Day of Imagination

*Proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result taken within 72 hours required for entry. Masks required.*

On September 18th, 2021, in collaboration with The Space at Irondale Contemporaneous presents the inaugural DAY OF IMAGINATION, a day-long festival of musical dreams.

DAY OF IMAGINATION is an ode to idealism — a space for the presentation of the most thrilling, ambitious, wildest "dream projects" of musical artists from across the world. Curated through the "Contemporaneous: IMAGINATION" open call, which asks creators to share what work they'd most like to be making regardless of traditional constraints on scale and practicality, DAY OF IMAGINATION is an entire day full of these extraordinary artistic dreams.

This inaugural DAY OF IMAGINATION festival features three different sets over the course of September 18th, with massive multimedia world premieres from artists Kara-Lis Coverdale, Brian Petuch, Andrés Martínez de Velasco, and Dylan Mattingly.

This first DAY OF IMAGINATION was initially scheduled to coincide with and celebrate Contemporaneous's 10th anniversary, and while the pandemic pushed back its presentation by a year, we are overjoyed to celebrate with you now – in our eleventh year — the limitless capacity of imagination.

Join us for this joyous day of the most extraordinary music and art you've never heard.

Schedule:

*Day of Imagination consists of three sets, starting at 2pm, 5pm, and 8pm. You can buy a ticket for an individual set for $20 or a pass for the whole day (which you can use to get into any or all sets) for $30.

2pm | Set 1

Stranger Love | Dylan Mattingly / Thomas Bartscherer

5pm | Set 2

Particles and Fields | Andrés Martínez de Velasco

Aftertouches | Kara-Lis Coverdale

8pm | Set 3

Portrait and a Dream | Brian Petuch

DETAILS

Set 1 | 2pm

Dylan Mattingly / Thomas Bartscherer: Stranger Love, Acts II & III

The day begins with the concert premiere of the last two acts from Stranger Love, the ecstatic 6-hour opera created by composer Dylan Mattingly (co-artistic director of Contemporaneous) and writer Thomas Bartscherer. Scored for 28 musicians (including three microtonal pianos), 8 singers, and 6 dancers, Stranger Love is a grand celebration of life itself. It follows two lovers whose romance unfolds to the rhythm of the seasons. Set on a vast time-scale against the ever-expanding universe, it broadens in scope and frame over the course of three acts, moving from the personal to the archetypical to a vision of the divine — a love supreme. Stranger Love evokes the visceral thrill of a gospel revival, the ethereal calm of watching snow fall, the wonder of staring into the night sky. Contemporaneous presented Act I of Stranger Love in a concert performance on the PROTOTYPE Festival in 2018, and this will be the first performance of the music from Acts II and III. Stranger Love is in development and will be presented in full in its world premiere production in Spring of 2023 in Los Angeles.

This project was the inspiration for Contemporaneous IMAGINATION. Composer and co-artistic director Dylan Mattingly writes: as I’ve worked these past nine years to bring my own dream project to life, I knew that there must be so many other artists in the world who share this kind of experience, who have ideas for artistic work of the utmost importance to them, which are just too bold or big or weird or plain countercultural to receive traditional support. I realized that Contemporaneous could offer artists a chance to pursue that work, to fill that gap in the model of how new work is produced, and to encourage artists to not back down from their wildest dreams.

Set 2 | 5pm

Andrés Martínez de Velasco: Particles and Fields

Particles and Fields is a hybrid exploration in sound, word, and image of the fantastical realities of quantum physics and the imaginative power of the figures who formed a new understanding of the universe. The performance follows an allegorical history of physics written by historian Alexander Blum, taking spectators from atomism to the birth of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. An animated painting created by visual artist Michael DiRosa unravels in time alongside a music composition written for the Contemporaneous ensemble by Andrés Martínez de Velasco. The composition unfolds in three chapters, evoking invisible worlds and microscopic events through its shape-shifting music at the same time that the projected painting weaves through a multiverse of tessellating light, color, and story. Through its entanglement of science and art, Particles and Fields seeks to illuminate the wonder of physics seldom experienced by non-physicists.

Kara-Lis Coverdale: Aftertouches

Aftertouches is an arrestingly beautiful electronica album created and produced by Canadian composer Kara-Lis Coverdale. Intricate in detail and vast in scope, the album is a tapestry of magical electronic sound. In collaboration with Coverdale, composers Dylan Mattingly and Zachary Ritter have worked meticulously to arrange this album for the live musicians of Contemporaneous. The album's otherworldly electronic beauty will be recreated in live performance in this never-before-heard arrangement.

Set 3 | 8pm

Brian Petuch: Portrait and a Dream

An opera about the life, work, and myth of Jackson Pollock

Music, Libretto: Brian Petuch

Director: Ashley Tata

Scenic Design: Magnus Pind

Lighting Design: Abigail Hoke-Brady

Costumes: Márion Talán de la Rosa

Soprano — Kendra Berentsen

Tenor — Brian Giebler

Baritone — Ricardo Rivera

The finale of the inaugural Day of Imagination is Portrait and a Dream. Brian Petuch’s Portrait and a Dream is a sequence of tone-poems inspired by works that span the breadth of Jackson Pollock’s life. The libretto - an assemblage of recordings of the voices of the people who knew Jackson - deconstructs the myth of Pollock by splintering narrative, intention and truth. The first-stroke-on-a-canvas production directed by Ashley Tata with designs by Magnus Pind, Abby Hoke-Brady and Márion Talán de la Rosa places the company in the present and considers whether it is possible to be an artist in the US anymore or whether the legacy of the mid-20th century art scene has led to a post-art society where the artist is a symbol and a successful artist is a commodity.