Past Performances
07/09/2010 at 8pm (sharp) at Galapagos Art Space
American Opera Projects and Opera on Tap return to Galapagos Art Space for the ongoing series Opera Grows in Brooklyn which brings the best of contemporary opera to one of Brooklyn’s most innovative art venues.
The July 9th installment features a performance of songs from Removable Parts performed by Corey Dargel and Kathleen Supové. Here’s the concert program:
Brooklyn Poets – Past and Present featuring The Calamus Songs and Songs from the F Train
150 years ago, “The Calamus Poems” by Brooklyn’s poet-father Walt Whitman were first published. Less than 150 days ago, poems by three local Brooklyn boys were written in a grade-school poetry workshop. American Opera Projects and the Walt Whitman Project present these poems by Brooklynites past and present as new songs written by composers Daniel Felsenfeld, Andrew Staniland, and Gilda Lyons. Performed by Adrienne Danrich and Nicole Mitchell. Kelly Horsted, piano. Hamilton Berry, cello. Produced by American Opera Projects.
Removable Parts
Composer and singer/songwriter Corey Dargel and pianist Kathleen Supové will perform songs from Dargel’s Removable Parts, a music-theater piece about love and voluntary amputation. Dargel based his original lyrics on documented case-studies of wannabe-amputees. His characters’ idiosyncratic behaviors and strange desires are gradually subsumed into larger issues of disconnection and longing. As they sing their songs, you may be surprised to find your heart breaking for them. The New York Times theater and dance critic, Claudia LaRocco, calls Removable Parts ”almost perversely pleasurable… Amputation, especially when it’s self-imposed, is a loaded and problematic metaphor. Mr. Dargel and company handle it with an intelligent grace that is as moving as it is impressive.”
Removable Parts comprises the second CD of Dargel’s newly released and critically acclaimed double-CD album, Someone Will Take Care of Me. Removable Parts won the New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Performance-Art Production and was nominated for Best Solo Performer (Corey Dargel) and Best Director (Emma Griffin). It was the subject of a “Critics Notebook” profile by Alex Ross inThe New Yorker magazine.
The Bloody Chamber
Opera on Tap will produce scenes from composer Daniel Felsenfeld’s The Bloody Chamber, a feminist retelling of Bluebeard. The Bloody Chamber is an adaptation of the 1979 novella by Angela Carter, set in decadent fin de siècle France. The obsessed and murderous Marquis has married Dora, a young soprano, and spirited her away to his castle in Brittany. Over the course of the darkly humorous piece, Dora transforms from ingénue to infamously disobedient wife — egged on by a ghostly chorus of her slaughtered predecessors. Librettist: Elizabeth Isadora Gold. Composer: Daniel Felsenfeld. Starring Indre Viskontas (pictured), Ross Benoliel, and Amanda Villegas with musical direction by Jennifer Peterson of operamission and stage direction by Sarah Stern of The Vineyard Theatre.
“Commited as strongly to freshness as to intelligibility, Daniel Felsenfeld composes music that’s strong, unusual, intelligent, and considerably skilled.” – Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Composer John Corigliano
05/21/2010 at 8pm (sharp) at Galapagos Art Space
in Brooklyn, NY
Tix – $15
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), David T. Little, and pianist Kathleen Supové join Corey in a performance of songs from Corey’s new album, Someone Will Take Care of Me.
Also performing is Craig Wedren (Shudder to Think) withACME.
Part of New Amsterdam Records’ Archipelago series:
Archipelago concludes with a special closing night event featuring an ambitious mix of stellar ensembles and performers. Known for its definitive takes on the masterpieces of the 20th and 21st century, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) actively seeks to redefine chamber music’s role in a new century. Joining ACME on stage will be Craig Wedren, a composer/vocalist best known for his work with the legendary math rock/post-hardcore outfit, Shudder to Think – and his impressive body of film music work (High Art, Velvet Goldmine). The show will also feature composer/vocalist Corey Dargel, who will use the evening to explore themes of loss and love in a special New Amsterdam dual record release event. Regarding Dargel’s idiosyncratic chamber pop, the New York Times had this to say: “Dargel sings in a modest, sweet-toned, conversational way, and writes songs whose lyrics and melodies are at once wistful and wry, tender and irreverent… giving voice to the lives and relationships of his subjects.” Both records are highly-acclaimed, theatrical pop-concept albums: for the semi-staged Removable Parts, Corey tells the twisted story of voluntary amputees with the help of renowned pianist Kathleen Supové, while the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) will join Corey for a selections from Thirteen Near-Death Experiences, a charmingly demented art-pop song cycle about hypochondria. Lauded for their “vigorous, richly detailed performances”, ICE brings nuance and precision to Dargel’s first fully-acoustic large-scale project.
