Kaatsbaan Cultural Park presents From History of Life – Act I by Contemporaneous as a part of their 2024 Annual Festival in Tivoli, NY, on September 21, 2024 at 5 pm.

New Music ensemble Contemporaneous brings an early look at Act 1 of their upcoming work, History of Life, by composer and Co-Artistic Director, Dylan Mattingly, and writer Thomas Bartscherer. Part céilí, part rock concert, part astral meditation on the history of the world, History of Life, is a wild, ecstatic musical vision that resurrects the ancient form of the epic — a massive musical poem weaving together a vast collection of the stories of our world to form a new mythology of ourselves and our place within its history. History of Life explodes out in all directions from Homer’s Odyssey, imagining and re-configuring the tale of Odysseus as though it had been passed throughout human history continuously for the last 2700 years, evolving and picking up new stories and new sounds in every retelling.

The vocalist Isaiah Robinson serves as a bard, guiding the audience through its music and story, and is joined by a ragtag band of 12 musicians who play hurdy-gurdies, harp, toy piano, harmonium, strings, and percussion. Sung and spoken in over a dozen languages, including English, ancient Greek, Old Provençal, Dante’s Tuscan, Cape Verdean Creole, and Irish, History of Life offers a vision of what is beyond our capacity to imagine: the vastness of history, seen not only as a succession of dates and names, of monarchs and empires and extinctions, but as the superabundant multitude of singular moments of experience — the near-infinite seconds of yearning and hunger and love and anger and wonder, the sheer vitality of every person and animal and plant that has ever lived.

Contemporaneous is an ensemble of 25 musicians whose mission is to bring to life the most transformative music by living composers through performances, commissions, recordings, and educational programs. Described as “exact and detailed, but also lively and openly dancing” (The New York Times) and “leading new music towards its better self” (I Care If You Listen), Contemporaneous particularly champions the creation of large-scale works and “dream projects,” which composers might not otherwise have opportunities to realize due to scale.

What: From History of Life – Act I by Contemporaneous

When: September 21, 2024 at 5 pm

Tickets: $40, General Admission | $50, Premium Admission

Where: Outdoors, Mountain Stage

Please RSVP to Michelle Tabnick: [email protected], 646-765-4773.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://kaatsbaan.org/performances-festivals.