Alarm Will Sound – St. Charles, MO – November 16, 2024

On Blue

Rafiq Bhatia 

In encountering the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, I was immediately inspired by its glacial pacing and patience. Though there isn’t much music in Apichatpong’s films, the environmental sound always feels intrinsic, even primary. Above all, there is a sense that Apichatpong creates from a place of deep engagement with his own memory and experience, a practice with which I strongly identify.

During my first viewing of the visuals for On Blue, I heard music in the gestures I saw on screen. Using instruments built from orchestral sound sources (often quiet actions intensely magnified), I set about searching for what I had imagined. Through careful tuning and timbral changes, I tried to let the musical sonorities melt like the sheets on screen. Harmonies unravel, flex, ripple and relax like their visualized counterparts. Is the state of dreaming always tranquil, or are dreams volatile, like waking life? 

Residing in densely populated New York, I feel the city experiencing the night together in phases, despite the asynchronicity of our REM cycles. Here, as in the jungle where Jenjira sleeps, environmental sounds seep into our experience of the night, guiding us along the journey towards wakefulness. I sought to craft the music so that the birds, frogs, insects, and pulley sounds from Apichatpong’s film would function like members of the ensemble—or even as featured soloists—while Alarm Will Sound’s instruments and Nina Moffitt’s playback voices could conjure the aviaries and ocean waves within Jenjira’s dreaming mind.

When I was presented with this opportunity to rethink this work for the masterful Alarm Will Sound, one of the things that excited me most was the chance to explore the very quietest end of the sonic spectrum. To my ear, the sounds of the softest techniques convey a hyperreal intimacy, vulnerability and ephemerality, as they are usually rich with evidence of the delicate human action it took to produce them. There is, of course, a relationship between the volume and timbre (or “character”) of a quiet sound, but many instruments playing quietly at once can convey the latter without being as constrained by the former. From the outset, I imagined a full dynamic range of textures that could still feel hushed when they grew immense, where even mountainous accumulations might retain a whispering, ghostly quality at their apex. But as I began to work, I was reminded of what William Blake once wrote: “without contraries there is no progression.” It’s after thunder that I most appreciate the stillness of a soft rain.

I am grateful that this commission provided an occasion to deepen my collaboration with orchestrator Taylor Brook, as well as Nina Moffitt, Chris Pattishall, and Ian Chang, who made invaluable contributions to the electroacoustic component of the piece. Those who listen closely may notice nods to György Ligeti’s Atmosphères and Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold.

I look forward to experiencing On Blue as it comes to life on stage each night with Alarm Will Sound. As Apichatpong wrote to me in an early correspondence: “Silence is never repeated.” (Oct 2024)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

“I reflect on the past years as we appear to have slept through the pandemic. Perhaps we are ready to wake up. On Blue was inspired by the moments of awakening, of sunrise. As uncertainty becomes the norm, I treasure this phenomenon’s consistency. It’s predictable yet brings tremendous change.

Revisiting Blue was like re-observing and rearranging a dream before dawn. Perhaps our brains are hurriedly retreating their fragmented scenes, storing them in the shadows before consciousness emerges. I saw a blue sheet crumble like a dream. An old cinema set was reanimated for the last performance.  

When first light reaches the eyes, there is a profound sense of clarity. The color blue was giving way to the morning gold. Dream and reality coexist, memories and conditionings fade. Even the word “blue” has lost its meaning. In an instant, we are newborns with no ties to anything.”

Rise, Again 

Daniel Wohl

“Arooj, Josephine and I held several brainstorming sessions that led to numerous ideas, some of which we didn’t end up pursuing. During this process it became clear to us that we needed to take into account perspectives and practical considerations that none of us were accustomed to. For example, we had to consider what was possible for film while also taking into account how the music would be performed live by an orchestra. Over the next few months, we each went our own way to come up with material.

One of the most exciting moments for me was when we learned that the demos Arooj and I created were being played by Josephine for the women she was working with in her film. Bringing the music so directly into the filming process really gives it an extra significance for me as a composer. From the feedback that was conveyed to me, the music seemed to resonate deeply with their stories and became part of their conceptualization of the final film.”