05/09/2010, at 7pm, at Joe’s Pub
in New York, NY
Tix – $15
Performing with violinist Cornelius Dufallo, opening for The Fancy
Part of Queer Conscience
Integrating affection, honesty, and humor into every song, The Fancy is a stand out in the Brooklyn indie rock scene. Their sound manages to be both eccentric and accessible, featuring atypical instrumentation within an equally unique song-writing setting. They bring this individual style and energy to their Joe’s Pub debut on May 9th, 2010. Classically trained musicians with a love for popular forms, the Fancy merges chamber music and pop sensibilities in their self-titled EP. This 5-track EP overflows with vocal harmony, full-band counterpoint, thick orchestral textures, and tongue-in-cheek lyricism. This special evening will provide a kick-off to the iTunes release of this EP and will feature an opening performance by Corey Dargel, Cornelius Dufallo and a digital looper.
11/29/2009 at 8pm
in New York, NY
Composer and violinist Cornelius Dufallo presents a concert entitled Journaling (part one) performing music by Dufallo, Gosfield, Gardner, Dargel, and Clyne.
Cornelius Dufallo (aka Neil) and Corey Dargel will premiere Every Day Is the Same Day, a set of songs about the subconscious motivations behind disaster fantasies. As the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizeck said, “The only way to imagine a Utopia of social cooperation is to conjure a situation of absolute catastrophe.” The piece is scored for singer and violin with digital looping. Dargel will join Dufallo in the performance.
Sunday, November 29th at 8pm @ The Stone, New York, NY
Tickets: $10 at the door
11/19/2009 at 8pm
in Brooklyn, NY
21cLiederabend will showcase a vast array of works by post-classical composers Caleb Burhans, Leah Coloff, Corey Dargel, Osvaldo Golijov, Judd Greenstein, Ted Hearne, David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly,and Milica Paranosic. FEATURED SINGERS include Grammy award winner Hila Plitman, Abigail Fischer, Amelia Watkins, Anne-Carolyn Bird, David Adam Moore, Helga Davis, Kamala Sankaram, and SKIM accompanied by the VisionIntoArt ensemble with very special guest stars ETHEL. The program culminates with the premiere of a new work by composer & singer Kamala Sankaram.
Corey Dargel’s painfully tender song cycle, Sexual Side Effects, puts a quasi-baroque spin on 21st-century themes of romantic dysfunction and inadequacy. Dargel’s take on impotence, patient-therapist transference, and internet cruising, features his trademark balance of earnestness and skepticism. Sexual Side Effects was commissioned by Avian Music who premiered the work in January 2009. On this concert, the piece will be performed by soprano Amelia Watkins and musicians from Vision Into Art and ETHEL.
Galapagos Art Space, 16 Main Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY
718-222-8500 | www.galapagosartspace.com
Doors: 7:00pm/Show: 8:00pm | Tix: $20.00
6/13/2009 at 7pm
6/20/2009 at 7pm
6/24/2009 at 7:30pm
in Brooklyn, NY
Laboratory Theater performs “Le Mirage” as part of the Anti-Depressant Festival at The Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Ave. (btw Union & Lorimer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn)
Tickets $15;
To purchase by phone call 212.354.3101
Click to purchase tickets online…
LE MIRAGE is an imagined lecture and demonstration of mystical dance by members of the real-life 1980’s French-Canadian cult, The Order of the Solar Temple. Three members of an alleged Las Vegas chapter of the Solar Temple offer true peace and happiness through a commingling of dance, original new age music, inspirational texts, and ritual. Featuring Rosicrucianism, ecological philosophy, the Holy Grail, and Transit to the planet Jupiter.
“At this Supreme Moment, the ruby power of the Work should rejoin the Levels of the Future. Our transit will be as a passage across a mirror. Our Terrestrial Journey is coming to an end.”
Laboratory Theater’s newest piece is drawn from actual lecture transcripts and ritual texts by The Order of the Solar Temple. The Order was a millenarian cult active in the 1980s and early ‘90s in Quebec, Canada and Geneva, Switzerland. They believed in the continuing existence of the Knights Templar, performed elaborate secret rituals, ran an organic farm, and professed that their members would be reunited one day with an ancient brotherhood of Ascended Masters on the planet Jupiter. In 1994, 53 members were found dead amidst fiery blazes, a combination of mass-suicide and ritual murder, their bodies arranged in star patterns.
