BEDROCK
by Nelle J. Anderson & Ivan Cunningham
a performance of bizarre dialogues, soliloquies, and songs that explore semantic meaning and non-meaning accompanied by a microtonal ensemble
Featuring Nelle J. Anderson, Violet Battaglia, Nicki Chen, Grace Dashnaw, Jaz(mine) Jendersee, Gabe Le Neveu, Matt LeVeque, Simone Maura, Brody Scott, and Michael Pisaro-Liu
Composed by Ivan Cunningham
Directed by Nelle J. Anderson
Conducted by Mason Moy
Microtonal Organ programmed by Gabe Le Neveu
Film projections by Drew Gebhardt
*This performance is a part of Oracle Egg’s Broiler, a series supporting the incubation of ambitious new work through 3 to 7 day residencies.
Soprano, composer, and interdisciplinary improviser Nelle J. Anderson seeks the nexus of opera, commercial music, and Fluxus. She recently sang with the Grammy-award winning PARTCH Ensemble in scenes from Anne LeBaron’s opera LSD—Huxley’s Last Trip, for which she “stunned with her buttery tone” (San Francisco Classical Voice). A Reiki master, Nelle composes solo and large-ensemble performance art pieces as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), externalizing the singer’s inner monologue, practice-room processes, and spiritual motivations. Her art-pop album ANY DEAD COQUETTE (Soubrette, 2021) was praised for its “production trickery” and “graceful experimentation," and named “an outstanding experience” by the Recording Artists Guild.
Ivan Cunningham is interested in music, but he is even more interested in the people who create music. As a composer, he intends to encourage an optimistically absurdist alternative to reality, cultivating a “universe of garish colors and bilious time signatures, inhabited by strange characters whose speech borders on nonsense” (The Wire Magazine, 2023). Ivan has composed for the Zeitgeist New Music Ensemble and presented work at REDCAT, Coaxial Arts Foundation, Studio Z, and the Cedar Cultural Center.