“Everyone will now be too far away,” a character quietly sings in Aaron Siegel’s new “Rainbird.” It’s a softly shattering summary of what death does. That line stuck in my mind during the work that followed excerpts from “Rainbird” on the program Thursday evening at Roulette in Brooklyn: “The Nubian Word for Flowers,” a new opera by Pauline Oliveros left unfinished when she died, just over a year ago. Ms. Oliveros was a beloved maverick, an electronic-music pioneer who turned to an earthy brand of conceptualism focused on meditative listening, improvisation and text-based “scores” that anyone could follow. For at least a few minutes, I thought as the performance began, everyone wasn’t now too far away. PhotoKitchener (the clear, evocative Michael Weyandt), in some state between death and life, ends up on a dreamlike version of the Nile River island that would later bear his name.

Source: New York Times December 01, 2017 17:50 UTC