The intent in merging these two artforms is to present a vivid physicalization of the repertoire being simultaneously generated; a realisation and representation that is honest, immediate and true-to-life. Professional musicians are engaged in equal partnership with visual, gestural and kinesthetic interpretative artists. Both parties are treated as integral to the performative experience of each composition. The company mandate seeks an elemental, organic expression of the deeper essence of the programmed repertoire.
Pazzia is fundamentally dedicated to the spirit of Australian music. The company provides a strong and viable presence for the Australian Music Centre on an international platform, forging connections between living composers and alternative presentations. Pazzia seeks to drop the curtain separating creation and interpretation in classical music.
Pazzia collaborators are hired locally at each new location. The membership of the collective is flexible and fluid, taking the form of an ongoing accumulation and networking of like-minded, free-spirited individuals, each capable of extraordinary expression within their chosen medium. Active performing members are essentially provided with a blank canvas and a set of concepts to explore while puppetted by the energies and gestures of the music.
Pazzia is confident in the ability of their initiative to engender potentially challenging classical repertoire with the vigor and presence necessary for the continuation of classical music in the public domain. They essentially seek to project a traditionally aural product into a multi-sensory, multi-layered, full-bodied and fiery new realm of reception.
’Pazzia’ is an Italian term for madness which shares the root of the word ’passion’: a state of madness generated by extreme creative intensity is not translatable into a single English equivalent.
"They push the sensory experience of live performance to new levels... these are wonderfully courageous performers." Indyish.com
Current Production: Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot in Montreal
"Alone in my cell, ten years deep in the icing": Pazzia Contemporary Performing Collective is excited to present Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, a 35-minute chamber opera in affiliation with Pop Montreal International Music Festival and Art Pop.
A deranged bridal rant, this unhinged pearl of contemporary alternative theatre is the collaborative product of prominent British composer Peter Maxwell Davies and Australian poet Randolph Stow. A true tour de force of expressionistic surrealism, classical music connoisseurs will know this as the partner piece to the much-coveted contemporary staple, Eight Songs for a Mad King.
The comic tragedy of Miss Donnithorne is an icy plunge into the Victorian salon and the cogs of a distorted and unstable mind. Taunted and dishevelled by her rejection at the altar, her lifelong existence becomes a disturbing and awkwardly opulent homage to a wedding day that never was. Pickled inside her Sydney mansion, shrieking obscenities through a chained door, Eliza Donnithorne is an eccentric recluse whose sumptuous ruffled plumage has become antiquated and obsolete after 30 years still wearing her bridal gown. Her wedding day dream disintegrates into a rotting, maggot-ridden tsunami of musty flounces, mildewed frills and a mouldy and decaying ceremonial feast which remains untouched at the table until her death. She is the permanent inhabitant of a manic rant which plays itself out in the isolated windmills of her imagination and the "moth-haunted radiance" of her cake.
Pazzia’s Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot will enjoy a season of three performances at Cafe L’Utopik on October 5, 6 and 7 (Friday-Sunday). The production will begin around 9pm each night and will be unticketed but with suggested donation in usual L’Utopik style. We reiterate this extraordinary free opportunity to enjoy the creative mastery of emerging professional opera scena in a lavish indie production.
The production will feature Ontario vocalist Catharin Carew (Queen of Puddings Theatre, Chants Libres), a hotbed of local emerging classical musicians, and with responsive real-time contortion on the side to accentuate the anguish of this twisted fate by Andreane Leclerc (Cirque Eloîze, Pomp Duck Berlin). The sensory feast will be encrusted and embellished by an elaborate array of costumes, all handmade by Artistic Director and conductor, Kelly Lovelady, who will direct from the stage. Formerly based in Montreal, Kelly has lived, worked and instigated creation around the world, now coming directly from an extended stint in Edinburgh to mount this self-produced piece.
Click here to read McGill University Tribune Article
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