Josephine Decker

Thanks to a commission from Liquid Music and the Cincinnati Orchestra, I had the honor of collaborating with six mothers from Upward Bound House – which supports families transitioning out of homelessness — to create a short film in concert with musicians Daniel Wohl and Arooj Aftab. 

The six mothers I got to work with – Michaela Slaninova, Tracy Taylor, Gisselle Martinez, Estephania Camacho, Amy Bryan and Christal Allen – responded to musical prompts, improvised and shared stories from their own journeys as parents to create the backbone of the script. Our process involved improvised dancing on jungle gyms, free writing, drawing and sharing intimate challenges from our lives as parents.  

 The tale we decided to tell together is this one:

A mother finds out that the money she’s paid for rent has been stolen by the person she’s subletting from. Forced to leave her apartment, she works to hold down a job and pay for childcare while living in her car. Our “mother” is played by four mothers — Amy, Michaela, Tracy and Gisselle — in a poetic and dance-inspired film, set to music by Daniel Wohl and Arooj Aftab.

 Working on this film was one of the creatively fulfilling projects I’ve ever taken on. I feel endlessly grateful to my collaborators and to the leadership at Upward Bound House.

To create a film work in dialogue with musicians — and with this level of creative freedom — is such a gift. I grew up as a musician myself, and music has always been foundational to all of my filmmaking. To get to give the music such a forefronted role in the process was a delight. Also, the piece that Arooj and Daniel created is soulful and spectacular — and inspired all of us on the film team as we moved into the work. Centering the piece on mothers and on the female voice was grounding and felt like a celebration despite the challenging circumstances we were illuminating in the piece.  

Naked Blue

Oumy is thirteen and the daughter of Valeria, a close friend of ours. Her dance training, particularly in ballet, is intensive, and we have long wanted to film her. This collaboration with Dev Hynes, commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was an occasion to finally work with her. The fragile, ambiguous nature of the images evokes archival footage of rehearsals for a school show or film shoot. It also gestures to the transition from childhood to adolescence, wakefulness to trance, sadness to its overcoming—as well as to the interstitial, tenuous nature of such passages. It is also a portrait of Oumy at a specific moment in her life, a moment that is deeply moving to us and that we wanted to capture. The dramatic intensity of Dev’s musical composition, performed by Alarm Will Sound, accompanies Oumy’s movements, mirroring their magnetism, cohesion, and radical autonomy. 

— Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie

Liquid Music / Kate Nordstrum

Sun Dogs was developed by myself and composer Daniel Wohl, in response to composers’ oft stated desire to collaborate more deeply with filmmakers than is possible in a traditional scoring relationship. We assumed filmmakers felt the same way when approached by musicians for the creation of music videos. These relationships can often be one-directional: a need for a score or a video is borne out of the creation of the other. We started thinking about an alternative vehicle for composers and filmmakers to create together from the outset: to mutually determine the story they wanted to tell through music and film, then figure out how to build it together from the ground up. This required two commissions per pairing: one for the filmmaker and one for the composer. It also required a film production budget. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in partnership with FotoFocus Biennial invested in 3 new works that comprise tonight’s program. This kind of investment by an orchestra is incredibly rare, but our intention is for Sun Dogs to be an ongoing series, with these first 3 works as our proof of concept. Since the premiere with CSO under the conductor Matthias Pitscher, we received support from Liquid Music donors to create new arrangements for Alarm Will Sound, which allows us to present performances across the country this fall. I’m gratified to know that each commissioned composer and filmmaker felt stretched, challenged, and discovered new ways of working through their Sun Dogs assignment. Thank you for your presence here tonight and for your interest in our experiment. 

– Kate Nordstrum, Liquid Music artistic director

A note on the series title:

In the natural world, there are special moments when elements combine in unique ways and offer a momentary spectacle. I see a sun dog once or twice a winter, and it is always a reminder to me that known quantities (like how I usually see the sun and its light) can shift and offer me another perspective. The collaborations within the program are similarly meant to offer small spectacles and new ways of seeing and sensing.

Funding / support credits

Rise, Again, Naked Blue, and On Blue were commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and FotoFocus as part of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial. Support for new arrangements was made possible by Tim and Calli Sullivan, Dr. Thomas von Sternberg and Eve Parker.

