Event

Decline of Ballooning / Madame X Paints Haydn Red - RHINOFEST 2010

DECLINE OF BALLOONING
by Brian Torrey Scott

DECLINE OF BALLOONING is a ghost-narrated story of a man and a woman caught up in a web of geomantic intrigue. It's a musical love story about aerial photography. The woman struggles to balance the stresses of her life's work with an increasingly unstable perception of reality, the man strives to actualize his ethereal yearning. Why does anybody ever do anything, and where are they all the time?

MADAME X PAINTS HAYDN RED
by Devin King

Three people trapped in a recording studio arguing about their debut: "I thought I turned you off...such a historicizing of the echo." MADAME X PAINTS HAYDN RED is an operetta that deals with youth culture stuck in a soundproof room moving between centuries of recording technology: Joseph Haydn's head stolen by phrenologists; the Jam re-recording the Kinks' David Watts; RCA color-coding their new 45 rpm records; "Opera is a shoddy refuge for emotional dishonesty." The musicians evolve with their recording techniques and all the while Madame X paints Haydn red.