Tag Archives: Bryce Dessner

CARRIE MAE WEEMS — PAST TENSE

“As much as I’m engaged with it, with violence, I remain ever hopeful that change is possible and necessary, and that we will get there. I believe that strongly, and representing that matters to me: a sense of aspiration, a sense of good will, a sense of hope, a sense of this idea that one has the right, that we have the right to be as we are.” — Carrie Mae Weems*

The timeless themes of political power, social justice, gender oppression, and valiant persistence are brought to life in a modern context in PAST TENSE, Carrie Mae Weems’ multimedia take on Antigone.

Combining music, spoken word, video, and projected images, PAST TENSE—presented this week in Los Angeles by CAP UCLA—includes works by poet Carl Hancock Rux and composer Craig Harris, and will be performed by Weems, Eisa Davis, Francesca Harper, David Parker, Imani Uzuri, and Alicia Hall Moran, who brought the house down at Disney Hall earlier this week in Bryce Dessner’s Triptych.

CARRIE MAE WEEMS—PAST TENSE

Friday, March 8, at 8 pm.

Theatre at Ace Hotel

929 South Broadway, downtown Los Angeles.

*Megan O’Grady, “Carrie Mae Weems,” T: The New York Times Style Magazine, October 21, 2018, 140.

From top: Carrie Mae Weems, Past Tense, in performance; Past Tense production photographs (2) by William Strugs; Carrie Mae Weems, portrait by Jerry Klineberg; Past Tense, in performance with, from right, Alicia Hall Moran, Imani Uzuri, and Eisa Davis. Images courtesy CAP UCLA.

BRYCE DESSNER’S TRIPTYCH PREMIERE

In TRIPTYCH (EYES OF ONE ON ANOTHER), composer and guitarist Bryce Dessner of The National has collaborated with playwright Korde Arrington Tuttle, the LA Phil New Music Group, Roomful of Teeth, videographer Simon Harding, lighting designer Yuki Nakase, and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation for an musical-visual investigation into the ways the photographer’s works “compel an audience’s complicity and characterizes them in the act of attention.”*

Tuttle’s libretto integrates the poetry of Mapplethorpe detractor Essex Hemphill and advocate Patti Smith, and the featured vocalists for this world premiere are Isaiah Robinson and Alicia Hall Moran, the latter of whom will perform later this week in Carrie Mae WeemsPast Tense at the Theatre at Ace Hotel.

TRIPTYCH is directed by Kaneza Schaal and conducted by Sara Jobin. Music direction is provided by Brad Wells.

BRYCE DESSNER

TRIPTYCH (EYES OF ONE ON ANOTHER)*

Tuesday, March 5, at 8 pm.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

111 South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

From top: Bryce Dessner, photograph by Shervin Lainez; Robert Mapplethorpe, Dorothy Dean, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; Korde Arrington Tuttle, courtesy of the artist; Robert Mapplethorpe, Alistair Butler, 1980, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Images courtesy LA Phil and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.