Image: Clare Shovelton.
“a gentle, thoughtful, provocative, and beautiful piece”
– Bill Bankes-Jones, Artistic Director of Tête à Tête
A Certain Sense of Order
‘A Certain Sense of Order’ is a pocket opera for two singers exploring the American poet Anne Sexton, presented here on the 90th anniversary of her birth. Using a single poem – ‘For John, Who Begs Me Not to Inquire Further’ – the piece reflects on Sexton’s life and work, and on the possibilities of reading poetry in general. The performance is followed by a Q&A session with the creators and performers.
The piece was co-created by tick tock-an interdisciplinary performance company founded by Sasha Amaya and Naomi Woo (PhD student at the Faculty of Music), who met as students at the University of Cambridge in 2015-with Catherine Kontz, a London-based composer whose work has been commissioned by the BBCSSO, Ensemble Recherche, EXAUDI, and the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg. The piece is performed by London-based singers Rosie Middleton and Sarah Parkin.
The event will also feature a performance of Kaija Saariaho’s From the Grammar of Dreams, based on text by Sylvia Plath, who studied at Newnham College.
Sidgwick Avenue CB3 9DF
Cambridge
Learn more about the process of working with poetry in an afternoon workshop before the concert, “Embodying Poetry with tick tock”: https://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/embodying-poetry-tick-tock-…
“A sign of the success of ‘A Certain Sense of Order’ is the freshness and seriousness with which it musically and dramatically explores the radical performative potential of Sexton and her poetry, in addition to the active questions it leaves us with.”
– Christian Coppa, 3:AM MAGAZINE
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For more information on tick tock performance, click here.
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