2009-10 Season
RHYMES WITH OPERA presents the world premiere of
BOOK OF GAZES
video cantata in eleven tableaux
for three amplified voices, ensemble, and electronics
music and libretto by
JENNY OLIVIA JOHNSON
featuring Baltimore’s experimental hip-hop quartet
SOUL CANNON
Saturday, May 15, 2010
COPYCAT THEATRE (Baltimore, MD)
9.00 pm show / suggested $10
Sunday, May 16, 2010
thefidget space (Philadelphia, PA)
7.00pm show / $10
Monday, May 17, 2010
THE TANK (New York, NY)
7.00 pm show / $10
“On the surface, Book of Gazes is a story of violation: the violation of trust and boundaries, and the sexual violation of an adolescent girl on the part of her female therapist. Yet it is also a story about fragmented memories and impossible temporalities, told in a kaleidoscopic blur of fantasy and reality, broken language, 90s-era synth jams, grungy guitar noise, Bach-style chorales, and drippy 80’s love songs.
At once narrative and episodic, this is a story that is struggling to tell itself, to make sense, and to fall into place. Its failure to do so reflects a common experience of traumatic childhood memories as both intrusively present and impossible to believe: ‘I know it happened, it never happened.’
Given these disruptions and paradoxes, this piece is perhaps best experienced as an album of songs, a playlist of memories—a book of gazes. The story is there, but it can also be your story; your experience; your jam. My hope is that it will create a space for all listeners to come together and feel, regardless of what they each take away.” – Jenny Olivia Johnson
“Soul Cannon doesn’t fit neatly into any boxes. It’s the exact opposite of today’s ring-tone hip hop.”
-BMore Live
“Soul Cannon is analog indie hip hop that you can get down with no matter your scene. Check out “What’s Real” and tell me you disagree. If your spirit isn’t lifted by this song, go back to your emo records and keep sleeping.”
-Any Given Tuesday
“…a band that is at once pure jazz tinged indie rock and political hip hop…rhymes are surrounded by a killer rhythm section that alternates between straightforward, backbeat-laden hip hop and Sonic Youth-esque noise and space drones.”
-transformonline.com
“Leaving Santa Monica, by the American Jenny Olivia Johnson…an attractive mini-opera with minimalist whirls.”
-Jochem Valkenburg, NRC, Netherlands
“sustained sonorities, drones, instrumental colorings (including the exotic sounds of Tibetan bowls)…lacy, abstract.”
- Anthony Tommasini, New York Times
“iridescent…shimmering…evocative…a composer with a genuine flair for musical drama.”
-Steve Smith, Time Out New York