32
OJAI MAGAZINE | SUMMER 2022
a Modern
by KAREN LINDELL
Opera
company
C
omposer-conductor-pianist Matthew Aucoin, co-founder of the American Modern Opera Company, known as AMOC (pronounced “amok,” as in “run amok”), describes opera as “the medium in which art forms collide and transform one another.” The moving parts in AMOC are its 17 artists: dancers, singers, musicians, writers, directors, composers, choreographers, and producers who mesh and mash to create new musical works and reshape classic ones. AMOC, which formed in 2017, is the musical director for the 76th Ojai Music Festival, taking place June 9–12. This will be the first time an interdisciplinary collective holds the position of music director, which changes every year, and only the second time an ensemble rather than an individual curates the festival (after Eighth Blackbird in 2009). Several of the performers in AMOC are previous Ojai Music Festival artists, including soprano Julia Bullock, cellist Jay Campbell, violinist Miranda Cuckson, flutist Emi Ferguson, and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Similar artists often work in a company together — singers in a chorus, musicians in a band or orchestra, dancers in a troupe — but these homogeneous groups don’t usually go the multidisciplinary route. For an opera or other production featuring multiple art forms, musicians, singers, actors, dancers, and others might come
A collision can be gentle, like two bubbles tapping skins in the air, or violent, like a speeding truck and train slamming together on a railroad track. In either case, all moving parties transfer energy and are transformed. Kind of like opera.
comes to
Ojai
