entanglementing
An American Ending
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TRACKLISTING
A1S1 - Bridge. Traffic Jam. Midnight.
A1S2 - Twin Girls’ Room. Bedtime Story. Later.
A1S3 - Kitchen. Wife: An Argument. Continuous.
A1S4 - In His Head. Operation Planned. Flashback.
A2S1 - Neighbor’s Front Yard. Wake Up Drunk. Day.
A2S2 - In His Head. Flashback: Operation Explained. Continuous.
A2S3 - Neighbor’s Front Yard. Stumble Home. Continuous.
A2S4 - Twin’s Bedroom. His Solution Devised. Later.
A2S5 - Driving. Race to the Laboratory. Night.
A3S1 - Laboratory. Science As Ceremony. Later.
A3S2 - Laboratory. Incantation: The Act of Splitting Himself in Two. Continuous.
A3S3 - Laboratory. His Twin: A Monster Unleashed. Continuous.
A3S4 - Bridge. Driving: In Fear/In Failure. Night.
Credits
Libretto/Music/Vocal Performance/Production by Sam Genovese
Production/Mix/Master by Cory Gehrich at Sisterly Silence Studios
Released July 4, 2019
I hope you find this music rewards close listening at louder-than-usual volume.
Thank you for listening.
album notes & act summaries
Read below
album notes
Sam’s 6th album and 1st opera sounds nothing like traditional opera, employing: electronic score; noise; volume; a solo Natural American vocal style.
Our story takes its initial cues from America’s 20th century bifurcated personality — private wars and public peace, democratic prose and foreign overthrows — and places that tension in the shape of a single man. His dissonance reaches crisis point.
Welcome to Entanglementing, a narrative experiment in sound.
Voice. Electronics. Noise.
But don't expect your average linear storytelling here. Sam's interests in this ambitious piece lie in generating an idiosyncratic dramatic vocabulary shifting through different forms of “language,” alternately activating the cerebral and more primal modes of experience. Traditional speech drops off into sentences completed with noise. Narrative phrases freely swap words for sounds and images. Changing modalities create expansive emotional and aesthetic leaps.
act summaries
Entanglement… is to be entwined or ensnared abroad politically or militarily; or from quantum mechanics: when pairs of particles are generated concurrently, they behave not as separate units, but as a single ‘entwined’ unit; or it may be a fool’s errand.
Act 1 begins in the middle of things. A mysterious man of questionable intentions feels dark truths chewing at his skull. Gentle father? Raging lunatic? Hero or villain?
Act 2 splits his memory wide open unleashing monstrous deeds done for country. Palpable pain. A plan is devised: is his poison his antidote?
Act 3 sings science as ceremony: an incantation of division. Will two halves make him whole?