This breathtaking Inflection series double-bill, including a major US premiere, comprises works from two of contemporary music’s leading figures performed by some of its brightest stars.

A major US premiere from Japan’s preeminent living composer, Toshio Hosokawa, Futari Shizuka (The Maiden from the Sea), is a ravishing one-act opera, with libretto by famed Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata, about a departed spirit which inhabits the body of a beautiful refugee girl who sings of the sorrows brought by war. Into the Little Hill, a haunting retelling of the Pied Piper myth, is a modern masterwork from white-hot composer George Benjamin (Written on Skin), and Martin Crimp’s libretto gives chilling and immediate relevance to the nature of groupthink, supposition, and the power of suggestion. These incredible works are unified by an enthralling artistic concept by Alexander Polzin (Love in Fragments), using shadow theatre and Bunraku puppetry, as well as choreography by Sommer Ulrickson. Experience contemporary music as intense as the times we’re living in.

Kerstin Avemo, soprano
Ryoko Aoki, Noh actress
Charlotte Mundy, soprano
Lucy Dhegrae, mezzo-soprano

Talea Ensemble
James Baker, conductor

Alexander Polzin, artistic concept
Sommer Ulrickson, choreographer