The Trillium R Project

Composition 162, a new work in Anthony Braxton's "Trillium R" series of operas, is written for the full Tri-Centric Ensemble of 40 instrumentalists, 7 solo improvisers, and 8 vocalists; it will also feature set designs and video projections of computer graphic art designed by one of the ensemble members. This new work will world-premiere at The John Jay Theater, at 899 10th Ave. (between 58th and 59th), New York NY 10019, October 25 and 26, 1996, 7:30 PM. The opera is four hours long. Tickets are $30, and will be available through Ticketmaster.

This particular work falls within Braxton's abiding interest in drawing on the improvisational principles of the African and the compositional concepts of the European musical traditions in America for their most comprehensive possible synthesis. Braxton has been at the forefront of this cross-cultural dialectic that is at the core of American culture for over three decades, exploring its possibilities when dominant trends were polarizations of, even confrontations between, Afrocentric and Eurocentric agendas, or when they tended toward simplest common denominators. The present cultural moment is no exception, and the Tri-Centric Ensemble was formed in New York in part as an alternative to musical agendas and expressions more prominent but, for many, less visionary, more reactionary, less inclusive of people and potential and less ambitious musically and culturally. Composition 162 is conceived as one of the latest and loudest words of that alternative.

The work also mines his relatively new interest in musical events with a dramatic narrative and visual components. This simply means that the concept described above will be expressed all the more explicitly and graphically, to a more widely sensing audience. Braxton writes his own libretti, which invariably convey the philosophical tenets -- as well as the sheer fantasy, and humor -- that motivate his music. They also inform much of the cadence, meter and rhythm, and pitch and timbre content of the music, as he writes the libretto first, over which he then lays the music. He has also long developed his own style of drawing his own inner visualizations of his music, which form the basis of the computer-video projections his latest work includes.

Composition 162 was commissioned by the Tri-Centric Foundation with funds from the MacArthur Foundation and the Mary Flagler Carey Charitable Trust's Commissioning Program of New York.