LOOK UP

The LOOK UP program received its world premiere in November 2023 at MASS MoCA. The program features Christopher Cerrone’s Beaufort Scales, a new 36-minute oratorio for eight voices and live electronics, commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble, that draws inspiration from various iterations of the Beaufort Wind Force Scale created by Sir Francis Beaufort in 1805, along with texts from Melville, Fitzgerald, and Anne Carson. According to composer Christopher Cerrone, “The piece tries to posit—through both historical sources and technological intervention—what increasingly tempestuous weather is doing to our lives.”

At the premiere, the first half of the performance, preceding Cerrone’s piece, included Meredith Monk’s “Other Worlds Revealed” and “Earth Seen from Above,” from Atlas, Molly Herron’s “Stellar Atmospheres,” Elena Ruehr’s “Not from the stars,” and Elijah Daniel Smith’s “Suspended in Spin” (world premiere). Subsequent performances of LOOK UP will feature Beaufort Scales along with some of these other works.

“The idea of ‘Look Up’ is about looking up to the sky and seeing we are one entity in this expansive universe, but also looking up and seeing what is happening on the planet right here,” says Artistic Director Beth Willer.  

BEAUFORT SCALES 

music by Christopher Ceronne
visuals by Hannah Wasileski
lighting by Yuki Nakase Link

Inspired by a poetic table of wind measurements from the 19th century, Beaufort Scales traces a trajectory from placidity (“Sea like a mirror / Smoke rises vertically”) to calamity. The original scale—12 steps, two hundred words—is the scaffolding for an exploration of changing weather phenomenon in our modern era. Cerrone treats Beaufort’s original text as a moire—he interweaves texts from authors throughout history—Melville, Teju Cole, Anne Carson—to create a kaleidoscopic view of weather, all headed towards an inexorable climax: “The air is filled with foam and spray / Devastation.” Beaufort Scales is a cautionary tale in the era of climate change.

Christopher Cerrone, composer

Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984) is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. 

Recent commissions include In a Grove, a new opera co-produced by LA Opera and Pittsburgh Opera, a violin concerto for Jennifer Koh and the Detroit Symphony, an antiphonal brass concerto for the Cincinnati Symphony, a piano concerto for Shai Wosner and the Phoenix and Albany Symphonies; a percussion concerto for Third Coast Percussion; and three works for the LA Philharmonic. His first opera, Invisible Cities, based on Italo Calvino’s novel, was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize and he is the recipient of multiple GRAMMY nominations. He is also the winner of the 2015-2016 Rome Prize.

Christopher Cerrone holds degrees from Yale and the Manhattan School of Music and is published by Schott NY. He is on the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music and lives in Brooklyn with his wife. christophercerrone.com.

Hannah Wasileski, visuals

Hannah Wasileski is an artist and projection designer based in Berlin and Brooklyn. She found her way into the visual and performing arts through her background as a classical violinist. Beginning as a video and installation artist after graduating from the University of Brighton, UK, she moved to New York City where she was immediately drawn to the performing arts and the interaction of live performance and projection design for the stage. She graduated with an MFA from the Yale School of Drama where she was in the inaugural class of Projection Design. www.HannahWasileski.com

Yuki Nakase Link, lighting

Yuki Nakase Link was born in Tokyo, grew up in Kyoto, Japan.  While she was working as a dancer in Japan, she felt lighting was always like magic.  Her body reacted totally differently once she had lighting for a rehearsal.  Lighting can change her visually, physically and emotionally.  She wanted to explore why.

Yuki started her career as a lighting designer in Japan for Nippon Television Network Corporation in Tokyo, working with them for eight years before she moved to the United States for a US education in 2007.  Her focus in the last fifteen years is designing for performing arts - opera, dance, and theatre.  She currently lives north of New York City in the woods of Hudson Valley.

Yuki received a B.A. degree in Physical Education from Japan Women’s College of Physical Education in Tokyo (1999), and a M.F.A. degree in Design for Stage and Film from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in New York City (2013).

Beaufort Scales was commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, an Alfred Nash Patterson grant from Choral Arts New England, New Music USA, the Adele and John Gray Endowment, Raulee Marcus, and Stephen Block. Suspended in Spin was commissioned by Lorelei Ensemble in honor of Susan Reardon with the support of the MaddocksBrown Foundation. The LOOK UP program is supported in part by The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.

The first half of the LOOK UP program, featuring works by Monk, Herron, Ruehr, and Smith, stems from Lorelei’s performance at the 2019 TESS conference at MIT, as part of Natalia Guerrero’s Songs from Extrasolar Spaces, revealing to the public some of the first images of exoplanets captured by the TESS telescope.