Jennifer Bates, Mae Carrington, Karen Feder, Basia Revi, John Howell, Clifford Terry, Edward Pleasant, Dennis Blackwell
Born in 1979 and raised in Chico, California, Steve Potter began piano lessons at age six and began composing at 14. In 2001 he graduated from Amherst College, and in 2002 he completed a Master’s in composition at the University of Sussex, where his additional studies in aesthetics and critical theory with David Osmond-Smith contributed to the development of unique relationships with text and extra-musical concepts in his music. Show more
Since 2006 he has been working on a PhD in composition at King’s College London. His composition teachers have included George Benjamin, Silvina Milstein, Clarence Barlow, Gilius van Bergeijk, Martin Butler, John Woolrich, and Lewis Spratlan.
He has written for Lontano (London); Teatro Lirico Sperimentale (Spoleto, Italy); ASKO Ensemble (Amsterdam); Hamburg’s Klangwerktage Festival; versatile vocalist/international whistling champion, Emily Eagen; and he is currently writing a horn concerto for members of Philharmonia Orchestra, to be performed in June 2008 at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
Potter made his New York conducting debut in June 2005, leading the Wet Ink Ensemble in works by Columbia University graduate students. In London, he occasionally performs in experimental works as a pianist or vocalist.
His music is concerned equally with changing rates of harmonic change and with the signifying power of everyday sounds and speech melodies, as well as with ideas in other arts, such as notions of tension in dance’s movement analysis and non-traditional notions of narrative in theater and literature. He conceives of music as an arena of felt thoughts and thought feelings, rejecting notions of music as a purely emotional art or a self-contained activity. He hopes that music can be a site for cognitive engagement with extra-musical (e.g. political) concepts through allegory and metaphor. Show less
Through a series of self-contained but related scenes, The Officers brings to the stage a social conflict rooted in the limits of language. The generality upon which language depends and the fleeting particularity of the world, which language strains to represent, are continually at odds. Show more
Idiosyncratic and spontaneous textual and musical utterances collide in the opera with infinitely repeatable musical patterns and texts ready-made for omnipresent commercial situations. The texts that appear in The Officers range from food labels and airport postings to passages inspired by modernist literature and contemporary philosophy. The music is concerned, among other things, with varying degrees of robotic repetition.
The opera follows a person, Mr. F, strongly committed to understanding his fellow humans, whose schematics, however, cleanly clip away the peculiarities that define individuals. Mr. F’s missteps in the human sciences are mirrored diversely in scenes from various sites in contemporary society. In the home, in the marketplace, in the newer marketplace of experiences and cultural products, and in a corporate office, patterns emerge: of schematizing for efficiency’s sake, of codifying for the sake of ensuring future pleasure, and of repeating for the sake of fairness and safety. Whatever may be lost through these pursuits has already been blissfully forgotten. Show less
Prologue & Scenes 1, 2 & 4 A narrator introduces a woman, Parvula Consequence, and a man, Mister F, who travels from Venice, Italy to Venice, California, conducting a survey to determine whether God is still ‘dead.’ When Mr. F arrives at Parvula's home, she deflects his questions with tangential comments on cultural decadence. He leaves, noting to the Chorus the irrelevance of her responses.
In Venice, Italy, two officers review routine surveillance tapes while an authority, Herr Professor Doktor, leads a slavish tour group comprising Mr. F, Simile, and the Chorus. Simile and Mr. F stop in a gift shop called ‘D-Spare’, where Simile is delighted to discover and purchase several pairs of sunglasses identical to her own. Show more
Interlude Fragments of sung lines from previous scenes, spliced on CD, form a robotic chorus, reciting a text phonetically nearly identical to the pledge of allegiance American schoolchildren recite every morning.
Scenes 5-7 A frustrated Parvula prophesies a disappointing trajectory for her life. Meanwhile, at an office that authorizes products to go on the commercial market, the powerful Hr. Prof. Dr. blesses a brand of bottled water for public consumption while the Chorus, which intends to market the water, looks on.
Simile and Mr. F fly from Venice, Italy to Venice, California, served by the Chorus. At the baggage collection Mr. F accuses Simile of taking interest in a similar man with similar luggage. She shrugs off his jealousy by repeating a ready-made phrase from the airport intercom: “Many bags look alike, many bags look alike.” *
Scenes 8-12 Parvula laments the facile spiritual life of contemporary man. In the chain store, ‘D-Spare’, she exchanges her things with items on the shelves and leaves without paying, setting off alarms, which three annoyed employees lethargically turn off.
At home, Mr. F and Simile answer each other’s questions with further questions. Simile muses on evenings identical to this one, thus exacerbating Mr. F's jealousy. Parvula enters, surprised to find the couple in her home. As the couple begins to realize that the place is only similar, but not identical, to their own home, two officers enter and arrest Parvula. She remarks upon her difficulties in being understood, and the police abruptly escort her out.
*Excerpt performed in VOX 2008 ends here. Show less