Alarm Will Sound gratefully acknowledges our individual donors and the following foundations for their support: Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, Amphion Foundation, BMI Foundation, Cheswatyr Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, and the Sinquefield Charitable Trust.

Additional Support provided by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Special thanks

Nate Bachhuber

Bios

Alarm Will Sound

Alarm Will Sound is a 20-member band committed to innovative performances and recordings of today’s music. They have established a reputation for performing demanding music with energetic skill. Their performances have been described as “equal parts exuberance, nonchalance, and virtuosity” by the Financial Times of London and as “a triumph of ensemble playing” by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times says that Alarm Will Sound is “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene.”

With classical skill and unlimited curiosity, Alarm Will Sound takes on music from a wide variety of styles. Its repertoire ranges from European to American works, from the arch-modernist to the pop-influenced. Alarm Will Sound has been associated since its inception with composers at the forefront of contemporary music, premiering pieces by Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, Tyshawn Sorey, David Lang, John Adams, Mary Kouyoumdjian, John Luther Adams, Marcos Balter, and Augusta Read Thomas among others. The group itself includes many composer-performers, which allows for an unusual degree of insight into the creation and performance of new work.

Alarm Will Sound collaborates with artists who work beyond the bounds of classical music. Alarm System, and the Matt Marks Impact Fund are initiatives that have created cross-genre music with electronica artists Eartheater, Jlin, King Britt, and Rashad Becker; jazz composer-performer Dave Douglas; multimedia artists Mira Calix, Bakudi Scream, and Damon Davis; soundtrack composers Brian Reitzell and JG Thirlwell; producer Valgeir Sigurðsson, and singer-songwriter Alyssa Pyper. 

Alarm Will Sound is the resident ensemble at the Mizzou International Composers Festival. Held each July at the University of Missouri in Columbia, the festival features eight world premieres by early-career composers. During the weeklong festival, these composers work closely with Alarm Will Sound and two established guest composers to perform and record their new work.

Alarm Will Sound may be heard on eighteen recordings, including For George Lewis | Autoshchediasms, their most recent release featuring music of Tyshawn Sorey; Omnisphere, with jazz trio Medeski Martin & Wood; a collaboration with Peabody Award-winning podcast Meet the Composer titled Splitting Adams; and the premiere recording of Steve Reich’s Radio Rewrite. Their genre-bending, critically acclaimed Acoustica features live-performance arrangements of music by electronica guru Aphex Twin. This unique project taps the diverse talents within the group, from the many composers who made arrangements of the original tracks, to the experimental approaches developed by the performers.  

In 2016, Alarm Will Sound in a co-production with Opera Theatre of St. Louis, presented the world premiere of the staged version of Donnacha Dennehy’s The Hunger at the BAM Next Wave Festival and the Touhill Performing Arts Center. Featuring Iarla O’Lionárd (traditional Irish singer) and Katherine Manley (soprano) with direction by Tom Creed, The Hunger is punctuated by video commentary and profound early recordings of traditional Irish folk ballads mined from various archives including those of Alan Lomax.

In 2013-14, Alarm Will Sound served as artists-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. During that season, the ensemble presented four large ensemble performances at the Met, including two site-specific productions staged in museum galleries (Twinned, a collaboration with Dance Heginbotham and I Was Here I Was I, a new theatrical work by Kate Soper and Nigel Maister), as well as several smaller events in collaboration with the Museum’s educational programs.  

In 2011, at Carnegie Hall, the group presented 1969, a multimedia event that uses music, images, text, and staging to tell the compelling story of great musicians—John Lennon, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul McCartney, Luciano Berio, Yoko Ono, and Leonard Bernstein—striving for a new music and a new world amidst the turmoil of the late 1960s. 1969’s unconventional approach combining music, history, and ideas has been critically praised by the New York Times (“…a swirling, heady meditation on the intersection of experimental and commercial spheres, and of social and aesthetic agendas.”)

Alarm Will Sound has been presented by Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Miller Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival, Disney Hall, Kimmel Center, Library of Congress, Annenberg Center, the Clarice, CAP UCLA, Caramoor, and the Warhol Museum. International tours include the Beijing Modern Festival, the Holland Festival, Sacrum Profanum, Moscow’s Art November, St. Petersburg’s Pro Arte Festival, and the Barbican.

