KATE SOPER IPSA DIXIT (2010-2016)
I. Poetics (voice, flute, percussion, and violin)
text by Aristotle (abridged Soper) and Sophocles (from “Oedipus Rex”)
II. Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say (voice and flute)
text by Lydia Davis
III. Rhetoric (voice, flute, percussion, and violin)
text by Aristotle (abridged Soper) and Soper
IV. The Crito (voice and percussion)
text by Robert Duncan and Plato (abridged Soper)
V. Metaphysics (for voice flute, percussion, and violin)
text by Aristotle, abridged/adapted Soper
VI. Cipher (for voice and violin)
texts by Jenny Holzer, Wittgenstein, Pietro Bembo, Freud, Guido d’Arezzo, and Sarah Teasdale
PERFORMERS
Maria Männistö, soprano
Sarah Pyle, flute
Eric Rynes, violin
Bonnie Whiting, percussion
CREATIVE TEAM
Neil Parsons, director
Nabilah Ahmed, projection designer
Ryan Dunn, light designer
Marcin Paçzkowski, sound designer
PRODUCTION TEAM
Maria Manness, production manager
Amanda Balter, stage manager
These performances of Ipsa Dixit are generously sponsored by Patricia Tall-Takacs and Gary Takacs.
PROGRAM NOTE:
What is art? As the opening salvo to a piece of chamber music, the question is a little grandiose, bordering on pretentious. And expecting to arrive at an answer may be as deluded as putting stock into Jenny Holzer’s enigmatic assertion that it is useful to incorporate language into art because ‘people can understand you when you say something.’ Nevertheless, these two phrases are the bookends of IPSA DIXIT, which attempts to sound the depths of the tangled relationship between art, language, and meaning.
IPSA DIXIT is the feminized form of ipse dixit (literally “he, himself, said it”), a term used to describe a fallacious claim based on the authority of the claimer alone – e.g., “I don’t need to prove that what I say is true, it’s true because I say so!” The piece explores myriad ways in which the truth can be hidden, in how musical language can complicate sense, how a soprano’s sovereignty over instrumentalists can be challenged, and how gut feeling can overrule reason. The pursuit of honesty, under everyday circumstances as well as in matters of life and death, relentlessly haunts Ipsa Dixit at its surface.
IPSA DIXIT is an evening-length work of chamber music theatre that explores the tantalizingly convoluted intersections of music, language, and meaning through a deep interweaving of music and text, complex instrumental textures, contemporary vocal techniques, and blistering ensemble virtuosity. Scored for voice, flute, violin, and percussion, and developed over several years of intense collaboration with the members of Wet Ink, IPSA DIXIT blends elements of monodrama, Greek theatre, and screwball comedy in its examination of the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of musical expression.
Ipse dixit /Ip-suh dik-sit/: noun (Latin). Literally “he, himself, said it.”
An unproven yet dogmatic statement which the speaker expects the listener to accept as valid without proof beyond the speaker’s assumed expertise.
Ipsa dixit: “she, herself, said it . . .”
– Kate Soper
DIRECTORS NOTES
It always starts with a question, doesn’t it? If I wish to stay true to form, these Director’s Notes certainly shall. And might we expect an answer? We might. But wouldn’t it be more interesting if it were phrased in the form of a question? In the case of this project, my involvement began on January 4, 2023 with an enticing question posed in an email subject: “Out of the blue inquiry/maybe directing gig?” This was how percussionist Bonnie Whiting unlocked the door and ushered me into the magical realm of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit, a landscape where waves of musical invention splash, churn, and bubble up amongst craggy rocks of philosophical inquiry, and the air sizzles with shrieks, sighs, and softly-spoken secrets. Under Kate Soper’s guidance, we navigate dense intellectual forests to interrogate our understanding of art, language, and truth, only to emerge suddenly in clearings of pure sensory experience. The air here encircles us with visceral, gestural, almost palpable music. Music that must be seen to be believed. What is this place? Can we ever truly understand its secrets? Where does art begin? It always starts with a question, doesn’t it?
– C. Neil Parsons
ARTIST BIOS:
Kate Soper is a composer, performer, and writer whose work explores the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the slippery continuums of expressivity, intelligibility and sense, and the wonderfully treacherous landscape of the human voice. She has been hailed by The Boston Globe as “a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power” and by The New Yorker for her “limpid, exacting vocalism, impetuous theatricality, and mastery of modernist style.” A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Soper has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Koussevitzky Foundation, and has been commissioned by ensembles including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the American Composers Orchestra, and Yarn/Wire. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Camargo Foundation, the Macdowell Colony, Tanglewood, and Royaumont, among others.
