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Voices From the Killing Jar

M O N O D R A M A
FOR VOICE AND ENSEMBLE WITH ELECTRONICS

Voices from the Killing Jar (2012)
monodrama for soprano and ensemble with electronics; texts by Kate Soper and various
Instrumentation: For soprano (doubling easy clarinet, easy percussion, and optional piano), baritone (mvt. V only), flute (C/picc/bass flute), tenor sax/clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, and live and fixed electronics.
NOTE: this work also exists in a version without tenor sax/clarinet doubling (with clarinet only).
Duration: ca. 42 minutes
Premiere date/venue: December 8, 2012, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, NYC
Premiere performers: The Wet Ink Ensemble: Kate Soper, soprano; Erin Lesser, flutes; Alex Mincek, sax/clarinet; Ian Antonio, percussion; Modney, violin/trumpet; Sam Pluta, electronics/baritone voice
Album: Kate Soper: Voices from the Killing Jar, Carrier Records

For licensing, contact Caroline Kane at Schott Music Corporation

Purchase Score with sax/cl doubling
Purchase Score with no sax/cl doubling (clarinet only)

  • “…keen intelligence; lacerating wit; a time-traipsing style with extravagant sounds extracted from frugal resources; and, not least, Ms. Soper’s lithe voice and riveting presence.”

    The New York Times (full review)

  • “...epic. It's the kind of piece that, if you were to see it performed live, there would be a slight gap between the end of the piece and the applause when the widespread gasps would make it sound as if this imaginary world has just escaped, leaving behind a slightly altered world.”

    WQXR (full review)

Program Note

A killing jar is a tool used by entomologists to kill butterflies and other insects without damaging their bodies: a hermetically sealable glass container, lined with poison, in which the specimen will quickly suffocate. Voices from the Killing Jar depicts a series of female protagonists who are caught in their own kinds of killing jars – hopeless situations, inescapable fates, impossible fantasies, and other unlucky circumstances – each living in a world constructed from among the countless possible sonic environments of the Wet Ink Band.

I. In Prelude: May Kasahara, the titular 16 year-old of Haruki Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle speculates on the true nature of the force underlying human existence, admitting its influence on her to commit acts of violence and cruelty. (Text by Kate Soper)

II. Isabel Archer: My Last Duchess, set to excerpts from a 19th century dramatic monologue by Robert Browning, portrays the heroine of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady (personified in a gradually collapsing clarinet tremolo), whose disastrous marriage to a soulless Machiavellian ends all hope for the future. (Text by Henry James and Robert Browning)

III. In Palilalia: Iphigenia, Clytemnestra broods on the murder of her daughter Iphigenia. She sends a prayer for bloodshed to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, instructions to Iphigenia in Hades, and a grim warning to her absent husband Agamemnon. (Text by Kate Soper)

IV. Midnight's Tolling: Lucile Duplessis
Lucile Duplessis was the wife of French Revolutionary Camille Desmoulins, and was executed by guillotine at 24.  Midnight's Tolling sets excerpts from a journal she kept as an extravagantly moody young girl and teenager, full of undirected angst and bloodthirsty charm. (Text by Lucile Duplessis, trans. Soper)

V. Mad Scene: Emma Bovary, a look into the seething mind of the irrepressible Madame Bovary, depicts a scene in Gustave Flaubert's novel in which she is thrown into delusional raptures during a night at the opera. (Text by Flaubert and Lorenzo da Ponte)

VI. Interlude: Asta Solilja
In Haldor Laxness' epic novel Independent People, the heartbreakingly sensitive young Asta Solilja finds beauty and a dream of love while cloud-gazing on her father's harshly isolated sheep farm in 19th century Iceland.

VII. The Owl and the Wren: Lady Macduff
Towards the end of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady Macduff is brutally and unforgettably murdered along with her children. The Owl and the Wren is the lullaby of her final moments, distorted by intimations of approaching horror. (Text by Kate Soper)

VIII. Her Voice is Full of Money (a deathless song): Dasy Buchanan
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Daisy's voice is variously described as"a singing compulsion," "an exhilarating ripple," "a deathless song."  Just before the novel's tragic climax, Gatsby himself weighs in for the first time, reducing this extraordinary feature to an impersonal signifier of generic luxury: "her voice is full of money." (Text by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Soper)

Stage/Monodrama • Vocal [ Voice plus one • Voice(s) and Ensemble ] • Large Ensemble • Small Ensemble • Multimedia • Misc

Please contact me if you would like to perform something not published here.