The members of the ensemble have also demonstrated our commitment to the education of young performers and composers through residency performances and activities at Princeton University, the University of Michigan, University of Maryland, Shenandoah University, the Community Music School of Webster University, Cleveland State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Missouri, Eastman School of Music, Dickinson College, Duke University, the Manhattan School of Music, Harvard University, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

For more information and to join the mailing list, visit Alarm Will Sound’s website atwww.alarmwillsound.com

Alan Pierson

Alan Pierson has been praised as “a dynamic conductor and musical visionary” by The New York Times, a “conductor of monstrous skill” by Newsday, “gifted and electrifying” by the Boston Globe, and “one of the most exciting figures in new music today” by Fanfare. In addition to his work as artistic director of Alarm Will Sound, he has served as Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and guest conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, L.A. Opera, Nationaltheater Mannheim, the London Sinfonietta, the Steve Reich Ensemble, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the New World Symphony, and the Silk Road Project, among others. He is co-director of the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, and has been a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. 

Passionate about using storytelling to bring listeners inside of contemporary music, he has led the creation of innovative musical experiences, like Alarm Will Sound’s 1969 and Soundbites video series, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic’s Brooklyn Village project. Mr. Pierson has collaborated with major composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, John Luther Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, La Monte Young, and choreographers Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan, and Elliot Feld.  Mr. Pierson received bachelor degrees in physics and music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a doctorate in conducting from the Eastman School of Music. He has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, Sony Classical, Oehms Classics, and Sweetspot DVD.

Daniel Wohl

Born in Paris and now residing in Los Angeles, Daniel Wohl is a composer who blends electronics with acoustic instrumentation to often “surprising and provocative effect” (NPR). HIs multifaceted output ranges from intimate music for soloists to immersive electronic pieces, music for film and television, chamber ensembles, and works for large orchestra. He has received critical praise as one of his generation’s “imaginative, skillful creators” (New York Times)  making music that is “beautiful…original” (Pitchfork). 

Performances of his electroacoustic concert music have been held at the Broad Museum, MASS MoCA, the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, The Barbican,  Sadler’s Wells, and MoMA PS1,  by orchestras such as the Cincinnati Symphony,  the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Alarm Will Sound, The London Contemporary Orchestra, ensembles from the San Francisco Symphony and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Bang on a Can All-Stars,  and So Percussion among others. An enthusiastic collaborator, Daniel has worked on projects with artists such as Jóhann Jóhannsson, Son Lux, Arooj Aftab, and Laurel Halo. He recently composed the music  for the  Luna Luna exhibit, a  showcase of the world’s first art amusement park, featuring artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Dali, David Hockney, and others.

His passion for composing for film and television has led him to work on a number of media projects with directors such as Luca Guadagnino, Patty Jenkins,  Sanaa Lathan, Josephine Decker and Morgan Neville. His most recent album Etat was released on Nonesuch and New Amsterdam Records in 2019. A graduate of the doctoral program at the Yale School of Music, Daniel studied primarily with composer David Lang.

Arooj Aftab

Over the last few years, Grammy award winning artist, Arooj Aftab, has emerged as one of the most innovative composers and vocalists of our time, a true visionary whose architectural compositions unfurl into moving reflections on love and loss. Her work mellifluously blends a wide array of genres, from jazz to minimalism to Pakistani semi-classical, and she sings with such intentionality and focus that it sounds like she is chiseling every word out of marble. 

Her incredible work has resonated with listeners across the globe: She has been named one of NPR’s Top 100 composers, and has been featured on several best concerts lists, including one by The New York Times. Her 2021 Vulture Prince album was met with critical acclaim from The Guardian, Time Magazine, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. Aftab has performed at major international music festivals including Coachella, Glastonbury, Primavera Sound Barcelona, Roskilde Festival, and Montreal Jazz Festival. She has also performed at Performance Art Centers such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, and The Broad. Aftab is a 2023 United States Artists Fellow and a recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Music. 

