Collaboration with Aaron Siegel, Bryan Markovitz, Ryan Dahoney, Kate Soper, Flux Quartet, Emcee C.M., Huong Ngo, and myself. Installation, performance, and composition took place at the Chocolate Factory April 24-26, 2008.

Swan catchers consisted of a non-traditional music performance in an evolving and interactive puppet-like theater performance.

Singers and spoken word performers hovered throughout the performance space, whispering, humming and singing in breadth with the string trio in the middle of the space. Simultaneously, makeshift miniature landscapes were being created and destroyed, while being lit and animated with small scale LEDs and diffused luminescence.

The performance consisted over three days, with an evolving and improvisational change within the space itself. Specifically, I was involved in lighting and helping change the space over the three days. More words regarding the music itself.

Set inside a murky pastoral landscape inhabited by a simple fisherman, his family and a Mute Swan, The Swan Catchers (formerly titled Another Place to Be) will unfold over a four hour period, performed in three parts over three nights (each performance has a running time of approximately one hour and fifteen minutes). A collaboration between composer Aaron Siegel and visual artist/director Bryan Markovitz, The Swan Catchers combines Siegel’s forlorn yet anxious libretto for three voices – accompanied live by The Flux Quartet – with Markovitz’s dynamic visual environment featuring large-scale projections and architectural elements, situated within the Chocolate Factory’s white upstairs performance space. The Swan Catchers is commissioned by the Jerome Foundation and the American Composers Forum, with support for Siegel bythe American Music Center.