Waves

based on Virginia Woolf's "The Waves

On a single day in New York City, we briefly enter into the thoughts of various women and girls, from a young child to an eighty year old woman. They are obviously all different from one another, yet they share things in common. Each will presumably move - or already has moved - from childhood, to adulthood, to old age. Each also engages with the world energetically and all share a healthy sense of independence and self-determination. Imagine, then, that these girls and women actually represent just one woman’s conscious life, not unfolding over decades, but coexisting within a single day. In their combined thoughts, a woman’s entire life is represented. Waves, for soprano, chamber ensemble, video and electronics, is based on Virginia Woolf’s late novel, The Waves. It is a series of ten songs, which use brief excerpts from Woolf’s text, spanning the lifetime of a single character. In short video clips we see the external lives of a number of girls and women, while we hear the thoughts of Woolf’s character sung by the soprano. Interspersed between these brief moments of life are images of Stuyvesant Cove, on the East River in Manhattan, from dawn to night.