Aftab is inspired by the poetics of the ordinary – the grandeur of a centuries old tree, the glow of the moon, the yearning floating in the air at dusk, the drama of an incomplete love affair – these inspirations are the mirror to her music, as she witnesses the world. The emotions Aftab conveys feel intimate and familiar, like they were pulled from a forgotten dream. But her musical skill is so precise and her voice is so singular that the music sounds like nothing that has ever come before it.

Josephine Decker

Josephine Decker is a filmmaker and performer whose work focuses on women’s interiority and sexuality. Her feature film Shirley, starring Elisabeth Moss and Odessa Young, won Sundance 2020’s U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking and centers around two women whose subtly erotic friendship is both liberating and destructive. Josephine’s work tends to bend the space between imagination and reality. Her feature film Madeline’s Madeline follows an unstable teenager as she is seduced into a large role in a theater company. The film’s visceral cinematography, editing and sound design thrust the audience into the ever-shifting first-person perspective of her main character Madeline. Madeline’s Madeline, scripted through a devised process with ten actors, played Sundance, Berlinale and scores of festivals worldwide, was hailed as a “mind-scrambling masterpiece” (Indiewire) and was nominated for Best Picture at IFP’s Gotham Awards and for two Independent Spirit Awards. 

Said to be ushering in a “new grammar of narrative” by The New Yorker, Josephine premiered her first two narrative features at the Berlinale Forum 2014 to critical acclaim. 

Her film The Sky is Everywhere (A24/Apple, adapted from Jandy Nelson’s YA novel) was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick. Josephine also explores collaborative storytelling via TV directing, documentary making, performance art, accordion-playing, acting, teaching at places like CalArts and Princeton University and working with The School of Making Thinking. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Josephine is directing and producing a feature documentary about teen mothers in Dallas, Texas, her hometown. She is also writing feature screenplays, raising her two toddlers and limiting her personal water usage. She is honored to be a part of this dynamic group and would love to collaborate with you!

Rafiq Bhatia

The New York Times proclaims guitarist, composer, and producer “Rafiq Bhatia is writing his own musical language,” heralding him as “one of the most intriguing figures in music today.” A guitarist, composer, producer, and sound artist “who refuses to be pinned to one genre, culture or instrument,” Bhatia “treats his guitar, synthesizers, drum machines and electronic effects as architectural elements,” the Times writes. “Sound becomes contour; music becomes something to step into rather than merely follow.”

Bhatia’s 2018 album Breaking English finds a visceral common ground between ecstatic avant-jazz, mournful soul, tangled strings and building-shaking electronics, resulting in a “stunningly focused new sound” (Chicago Tribune) that resembles “science fiction on a blockbuster scale” (Washington Post). 2020’s Standards Vol. 1 (EP) renders repertoire from the American songbook “completely deconstructed, infused with brand new textures and electronic effects, dreamlike and beautiful” (BBC).

More recently, the painstaking sound design of Bhatia’s own projects has inspired other artists to recruit him as a producer and mixing engineer. 2020 saw the release of pianist Chris Pattishall’s debut album, Zodiac, featuring the music of Mary Lou Williams with production and mixing by Bhatia. The New York Times hailed it as “a startling achievement,” while The Wire writes, “the production successfully achieves an impression of solid forms melting and reconfiguring, ethereal transitions precipitating dramatic and frequent shifts of mood and manner… an audible space opening up between the routine and the magical.”

Since 2014, Bhatia has been a member of the band Son Lux. Together, they have released three albums and numerous EPs, and given over 500 performances worldwide. Most recently, they scored the Academy Award-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once for A24 which was nominated for Best Original Score at the Oscars and BAFTAs, and included collaborations with David Byrne, Mitski, Moses Sumney, Randy Newman, and more. 

Bhatia has presented his music live in dozens of performances across three continents. He has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, Cincinnati Symphony, Walker Art Center, Liquid Music, Newfields, The Jazz Gallery, Toledo Museum of Art, and more. Bhatia has collaborated with Arooj Aftab, Michael Cina, Dave Douglas, Vijay Iyer, Okkyung Lee, Billy Hart, Helado Negro, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Moses Sumney and many others.

