impossible situation of illegal refugees in America living in fear of INS/ICE. The “songplay” also explored the autonomy of women’s bodies, the full expression of gender and sexual identity, and complex racial bigotries against Asian American and Pacific Islanders – all issues 30 years ago that we still grapple with today.  

 
At its heart, however, this masterpiece gives utterance to the violent power of love itself to function as an earthquake (the piece is subtitled an “earthquake/romance”), shaking up the heart, mind, and soul so as to allow the perception of unseen possibilities for growth and fullest expression. 
 

June Jordan’s artistic and life partner, Adrienne Torf, joins IN Series Opera for a special evening salon on April 18, lifting up the life and legacy of one of America’s most prophetic and poetic Black, female, and queer voices in living memory. 

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IN Series - We make theater from music: transforming artists, audiences, and community by disrupting expectations, nourishing empathy, stimulating insight, and deepening the conversation. 

Music by: John Adams 
Libretto by: poet June Jordan 

Directed by:?Timothy Nelson 
Conducted by:?Emily Baltzer & David Chavez 
Featuring singers:?Shana Oshiro, Louisa?Walcott, Judy Yannini, Demarcus Bolds, Daniel J. Smith, Alan Naylor and John Kun Park 

APRIL 14-16, 2023 

BALTIMORE THEATRE PROJECT 

www.theatreproject.org 410-752-8558 

APRIL 22-30, 2023 

ATLAS PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 

LANG THEATRE 

www.atlas.org 202-399-7993