Directed by Yvan Greenberg; performed by Corey Dargel, Sheila Donovan, and Oleg Dubson, with original music by François B. Nouvel-Âge, the piece unfolds through Laboratory Theater’s signature layering of choreography, text, complex sound design, improvisation, and imitation.
5/22/09 and 5/23/09 at 8pm (two shows)
in New York, NY
Performance Space 122
150 First Ave. at E. 9th St.
NYC 10009
Phone: 212-477-5829
ICE returns to PS 122 to offer the world premiere of THIRTEEN NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES, an art-pop song cycle by Brooklyn composer-performer Corey Dargel.
The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), recently described by the New York Times as “one of the most adventurous and accomplished groups in new music,” returns to Performance Space 122 for a genre-eclipsing program of world premieres from four of New York’s most talented young composer-performers.
The program’s centerpiece will be Corey Dargel’s Thirteen Near-Death Experiences, a 45-minute cycle of semi-autobiographical art-pop songs about hypochondria. The piece, which Dargel tailored for ICE’s virtuosic performance style, pairs his distinctive singing voice with a mixed ensemble of winds, strings, piano and percussion, with choreography by Yvan Greenberg and stage direction by Emma Griffin. In Dargel’s original lyrics, with symptom checklists masquerading as love songs, an abnormal anxiety is gradually subsumed into larger issues of longing, alienation, and empathy. The music, meanwhile, presents a radical departure from the glitchy electro-pop for which Dargel is best known, as well as a defiant shift from ICE’s core repertoire. Dargel has been blogging about the piece’s genesis at 13neardeathexperiences.com.
ICE will round out the program with the world premieres of three stunning shortworks by three of New York’s most luminary young composer-performers – Stephen Lehman, Nathan Davis and Mario Diaz de León.
04/02/09 at 3pm and 7pm (two shows)
in New York, NY
“Give you a tenner, get me suit from the pawn. In the theatre at 6 for an 8 o’clock show. Doing Murphy once a month, me whole life—when the rent comes due.”
MURPHY by Honor Molloy with music by Corey Dargel
recipient of the 2007 Frederick Loewe Award in Music-Theatre from New Dramatists
Irish comedian Murphy spends his final years in a studio apartment in Berkeley, California. Once-famous, now ailing and demented, he performs his routines on his Murphy bed for an audience of one—the oral historian, Jon Harris, from Lubbock, Texas.
A Workshop Presentation performed by Molloy and Dargel, directed by Yvan Greenberg
New Dramatists 424 West 44th St (btw 9th and 10th)
2/25/2009 at 7pm and 9pm (two shows)
in New York, NY
Work in Progress Showings: Laboratory Theater’s Git Along Lil Doggies
Laboratory Theater’s newest work, Git Along Lil Doggies, is a meditative, cowboy dance-drama about the spiritual imprint of the windswept landscape of the American west. In a narrative drawn from a variety of sources, two outlaws on the trail of an old adversary take work as jewel thieves for a washed up brothel madam. In a chance encounter with a traveling magician, they locate their enemy and conjure the violent forces of nature through sex-magic to take revenge. The performance unfolds against a projected video landscape drawn from Marlboro cigarette TV commercials and within an evocative soundscape incorporating recordings of early country-western singer Hank Thompson and contemporary music for pedal steel guitar. Featuring Corey Dargel, Sheila Donovan, Oleg Dubson, and Andrew Gilchrist, Laboratory Theater’s signature layering of choreography, text, improvisation, and imitation provides a continuously shifting framework for a reconsideration of the frontier spirit that continues to shape the mindsets of Americans in the 21st Century.
Venue: Dixon Place
For more information, visit: Laboratory Theater
2/4/2009 at 7pm sharp
in New York, NY
“Sexual Side Effects” at (Le) Poisson Rouge
The Avian Ensemble performs a concert entitled “Love Machines and Shameless Hussies: songs of love, lust, sex, and jealousy.” The concert features the premiere of Corey’s new piece, “Sexual Side Effects,” commissioned by Avian Music. “Sexual Side Effects” is scored for Baroque soprano, flute, piano, violin, and cello. Also on the program are works by Conrad Cummings, Raymond Lustig, and Peter Flint, and a performance by world-reknowned burlesque performer, Miss Dirty Martini, who will reconstruct Sally Rand’s legendary fan dance set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
Venue: (Le) Poisson Rouge
For more information, visit: Avian Music
1/31/2009 at 8pm
in Philadelphia, PA
“Sexual Side Effects” presented by Chamber Music Now!