Praised by the New York Times for her “lithe voice and riveting presence,” Soper performs frequently as a new music soprano. She has been featured as a composer/vocalist on the New York City-based MATA festival and Miller Theatre Composer Portraits series, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series, and the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series. As a non-fiction and creative writer, she has been published by McSweeney’s Quarterly, PAJ, the Massachusetts Review, Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies.
Soper is a co-director and performer for Wet Ink, a New York-based new music ensemble dedicated to seeking out adventurous music across aesthetic boundaries. She is the Iva Dee Hiatt Professor of Music at Smith College. http://www.katesoper.com (Photo Credit: Richard Burbridge)
Finnish-American soprano Maria Männistö, “one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices I have heard in years,” (Seattle Times), moves comfortably among a wide range of musical styles to international acclaim. Maria has appeared frequently as soloist with Seattle Symphony, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra, and has premiered works by Seattle-based composers Wayne Horvitz, Garrett Fisher, William O. Smith, and Tom Baker.
Recent solo engagements include Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day with Seattle Symphony, Kate Soper’s Now is Forever with Seattle Modern Orchestra, Carmina Burana with Pacific Northwest Ballet, and a performance of her own compositions at Musiikkitalo concert hall in Helsinki. A dedicated member of the Nordic community in Seattle, she serves as music director of the Finnish Lutheran Church, directs the Swedish Singers of Seattle, and performs regularly at Nordic festivals and events. (Photo Credit: Pinehurst Photography)
Sarah Pyle, flutist, is a specialist in contemporary music and most enjoys working on projects involving intersections of nature, music, visual art, and improvisation. In 2022 she integrated all of these interests with her new work for flute and tape, Four Ways of Moving through Penrose Point, an electroacoustic piece played from a limited run of four linoleum print graphic scores, where each score depicts notable landscape features of Penrose Point State Park located in South Puget Sound.
Sarah has played with the Seattle Modern Orchestra since 2018. Previously, she was a founding member of the Seattle and Portland-based contemporary chamber ensemble Sound of Late, active 2014-2019. Sarah enjoys working with student composers and premiered more than one hundred works by young American composers at concerts throughout the Pacific Northwest with Sound of Late. She has held residences at the University of Washington, University of Oregon, Boise State University, and Illinois State University.
As a piccolo specialist, Sarah was awarded first place at the 2015 Kujala International Piccolo Competition in Chicago and second place at the National Flute Association’s 2014 Piccolo Artist Competition. She has played flute and piccolo with the Oregon Mozart Players and has played substitute flute and piccolo with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.
Sarah studied flute with Molly Barth, Michel Debost, and Kathleen Chastain. She holds master’s degrees in Flute Performance and Musicology from the University of Oregon as well as a B.M. in Flute Performance from Oberlin Conservatory and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College. A keen environmentalist, she is currently serving a term as a Rain Garden Specialist intern at the Kitsap Conservation District. She is based in Bremerton, Washington, and in her spare time she likes to sea kayak, garden, and explore fiber arts.
Eric Rynes has performed hundreds of works from the past 100 years, from concertante works and concertos by Scelsi and Berg to large-ensemble works by León and Ligeti to string quartets by Threadgill and Lutoslawski to solo pieces employing exotically-tuned violins and live electronics. He has performed in all thirteen SMO seasons. He has performed at June in Buffalo, ICMC (Havana), the Rotterdam Music Biennial, SEAMUS (Texas), Aspen, and other festivals, and in recital in Berlin, Barcelona, Belfast, Stanford, UCSD, and many other locations; he has performed with composer/performers Wayne Horvitz, Leroy Jenkins, Stuart Dempster, Garth Knox, Erin Gee, Sean Osborn, and Darius Jones, among others. His solo album of works by Xenakis, Boulez, Carter, Kotoka Suzuki, and others, on Albany Records, was praised in The Strad and called “a marvelous CD [by] a marvelous musician” by Helmut Lachemann. In his sixteen seasons as concertmaster of the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, he has performed the violin concertos of Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Beethoven, and Barber; his extensive orchestra experience includes membership in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago during Daniel Barenboim’s tenure as its director. A versatile musician drawing inspiration from a wide range of experiences, he has performed Cuban music at The Triple Door and for several years performed in dance halls as the violinist of the quartet Tangabrazo; he has also performed with Sufjan Stevens, Natalie Cole, and Rod Stewart and recorded with jazz and rock groups. He received his M.M. in violin from the University of Washington, with further studies in Europe with Maryvonne Le Dizès (Ensemble Intercontemporain) and Irvine Arditti.
