
Playdate: Part II (Cambridge)
Sun, Nov 07
|Location is TBD
Come join story time with Live Contemporary Music!, integrating traditional story-telling in a family-friendly environment with live incidental musical cues written specifically for the stories in a family-friend setting.
Time & Location
Nov 07, 2021, 7:00 PM EST
Location is TBD
About the Event
Dinosaur Annex presents Storytime with Live Contemporary Music!, integrating traditional story-telling in a family-friendly environment with live incidental musical cues written specifically for the stories in a family-friend setting. Several composers will be commissioned to write new musical cues for specific readings of stories; pre-existing music from other composers will be chosen to accompany other stories. This project serves as a reprise to our very successful event Playdate in November 2019, which featured performances of contemporary classical concert music in a stress-free, judgment-free setting. Children and families gathered around to listen to contemporary music as they sat on the floor, drew in coloring books, or played with soft toys. The current proposed project iterates on this concept by introducing an explicitly narrative component. The composers we have asked to participate bring significant experience composing to texts. Nkeiru Okoye’s opera on Harriet Tubman was workshopped and produced by The American Opera Project. Composer Lisa Neher’s vocal and instrumental writing reflect the emotional urgency of the texts she sets. Andre Myers' vocal/orchestral setting of poems by Countee Cullen amplifies its meanings in honest and exciting ways. Samples of their prior work have been included in the supplement.