OSCILLATIONS: 100 YEARS AND FOREVER

“Outside the concert hall, a sixth world premiere: Ellen Reid’s eight minute long Oscillations: One Hundred Years and Forever looped in Disney’s outdoor Keck Amphitheatre prior to the concert and during intermission. An intricate and lush choral arrangement based on a libretto by Sarah LaBrie, the chorus was sparsely and effectively accompanied by solo percussionist and abstract projections by artists Keith Skretch and Hana S. Kim.”

— I Care if You Listen

“A large, ecstatic chorus transformed Keck Amphitheatre in the Disney garden into a mystical evocation of a forgotten but eerily present Los Angeles….It was transfixing.”

— Los Angeles Times

dreams of the new world

“Reid worked with a librettist, Sarah LaBrie, and a Yale sociocultural anthropologist PhD candidate, Sayd Randle, to create a poetic narrative that moves from 1890s Memphis through the Houston oil boom and bust of the 1970s. It ends with an invocation of the horizon of the future, the ‘new world’ that is not of this world, but one imagined in the dreams and hopes of scientific aspiration and space travel. The three movements of this quasi-choral symphony are neatly linked through the selected text and original musical ideas, and the linkage underscores both the evocation of hopes for the future and the grim reality of the past.”

— Seen and Heard International

“… attempts to cast a critical yet empathetic eye on the cyclical failures of the American Dream. John Curry, founder of metal fabricator Gulfex, memorably told Reid that the oil boom years were a time when “we got all fat and sassy,” sonically rendered in the choral work as a chugga-chugga musical montage ticking off the prizes of newly rich Houstonians—“fine dining, fishing boat, picket fence, deer lease”—before the chorus voices launch into the stratosphere (and immediately tumble back down). The artists make no outward mention of the downturn, but you can hear how times were insanely, absurdly good, until they weren’t. By taking the work into the present day, the artists offer a mix of hope and caution with their look at the booming L.A. aerospace industry.”

— Houstonia Magazine

“In "dreams,” Houston makes oil money to the tunes of electronic funk. The Gulf region gets fat with the sounds of big band jazz. But it cared little about the fate of oil rig workers or the environment, a golden era represented in golden harmonies, sung a cappella, a drone that proves surprisingly somber. In L.A., it’s the race to the future. Elon Musk. Rockets. Sopranos, with the help of a flute, are remarkably reminiscent of buoyant early electronic music. A sanguine sax solo blasts to Mars. Space, cinematically rousing, is our next frontier.”

— Los Angeles Times

HOPSCOTCH

“….’Hopscotch’ also has a richly embroidered literary dimension, incorporating references to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, “Paradise Lost,” Goethe’s “Faust,” and the Situationist writings of Guy Debord, among other sources. The librettists—Tom Jacobson, Mandy Kahn, Sarah LaBrie, Jane Stephens Rosenthal, Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and Erin Young—worked in consultation with Joshua Raab, who served as the dramaturge of the project. ”

— The New Yorker