Bhatia is a Jerome Foundation Composer/Sound Artist Fellow and adjunct faculty of the New School’s Performer-Composer Master of Music program. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Devonté Hynes

Raised in England, Devonté Hynes started in the punk band Test Icicles before releasing two orchestral acoustic pop records as Lightspeed Champion. Since 2011, Hynes has released four solo albums under the name Blood Orange – Coastal Grooves, Cupid Deluxe, Freetown Sound, and Negro Swan, as well as 2019’s Angel’s Pulse mixtape and his most recent EP, Four Songs in 2022, all of which have been met with critical acclaim. His work has explored the complexities and ambiguities of 21st century identity, delving into memory, trauma, depression and anxiety, as well as the triumphs of vulnerable communities, including people of color and queer and trans communities, and where they intersect. 

In addition to his solo work, Hynes has collaborated with pop music superstars including Mariah Carey, A$AP Rocky, Solange, Blondie, Paul McCartney, Tame Impala, Robyn, and Sky Ferreira. Hynes’s film and television credits include the scores for Melina Matsoukas’ Queen and Slim, Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto, Luca Guadagnino’s We Are Who We Are, Rebecca Hall’s Passing, and Rodrigo Garcia’s In Treatment. He also recently scored the music for the Broadway production, Job, and is a frequent collaborator with the fashion house, Marni. 

As a performer and scholar of contemporary music, Hynes has long specialized in the work of Julius Eastman, performing the composer’s work internationally and recently featured on Wild Up’s Grammy nominated anthology of the composer’s works. Hynes also provided the forward to the French edition of Gay Guerrilla, a collection of essays about Eastman’s life and music. Hynes has also performed the music of Philip Glass alongside the composer, and was recently featured in a ten-part BBC series Composed, about the breadth of classical music. 

Hynes’s symphonic and instrumental music has been performed and commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, among others, and championed by artists including Seth Parker Woods, Adam Tendler, and Third Coast Percussion, who in 2020 were nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Chamber Music or Small Ensemble Performance for their recording of Hynes’s work, Fields. Hynes’s piano concerto, Happenings, saw its premiere at New York’s Little Island Festival in 2021, and has been featured, along with his cello concerto, Origin, multiple chamber works, and his symphony Naked Blue, in a series of Selected Classical Works programs, which have appeared at Sydney Opera House, Los Angeles’s Ford Theatre, London’s Barbican Centre, and New York’s Brooklyn Academy of America.

Mati Diop

Mati Diop is a French-Senegalese filmmaker born in Paris in 1982. Since her start as a visual artist in the early 2000s and her leading role in Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum (2008), she has built an eclectic body of work which includes her award-winning short films Atlantiques (2009), Big in Vietnam (2010), Snow Canon (2011), A Thousand Suns (2013), and In my room (2020).

With her first feature film Atlantics (2019), winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, she has established herself as one of the leading figures of international auteur cinema and a new wave in African and diasporic cinema. Her nomadic, romanesque and political films challenge the boundaries between genres and formats like a reflection of her mixed identity. Selected in the official competition at the 74th Berlinale, Dahomey (2024), her second feature film shot in Benin about the restitution of royal treasures looted during French colonization, pursues her artistic commitment on the African continent.

Manon Lutanie

Manon Lutanie is a publisher and filmmaker based in Paris. Her short films have screened internationally at e-flux, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, ICA London, FIAC Hors les murs, Documenta Madrid, FIDMarseille, Mucem, Indie Lisboa, and elsewhere. In 2009, she founded the independent press Éditions Lutanie, through which she has published books by Zoë Lund, Rene Ricard, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Marianne Vitale, and more. She is a member of P.A.I.N.–a non-profit acting to end the overdose epidemic and the stigma of addiction. 

Liquid Music

Liquid Music is a leading producer of special projects in contemporary music, an internationally recognized laboratory for artists from across genre and disciplinary spectrums. This creative institution nurtures and realizes bold ideas from performers and composers, inspiring audiences to discover, learn and be transformed.

