Solo Arts Heal
Hosted by Gail Schickele
Excerpts, talkbacks and Q&A with special guests
providing health and healing education and advocacy.
Wednesday November 18, 2020
7:30pm
Hai-Ting Chinn
SCIENCE FAIR
AN OPERA WITH EXPERIMENTS
About the Show
SCIENCE FAIR: AN OPERA WITH EXPERIMENTS: A live science show with lessons & lectures in song. A musical celebration of science, with lyrics created from the words of scientists & teachers, performed as songs with live experiments.
SCIENCE FAIR is an opera singer’s love-song to science. Conceived and performed by mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn with pianist Erika Switzer, Science Fair uses physical demonstrations and experiments, a libretto created from the words of scientists, and original music to illuminate our current understanding of the natural world. Celebrating curiosities like the formation of our solar system, the structure of the atom, and the ancient legacy of DNA, Science Fair pairs light-hearted humor with luscious operatic vocals to uplift the ordinary into the realm of wonder.
SCIENCE FAIR is also the culmination of a multi-year residency at HERE Arts Center in New York City. This fully-staged, theatrical presentation presents lyrics by well-known scientists and writers, including an astronomer, a chemist, a particle physicist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, and a middle school science teacher. The performance includes live demonstrations of basic scientific concepts that shape our understanding of the world, familiar classroom experiments elucidated and illuminated, slideshows with illustrations by comic artist Maki Naro, and even a wearable model of the solar system.
Lyrics from the words of Natalie Angier, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay; additional lyrics and fact checking from Alissa Gildermann, Daniel Heller, Page van Meter, and Debbie Berebichez.
Music by Matthew Schickele, Renée Favand-See, Stefan Weisman, and Conrad Cummings
Excerpts from Science Fair
https://vimeo.com/350138146
About the Performer
American Mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn performs in a wide range of styles and venues, from Purcell to Pierrot Lunaire, Cherubino to The King & I, J.S. Bach to P.D.Q. Bach. She has performed with New York City Opera, The Wooster Group, Philip Glass/Robert Wilson, OperaOmnia, American Symphony Orchestra; on the stages of Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center in Philadelphia, and London’s West End; and at Festivals including the Edinburgh, Verbier, Grimeborn, Tête-à-Tête, and Festival d’Autumne. As an Artist in Residence at HERE arts center, Hai-Ting created and performed Science Fair: An Opera With Experiments, a staged solo show of science set to music.
Hai-Ting was featured in the revival and tour of Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, performed at venues around the world from 2011–2014, and sang the role of Belle in Glass’s La Belle et la Bête, also on tour. Operatic roles include Didone in The Wooster Group’s wildly experimental production of La Didone, Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea and Medea in Cavalli’s Giasone with Opera Omnia, as well as Nicklausse and the Muse in Offenbach’s Les Contes D’Hoffman, Hansel in Hansel and Gretel, Dorabella in Cosi fan tutte, and in Peter Maxwell Davies’s unaccompanied monodrama, The Medium. An ardent advocate of new vocal repertoire, she has premiered new works by Conrad Cummings, Yoav Gal, Renée Favand-See, Amy Beth Kirsten, Tarik O’Regan, Ellen Reid, Matthew Schickele, Stefan Weisman, and Du Yun, and she was featured in the 2017 Resonant Bodies Festival, a singer-centered celebration of new music in New York.
Of mixed Chinese and Jewish ancestry, Hai-Ting is a native of Northern California and currently resides in New York City. She holds degrees from the Eastman and Yale Schools of Music.
More Information
http://www.hai-ting.com/science-fair
Talkback Guest
Renée Favand-See is a composer and soprano living in Portland, Oregon. Her works explore the music of words, natural and made environments, emotions and spiritual questions. These investigations yield vocal music of all stripes, Musique Concrète-esque electronic pieces, and lyrically driven instrumental music cultivating relationships that unfold in the spaces between voices. Recent commissions include works for Trio Triumphatrix, Northwest Art Song, Portland Piano International, fEARnoMUSIC, Hai-ting Chinn, Resonance Ensemble, and Five Boroughs Music Festival. She holds B.M. and M.M. degrees in composition from Eastman and Yale, respectively. Renée currently teaches music composition and theory at Portland State University and Creative Musicians Retreat in New England.
ABOUT SOLO ARTS HEAL
Solo performers present real-life, empowering stories. Transformative experiences for audiences. A theater of resilience that celebrates overcoming mental and physical life challenges and offers hope and inspiration. SOLO ARTS HEAL includes excerpts, talkbacks, and Q&A that provide education and advocacy. Readings or clips of performances will be shared by artists in conversation with Gail Schickele, whose work as a manager and producer of solo artists inspired collaboration of performing arts presenters with artists on a medical track based on their personal experience. The collective creative vision? To help communities through educational outreach and the healing power of the Arts.
About the Host
Gail Schickele (Host) champions arts & sciences taking her left and right brain wherever she travels. As an arts manager, consultant, and producer dba SAGE Artists, she convened an ‘Arts Heals’ group of solo artists at APAP 2020 whose unique stories of physical and mental challenges evince the healing power of The Arts. The COVID lockdown inspired Stephanie Weisman to create SOLO ARTS HEAL to share these outstanding stories of resilience, dramatic and comedic, for the entertainment and benefit of communities everywhere. Gail’s expertise in marketing, management, booking and production has served various theaters, festivals and events nationwide. Trained as a journalist in New York and Colorado, Gail has covered Colorado state politics and the environmental landscape of the Rockies. Environmental science inspires her educational and advocacy work in California with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, and for the League of Women Voters for which she’s worked as an administrator and reporter on environmental issues Including legislation, climate science outreach, and co-chair of an environmental speakers series. Gail is honored to host SOLO ARTS HEAL where artists powerful stories offer audiences great performance and ‘informance’ on issues related to health and the environment, inexorably linked.