Métier Records to release fashion-opera, ROBE, by Alastair White

A posthuman fantasia about cities, virtual reality and the A.I. singularity: ROBE is an award-nominated opera inspired by fashion and machines. This new (world premiere) recording will be released by Métier Records in late 2020/early 2021. (MÉTIER  MSV 28609). An audio recording which will be available on CD and Hi-Res digital download and streaming, it will be supported by promotional video shorts – the label hopes for a full staged video version in the future. An opera in form, it is also beautifully choreographed and is visually stunning.

Story

Descending into the mind of the superintelligence EDINBURGH, a young cartographer is tasked with mapping this creature so as to grant its desire: to become a living city, teeming with human life and activity. But they grow close, and she weaves into the map those things that cannot be known or spoken: the hidden histories of joy and longing each privately our own. As these rifts in the structure undo causality itself, she must answer the question: what exactly has she created?

About

“Music is an ancient, powerful technology,” says composer-librettist Alastair White. “In ROBE we’re trying to explore the idea that virtual reality has existed since the dawn of time: in the way that books, theatres – even the clothes we wear –  transform and augment our perception of the world. And, how music has this astonishing power to contain and combine its participants – audiences, performers, writers – into a type of artificial superintelligence. “

This first full studio recording features the original cast from the 2019 UU Studios production at Tête-à-Tête festival, where the opera was shortlisted for a Creative Edinburgh Award and won praise for the ways in which it “successfully evoked the strange abstract world of cyberspace, creating a real sense of non-reality…The performances from all concerned were excellent.” (Planet Hugill).

People

Alastair White is a Scottish composer and writer whose work is characterised by a lyrical complexity that draws influence from materialism, fashion, cosmology and computers. Previous work includes 2018’s WEAR, shortlisted for a Scottish Award for New Music: “an opera of rare imagination and success” (Mark Berry, Boulezian). Produced at Goldsmiths Music Studios by Henri Växby (French For Cartridge), this release features a cast of rising stars from the new music scene: virtuosic pianist and music director Ben Smith (ROH, Wigmore Hall, Barbican), experimental flautist Jenni Hogan (Barbican, Radio 3, Queen Elizabeth Hall), Clara Kanter (Wigmore Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields, BBC), the “theatrically and vocally excellent” (Opera Magazine) Kelly Poukens, “staggeringly good” (New Statesman) Rosie Middleton and Sarah Parkin, described as “a joy to watch” (The Times). 

This recording has been supported by Help Musicians UK, the Hinrichsen Foundation and the Goldsmiths Graduate Fund and Music Research Committee.

RECORDED IN JANUARY 2020.

ROBE Synopsis (duration c. 80 minutes)

In a society where difference between the real and the virtual is no longer meaningful, a powerful new being threatens the stability which holds these worlds together. Two elders, Neachneohain and Beira, convince the young cartographer Rowan to complete a terrible task: descend into the mind of the superintelligence EDINBURGH and map this creature so as to grant its desire – to become a living city, teeming with human life and activity. Witnessing visions of the awful realness of life beyond cyberspace, Rowan agrees – plunging into its depths: a strange, abstractworld of data and dream.

30 years later, Rowan and EDINBURGH have fallen in love, have lived their lives together. Though every morning she awakes with no memory of the past, Rowan has almost completed the map that EDINBURGH desires. But into this map Rowan has woven something else: something hidden, silent, unsaid. As these rifts in the structure undo causality itself, she must answer the question: what exactly has she created? And what does it have to do with this strange, otherworldly figure who sings the red song of a forgotten city – of an ancient, poisoned ROBE…