The Happenstancers

In FUTURE PASTORALE, three performers create a path connecting the past and future. Using Claude Vivier’s rarely-performed and enigmatic Ojikawa as a foundation, the artists construct an evening of collaboratively-composed/improvised acoustic and electronic performances that explore the imagined pastoral expanses of antiquity and link them to the endless digital landscapes of tomorrow. This work features poems from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence as well as text manipulations and generative poetry created by the performers with tools utilizing artificial intelligence. Taking inspiration from the Knee Plays of Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach, these texts are then fragmented and layered.
Framing Vivier’s work with spoken-word recitations and collaboratively-composed works by Cherwin, Pino, and Young, FUTURE PASTORALE challenges the expectations of Vivier’s forward-thinking and experimental trio. Recasting Vivier’s work as nostalgic and historical — in a subtle upending of the expected understanding of Ojikawa as contemporary — FUTURE PASTORALE envisions expansive new possibilities for the chamber music recital, blending abstract narrative, improvisation, spoken word poetry, collaborative composition, and theatrical lighting to evoke a future that is equal parts celestial and computerized.