Michaela Eremiášová was born in Prague, Czech Republic. She has fullfilled commissions that range from jazz big bands and concert music ensembles to electroacoustic music. Her collaborations include work with painters, poets, modern dance choreographers as well as with experimental and mainstream film makers. Her music has been performed by ensembles like the Eastman Triana, Musica Nova, Eastman Composers Sinfonietta, Eastman Chorale and the Novus Trombone Quartet, among others. Her film music has been featured in numerous national and international film festivals and has been recognized with several awards including the 2007 ASIFA Award for Excellence in Experimental Techniques for the electroacoustic score for the short film All That Remains. Recently Michaela became a finalist for the international choral composition competition Associazione "C. A. Seghizzi”, one of the largest in Europe. Michaela holds a BM in Composition from the Conservatory of Jaroslav Jezek; a Diploma Degree in Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music and a Masters in Musicology from Charles' University in Prague. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in Composition at the Eastman School of Music.
Jairo Duarte-López was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He enjoys composing both concert music as well as film music. His works have been performed by ensembles like the Eastman Triana, Musica Nova, Eastman Composers Sinfonietta, the New York Miniaturist Ensemble and the Eastman Contemporary Percussion Ensemble. Most recently his music was featured at the 2008 IMS Film Festival, at the 29th BGSU Annual New Music Festival as well as in 100 games of the Toronto BlueJays. Jairo has been recognized with several composition awards including The National Prize of Music in Composition by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia for a solo work comissioned by cellist David Gerstein through the Hanson Institute for American Music of the Eastman School of Music. Jairo holds a BM in Film Scoring from the Berklee College of Music and a MA in Composition from the Eastman School of Music where he is currently pursuing his PhD.
Skip Battaglia, (Carl F. Battaglia) was born August 14, 1948, in Buffalo NY. He is an independent animator of thirty-five years, his most current animation being “Crossing the Stream,” (4 minutes), winner of “Best Animation” in the Association of Independent Film Animators – EAST (ASIFA-East) in New York City, May 2007, and other international awards, including a “Retrospective” of 35 years of his animated production at the National Gallery of Art, Ottawa, CANADA, in September 2008. Show more
“Car Crash Opera” is his first libretto, written to be the soundtrack for his in-progress, hand-made, animated film, due next year.
Battagliahas worked with various musicians for the soundtracks of many of his films, and has been involved in sound design on all his film soundtracks since 1981. Hehas held a teaching and research Fulbright for 1994-1995 at the University of Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico, and also been a professor 2002-03 at La Universidad de Las Américas, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico.
Battagliahas found support and multiple awards for his short fine art animations from the New York State Council on the Arts and the national Endowment of the Arts. His works screen worldwide.
Battagliais professor in the School of Film and Animation, college of Imaging Arts and Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY since 1987. He received a Faculty Education and Development Grant from his college for the musical composition and production of “Car Crash Opera” in 2006.
American opera is the ultimate medium for musical exploration. There is no other art that, while maintaining its primary conventions, has the capacity to combine multiple disciplines without becoming something else. In opera all prominent ways of expression are welcome to exist together, from vocal, instrumental, choral, and electronic music to dance, theater, plastic arts, poetry, animation, experimental and conventional film. In one way or another, all forms of art appear to find a space to exist within opera today. Also, the natural link between serious and popular art in opera reflects the crosspollination of expressions and influences in music as a direct result of the culturally borderless society in which we live. From this point of view, American opera has all that it needs to continue its exploration of art as a matter of evolution rather than self-preservation, and the duty of those who create and support it is to nurture its perpetual renewal.
About the work, in the composers’ words: Car Crash Opera was commissioned as the musical score for a short film by renowned animator and RIT Professor Skip Battaglia. The creation of the film required that the music be composed and recorded in advance. Knowing that the animation would take close to two years to complete, we approached the music not only as a film score but also as a stand-alone composition. The music makes use of several musical styles in order to illustrate a different backdrop for each character or couple. Once we are familiar with the characters, the story develops: two adolescents find themselves cut off the road by a careless amorous couple. They decide to start a chase that concludes with the inevitable collision of four cars. After the final crash, the music attempts to depict images of horror, tragedy and mourning as the singers join as a choir of souls. Show more
Synopsis of the film in the director’s words:
This seven-to-eight minute animated film will be a cinematic homage to that paragon of American movie art forms---the car crash film. But this will be sung as an opera, with characters, flourishes, poignant interludes, orchestration, sound effects. It will be dramatically exaggerated, an over-the-top car crash which comments on all filmed car crashes, funny and tragic, graphically beautiful and kinetically terrifying, and more sublime than ironic. The soundtrack is meant to be as oversized as the visual elements of the film.
There are to be four separate vehicles which meet in a traffic conflagration: In the first is a mother and young child delivering a birthday cake; in the second. a portly contractor driving his farm pick-up truck, loaded with chickens, as he smokes a cigar; in the third, an amorous couple drinking and fondling one another; and in the fourth, two addled teenage speedsters sharing their music from a single iPod. Show less
