TERRA NOVA
In collaboration with Hub New Music
Premiered March 7 2020, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA
Performed May 2020 at Central Library (Brooklyn) and Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art (Staten Island)
David Scher
Guitar, 2005-2016
Mixed media on paper
26 × 41 in
66 × 104.1 cm
At the invitation of Hub New Music, Oracle Hysterical’s Terra Nova is an evening-length collection of songs inspired by new lands, and the people who ventured into them. Texts come from Amelia Earhart stepping into the sky; John James Audubon cataloging the birds of North America; Lucifer adjusting to his new home in Paradise Lost (Donne); Chinese mariners discovering new continents; Chinese immigrants facing persecution in San Francisco; Spanish conquistadors sweeping cruelly through the New World; and the touching final letters of Robert Falcon Scott from his doomed Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole.
These characters come alive in their contrasts. They are the curious, the cruel and the courageous, the legalistic and the loving, the awe-struck and the blind. Terra Nova is the story of the many faces, good and evil, that we show when we stand at the edge of human experience.
The work exists as a concert version and staged production.
Hub New Music is flute, clarinet, violin, cello
Oracle Hysterical is double bass, viola da gamba, bassoon, vocals, keyboards, guitars, percussion