Carmina Terra

  • Choreographer: Susan Jaffe
  • Music: Bruno Louchouarn
  • Costumes: Kathy Grillo
  • Lighting: Roya Abab
  • PBT Performance Date: September 10-13 2020. May 2021 (PBT Digital Spotlight)

Program Notes

The technique is just the words and the artistry is the meaning.
-Susan Jaffe

Carmina Terra (“Song of the Earth”) is PBT’s first work by new Artistic Director Susan Jaffe. Created three years ago at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the ballet takes its inspiration from “the natural spirals in nature . . . in seashells, (in) the way water spirals going down a drain, and (in) the spinning spiral of the galaxy.”

 

About Composer Bruno Louchouarn

Bruno Louchouarn (1959-2018) composed more than 600 original works including orchestral and chamber music, opera, dance, film, television and theatre scores, as well as sound and media installations. His remarkable body of work reflects his wide-ranging interests in music, media and sound, informed by his academic research in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and ethnomusicology.  Louchouarn’s musical catalogue reflects the spirit and rhythms of Paris, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Piedmont North Carolina, the places he called home over his six decades of life.  During his lifetime Louchouarn collaborated extensively with dance, theatre and visual artists including Suzanne Lacy, Jacques Heim, Herbert Siguenza, Michael John Garces, Juan Felipe Herrera, and his wife, Corey Madden to create performances in which his moving and layered scores play a leading role. Louchouarn’s collaborations with Susan Jaffe on Metallurgy and Carmina Terra were among his most rewarding creative experiences. Louchouarn’s compositions have been performed at leading arts institutions such as the Kennedy Center, Royce Hall at UCLA, Cal Arts’ REDCAT, the Getty Museum, The Juilliard School of Music, University of Southern California, University of Akron, UNC School of the Arts, Chapman School of Music, Occidental College, San Diego Rep, Boston Court, Pasadena Playhouse, Cornerstone Theatre Company and at festivals including Santa Monica’s GLOW, Pasadena’s AxS Festival and Poland’s Transatlantyk Film and Music Festival.