Founded at The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2012, Liquid Music became independent in 2020, owned and operated by artistic director Kate Nordstrum who has been widely praised for her programmatic vision, panoramic tastes and “storied matchmaking” (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Through Liquid Music, Nordstrum has built a boundary-defying platform for collaboration and earned her reputation as “the most adventurous music curator in town” (MinnPost), “a presenter of rare initiative” (Star Tribune), and “Twin Cities’ curatorial powerhouse with international pull” (Minnesota Public Radio).

Additional Credits

Rise, Again
Commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Louis Langrée, Music Director

Produced by Liquid Music
Presented by the CSO and FotoFocus as part of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial: World Record
Supported by the David C. Herriman Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation

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Directed by Josephine Decker
Music written by Arooj Aftab and Daniel Wohl
Produced by Valerie Steinberg
Co-Producer: Thomas Bond
Executive Producer: Luna Zhang

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Written by Josephine Decker, Amy Bryan, Christal Allen, Tracy Taylor, Michaela Slaninova, Estephania Camacho and Gisselle Martinez
Created in collaboration with Upward Bound House, Los Angeles

Featuring:
Amy Bryan and Shawntay Brown
Michaela Slaninova and Kira Berousek
Gisselle Martinez and Sebastian Gonzalez
Tracy Taylor and Thor Wilridge
Andy Gilchrist and Sierra Santana

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Director of Photography: Amina Zadeh
Production Designer: Ashley Fenton
Costume Designer: Jordan Butcher
Editor: Harry Cepka

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1st Assistant Director: Art Brainard
2nd Assistant Director: Nicholas Sherman
Set Decorator: Laura Santoyo
Set Dresser: Betsy Holt
Hair and Make-Up Artist: Lizzy Romero
Production Sound Mixer: Sandra Joen Pérez-Tejeda
Assistant Camera: Samahra Little, Corey Cave
Steadicam Operator: Wes Turner
Gaffer: Yannis Schmid
Key Grip: Samir Golshan
Swing: Gustavo Perez, Pedro Penteado
Production Coordinator: Karley Ferlic
Key Production Assistant: Kelsey Lorensen
Production Assistants: Lucien Muller, Sydney Ribot, Mike Lars White, Andrew Anzora
Childcare: Milagros Molina, Andy Gilchrist, Jenna Bruce
Workshop Leaders: Josephine Decker and Audrey Evans

Picture Finishing by: Company 3
Colorist: Jenny Montgomery
Finishing Producer: Nick Krasnic

Steadicam Shot Concept workshopped in collaboration with Pig Iron Theatre Company

Special Thanks
Christine Mirasy-Glasco, Upward Bound House CEO and President
Laura Anderson, Upward Bound House
Nancy Morales, Upward Bound House
Ariana Herrera, Upward Bound House
Sister Kathleen Callaway and Ramona Convent Secondary School
The Corner Shop
Luky’s Hardware
Hudson Spider

Naked Blue
With Oumy Bruni Garrel
Directed by Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie
Music composed by Devonté Hynes
Cinematographers, editors: Mati Diop and Manon Lutanie
Light: Joe McCrae
Color grader: Yannig Willmann
Commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Louis Langrée, Music Director
Creative producer: Liquid Music
Produced by DIVISION
Executive producer: Laure Salgon
Producer: Alice Wills
Production coordinator: Lina Messeghem
Co-produced by Manon Lutanie
Presented by the CSO and FotoFocus as part of the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial: World Record
Supported by the David C. Herriman Fund of Greater Cincinnati Foundation
Naked Blue, by Devonté Hynes, is interpreted by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra
Conducted by Matthew Lynch
Director: Balint Sapszon
Mixed by Alec Fellman

On Blue
Composed by Rafiq Bhatia
Orchestrated by Taylor Brook

Cast: Jenjira Pongpas Widner
Edited and Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Director of Photography: Chatchai Suban
Camera Assistant and Production: Thanayos Roopkhajorn
Set Director: Natchanon Pribwai
Production Crew: Jirayu Rattanakhanahutanon, Pongsakorn Nanta, Suttipong Nanta
Production Assistant: Somporn Ruensai
Production Manager: Phatsamon Kamnertsiri
Sound Designer: Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr 

Digital Laboratory: White Light Studio, Bangkok
Post Production Producer: Supapit
Colorist: Chaitawat Thrisansri
A Production of Kick the Machine Films