TED HEARNE ANNOUNCES
NEW ALBUM THE SOURCE
SHARES TRACK “[A young boy released several pigeons]”
THE SOURCE DUE OCTOBER 30, 2015
VIA NEW AMSTERDAM RECORDS
“[A] beautiful, sad, altogether crucial reflection of our time” — The New York Times
“[A] rich musical masterpiece” — Opera News
New Amsterdam Records is proud to announce The Source, the new data-obsessed work from composer, singer, and bandleader Ted Hearne. The album will be released in digital and CD formats on October 30th, 2015. Listen to a track from the album titled “[A young boy released several pigeons]” and pre-order the album HERE.
A modern day oratorio (written for 7 musicians and 5 singers including Hearne himself), The Source explores the life and story of Chelsea Manning, and the content and implications of the hundreds of thousands of classified military documents she infamously leaked to WikiLeaks. Like Hearne’s previous release for New Amsterdam, the widely hailed Katrina Ballads, The Source draws on a litany of primary source texts (stitched together by librettist Mark Doten) – including Twitter feeds, cable news interviews, chat transcripts and declassified military reports.
The piece premiered as a multimedia production (directed by Daniel Fish) at the BAM Next Wave Festival in 2014, and received rave reviews in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Opera News, among others.
“The music, like the text, draws from diverse sources,” Hearne says of the piece. “Auto-tuned recitatives, neo-soul ballads, icy string trios and moments of cracked-out musical theater are peppered with (and sometimes structured around) samples that bridge sonic worlds.” Referential shards ranging from Big Boi’s interpolation of Soul II Soul to Clay Aiken’s revisitation of The Threepenny Opera cut through and against texts from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to create new ways of experiencing the polyphony of our globally interconnected world.
Read more of Ted’s thoughts on the album HERE.
Pre-order The Source HERE.
The Source
tracklist:
1. [EXPLOSIVE HAZARD]
2. Oh The Shark
3. [Trust Logs]
4. s/as a boy/as a boy
6. Julian in a Nutshell
7. [CRIMINAL EVENT]
8. Interlude: Don’t want to be a part
9. Complex Keys
10. [Smoke when bird nears]
11. [The marine that engaged]
12. [We called for illumination at 1630]
13. I encrypt as much as I can
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