Album Notes

"... exquisite darkness… whimsical lines… captivating experience." The Stranger

Kidnapping Water travels through warnings, prayers, fantasies, and whispers in a thematic review for future generations about an element older than man. Human voices (singers Josie Davis, Emily Greenleaf, Jeremiah Oliver, David Stutz) and splashing water (percussionists Stuart McLeod, Dean Moore, Benjamin Morrow, James Whetzel) cry out harder than the silent wisdom of hair turned white.

There is fear and longing in these Bottled Operas. Not a run-away-in-fear or humping-towards desire, more a pause-and-reflect terror and furrowed-brow hope that sends quiet shivers through the stomach. Breath senses water disappear. Ears caress aural mirages where the abundant waterways of the present hide a future of burning salt.

The libretti are prompted by the I Ching, one of the oldest Chinese texts, reinterpreted by eight contemporary writers Eugenie Chan, Bret Fetzer, Aaron Jafferis, Archana Kumar, Carola Luther, Caroline Murphy, Vivian Umino, and Edisa Weeks then shaped into operatic miniatures by composer Byron Au Yong.

The I Ching 易經 (Book of Changes) structures chaos by balancing dynamic opposites. There are 64 ways to configure broken and continuous six lines. The 64 hexagrams present a cosmology and philosophy for anticipating and accepting change. 23 of 64 Bottled Operas are included on this CD.

Kidnapping Water: Bottled Operas is thankful for support from Creative Capital’s Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation; 4Culture’s King County Site-Specific Performance Network; Bumbershoot Festival of the Arts; and Jack Straw Productions.