Announcing Alastair White’s ‘fashion-opera’ WOAD

In the medieval Scottish Borders, a young boy is bewitched – into the form of an ape, an adder, a speck of dust. But is it his shape that twists and churns, or that of the world around him? WOAD is a fashion-opera about metamorphosis and parallel worlds – from the team behind the groundbreaking WEAR (“spellbinding…an opera of rare imagination” – Boulezian) and ROBE (“highly inventive…wonderfully original” – Artmuse London). Created with the award-winning soprano Kelly Poukens and international saxophonist Suzy Vanderheiden, Alastair White’s WOAD adapts the Scots myth of Tamlane to ask: in a multiverse of endless possibility, what becomes of our potential, our regret?

The work will have its world premiere stage performance in Belgium in March 2022 using Poukens’ experimental theatricality alongside the high fashion of designer Renli Su in a live digital event.

This world premiere recording will be released by Métier Records in late 2021 (MÉTIER  MSV 28617) on CD and Hi-Res digital download and streaming.

Alastair White explains, “Tamlane is a traditional myth of metamorphosis which, through its imagery, can be read as an exploration of the mutable, transformative nature of the body: how, in adolescence, for example, our bodies are recast and divided through time as a series of separate versions of ourselves. In WOAD, these ideas are used to aestheticise the social implications of the multiverse: where versions of events coexist in different areas and types of space. The work contextualises this against the backdrop of the social change foregrounded by the current health crisis, relating the themes of metamorphoses and quantum ‘flickering’ to socio-historical revolution and the possibility of a break with the horrors of multinational capitalism.

“The piece engages these themes by further developing the compositional methodology devised in the creation of WEAR and ROBE. For this particular piece, we attempted to create a sense of material objectivity in the phenomenological apprehensions of the listener. This is achieved through the overlay of different compositional methodologies that each imply mutually exclusive approaches of listening. It is hoped that this interpretive complexity allows the listener a series of different paths and perspectives: a constantly changing experience that is marked by the collapse of other possibilities. This was expanded throughout the process in collaboration with Kelly and Suzy, where we attempted to radically incorporate contingency into every aspect of the work. We are trying to find a way of dramatising absolute change, and the potential this implies, without it being neutralised to mere indeterminacy or simply another referent within the work’s limits.”

Kelly Poukens is an international artist whose recent highlights include Regan in King Lear (Holland Opera) and solo recitals at the Henry Le Boeuf Hall. Saxophonist Suzy Vanderheiden’s distinguished career sees her tour worldwide, currently as a soloist with her saxophone quartet and in the Royal Harmonie Tessenderlo. Shortlisted for several Scottish art awards, composer-librettist Alastair White’s work is characterised by a lyrical complexity described as “virtuosic” (Winnipeg Free Press), “passionately atonal” (Gramophone) and “deftly manic” (American Record Guide). Renli Su is a globally-recognised fashion designer whose collections are characterised by her sense of nostalgia: where a love for old craftsman’s techniques is balanced with innovative, modern methods. Fashion curator Gemma A. Williams is author of Fashion China (Thames & Hudson). WOAD is produced by UU Studios, a fashion-opera collective co-founded by Williams and White.