The Avian Ensemble performs a concert entitled “Love Machines and Shameless Hussies: songs of love, lust, sex, and jealousy.” The concert features the premiere of Corey’s new piece, “Sexual Side Effects,” commissioned by Avian Music. “Sexual Side Effects” is scored for Baroque soprano, flute, piano, violin, and cello. Also on the program are works by Conrad Cummings, Raymond Lustig, and Peter Flint, and a performance by world-reknowned burlesque performer, Miss Dirty Martini, who will reconstruct Sally Rand’s legendary fan dance set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
Venue: The Community Education Center
For more information, visit: Chamber Music Now!
1/29/2009 at 7pm
in Wilmington, DE
“Sexual Side Effects” premiere by the Avian Ensemble
The Avian Ensemble performs a concert entitled “Love Machines and Shameless Hussies: songs of love, lust, sex, and jealousy.” The concert features the premiere of Corey’s new piece, “Sexual Side Effects,” commissioned by Avian Music. “Sexual Side Effects” is scored for Baroque soprano, flute, piano, violin, and cello. Also on the program are works by Conrad Cummings, Raymond Lustig, and Peter Flint, and a performance by world-reknowned burlesque performer, Miss Dirty Martini, who will reconstruct Sally Rand’s legendary fan dance set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
Venue: Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts
For more information, visit: Avian Music
1/7/2009 – 1/11/2009 at various times
in New York, NY
REMOVABLE PARTS Encore Performances at HERE Arts Center – part of Culturemart and Under The Radar festivals
Schedule of performances: January 7-9 at 7pm; January 10 at 7pm and 10pm; January 11 at 1pm and 5pm: This special engagement marks a co-presentation with the Under The Radar Festival by HERE Arts Center’s Artist Residency Program alumnus Corey Dargel. Performed by Dargel and pianist Kathleen Supove, Removable Parts is directed by Emma Griffin with dances by Yvan Greenberg and production design by Raquel Davis. Removable Parts centers on a victim of unrequited love, who turns to voluntary amputation as he questions the usefulness of his body parts once his heart is broken. This production drew rave reviews in its 2007 mainstage run at HERE Arts Center, with The New York Times noting its “intelligent grace that is as moving as it is impressive.” Additionally, Removable Parts is the recipient of the NY Innovative Theatre Award for “Outstanding Performance-Art Production.”
Venue: HERE Arts Center
For more information, visit: Under The Radar
12/6/08 at 8:00pm
in Toronto, Ontario
REMOVABLE PARTS at the The Music Gallery
REMOVABLE PARTS, Corey’s critically acclaimed theatrical song-cycle about love and voluntary amputation, is presented as part of the The Music Gallery’s “Pop Avant” series.
Venue: The Music Gallery
For more information, visit: The Music Gallery
11/21/08 at 8:00pm
in Pittsburgh, PA
REMOVABLE PARTS at the Warhol Museum
REMOVABLE PARTS, Corey’s critically acclaimed theatrical song-cycle about love and voluntary amputation, is presented as part of the “Off the Wall” series at The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Venue: The Warhol Museum
For more information, visit: The Warhol Museum
11/4/08 at 8:30pm sharp (doors at 8pm)
in New York, NY
Election Night Party/Concert with Newspeak, Anti-Social Music, and Corey Dargel
An Election Night celebration with performances by Newspeak, Anti-Social Music and Corey Dargel. Live election coverage projected on a big screen, with captioning during the sets so you won’t miss a nail-biting moment! Cover is $12, but if you bring your voting stub it goes down to a recession-busting $9.99.
Venue: Nuyorican Poets Cafe
For more information, visit: Newspeak
10/29/08 at 9:30pm sharp (doors at 9pm)
in New York, NY
OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE SONGS with NOW Ensemble
The album release concert for OTHER PEOPLE’S LOVE SONGS, featuring NOW Ensemble and special guest accordionist/singer Kamala Sankaram
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge
For more information, visit: New Amsterdam Records
9/27/08 at 8:00pm
in North Adams, MA
TIME AND MOTION STUDY and MASS by Nick Brooke
Corey performs as a singer/actor in two pieces by Nick Brooke, composer-in-residence at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Venue: MASS MoCA
For more information, visit: Nick Brooke
9/6/08 at 8:00pm
in Sarasota, FL
REMOVABLE PARTS at New College
REMOVABLE PARTS, Corey’s critically acclaimed theatrical song-cycle about love and voluntary amputation, will be the opening event for the 2008-2009 season of “New Music New College” in Sarasota.
Venue: Harry Sudakof Center at New College
For more information, visit: New Music New College