Bonnie Whiting performs and composes experimental music, seeking projects that involve the speaking percussionist, improvisation, and non-traditional notation. Recent work includes an evening-length song cycle for speaking percussionist composed by Eliza Brown and 10 musicians incarcerated at the Indiana Women’s Prison, performances on the original Harry Partch instrumentarium, collaborations with Torch Collective, and concerti with the National Orchestra of Turkmenistan. Her debut album, featuring a solo-simultaneous realization of John Cage’s “45′ for a speaker” and “27’10.554″ for a percussionist” was released by Mode Records in 2017, and her second album, Perishable Structures, launched on the New Focus Recordings label in 2020. Whiting is a core member of the Seattle Modern Orchestra and she has performed with the country’s leading new music groups: Ensemble Dal Niente, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea Ensemble, and red fish blue fish percussion group. She is Chair of Percussion Studies and the Ruth Sutton Waters Associate Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. (Photo Credit: Titilayo Ayangade)
Neil Parsons has been performing for as long as he can remember, appearing in his first professional theatre production at age three. As a bass trombonist, actor, director, dancer, and choreographer, Neil’s creative output runs the gamut of music, theatre, dance, and interdisciplinary productions. Before co-founding the hybrid arts ensemble The Fourth Wall in 2010, Neil spent nine seasons touring with the “musictelling” ensemble Tales & Scales. Neil has directed and collaborated on interdisciplinary works with such musical ensembles as Hinge, Nightingale Vocal Ensemble, Shakespeare’s Ear, Sputter Box, Strange Trace Opera Company, and numerous projects with flutist Zara Lawler. Neil is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he declared an individual major in Interdisciplinary Performance and Education, and earned his master’s degree in Contemporary Classical Music Performance at Boston Conservatory. Neil is an Assistant Professor in Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Contemporary Theater BFA program, with additional teaching duties in the conservatory’s Dance and Music Divisions. (Photo Credit: Andy Batt)
Nabilah Ahmed (she/her) is a multi-hyphenate artist with a background in acting, museums, design, and live production. She has collaborated with many arts organizations in her various creative capacities, including Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-it Repertory Theater, On the Boards, Washington Ensemble Theater, and MoPOP. Nabilah is passionate about moving image as a source of cultural power and metaphysical exploration. She is a graduate of Smith College with a B.A in Economics.
Ryan Dunn is a Seattle-based lighting and scenic designer for theatre, dance and opera. Recent work includes designs at Book-it Rep, Intiman, Washington Ensemble Theater, On the Boards, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Village Theatre, ArtsWest Playhouse, Velocity Dance Center, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, and Café Nordo, among others. Ryan was a founding member of experimental theater troupe The Horse in Motion, is a resident designer for Washington Ensemble Theater, and has twice been the recipient of Gypsy Lee Rose awards for Outstanding Lighting Design. Outside of theater, Ryan is a freelance lighting designer, lighting director, and moving light programmer for concerts and events.
Marcin Pączkowski is a composer, conductor, digital artist, and performer, working with both traditional and electronic media. As a composer, he is focused on developing new ways of creating and performing computer music. As a conductor he regularly works with Evergreen Community Orchestra, presenting concerts of diverse repertoire to local communities. He collaborates with numerous ensembles in the Seattle area as an electronic music specialist, while also being active in the local improvised music community performing on various instruments.
Maria Manness facilitates the performing arts using her management and fabrication skills, and love of spreadsheets. As a freelancer she regularly works with On the Boards, Velocity Dance Center, Kitten N’ Lou, MALACARNE, Drama Tops, Tim Smith-Stewart & Jeffrey Azevedo, and Hannah Simmons. She serves as Managing Director for Washington Ensemble Theatre, where she has been a company member for 10 (!!!) years. She also teaches technical theatre to the youth. @xo.m.e.m