They Will Have Been So Beautiful

Wonderful… a dense weave of electric and acoustic sonorities…gritty tenderness and emotional power” — Joshua Kosman, The San Francisco Chronicle
Full review…

After premiering the project to glowing acclaim at UC Berkeley’s Cal Performances, the Paul Dresher Ensemble and Amy X Neuburg reprise “They Will Have Been So Beautiful” at Z Space in San Francisco. The project features songs by composers Lisa Bielawa, Jay Cloidt, Conrad Cummings, Fred Frith, Guillermo Galindo, Carla Kihlstedt, Ken Ueno, Pamela Z, Paul Dresher and Amy X Neuburg

With “They Will Have Been So Beautiful,” celebrated composer, performer and instrument inventor Paul Dresher collaborates with composer-vocalist Amy X Neuburg on an electroacoustic song cycle inspired by a little-known text by photographer Diane Arbus. This evening-length program features ten newly commissioned works from a host of today’s most compelling composers, alongside projections of the images that inspired them.

Writes Dresher: “In exploring ideas, I shared with Amy a prose text that I was considering setting in a composition — Diane Arbus’ 1962 application for a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. In this single, typewritten page she eloquently and poetically defines her then-revolutionary aesthetic, that the commonplace habits, rituals and social spaces of everyday life hold a meaning and importance that will only be understood in the future, because “they will have been so beautiful.”

“They Will Have Been So Beautiful” features new works by composers Lisa Bielawa, Jay Cloidt, Conrad Cummings, Fred Frith, Guillermo Galindo, Carla Kihlstedt, Ken Ueno, Pamela Z, Dresher and Neuburg. Each composer was asked to select or create one or more photographic images, to find or create a text connected in some way to the image, and to use these as the basis for their composition. The texts range from the earnest and passionate — an essay by a San Quentin Prison lifer, an ode to a small child, infatuation and desire among the disadvantaged of Mexico City — to the humorous and absurd — anglophilic bath fixtures and an infomercial angrily critiquing late-stage Capitalism.

Amy X Neuburg

Amy X Neuburg has been developing her own brand of irreverently genre-crossing works for voice, live electronics and chamber ensembles for over 25 years, known for her innovative use of live looping technology with electronic percussion, her 4-octave vocal range and her colorful — often humorous — lyrics. One of the earliest performers to work with live digital looping, Amy has presented her solo “avant-cabaret” songs at such diverse venues as the Other Minds and Bang on a Can new music festivals, the Berlin International Poetry Festival, the Wellington and Christchurch Jazz Festivals (New Zealand), the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, electronic music festivals, colleges, rock clubs and concert halls throughout the U.S. and abroad.

They Will Have Been So Beautiful — Details

The Electro-Acoustic Band In Concert with Guest Artist Amy X Neuburg
Friday and Saturday, June 24 and 25, 8 PM
$20 – General Admission; $12 – Students/Low-Income
Pre-concert talk with the featured artists will begin at 7 pm on both nights.
Buy Advance tickets.

Z Space
450 Florida Street (at 17th St)
San Francisco, CA 94110