Third Angle celebrates queer love and joy with Slipping Off the Petticoat: mezzo-soprano Hannah Penn is joined by pianist Maria Garcia for an evening of curated song and poetry at Curious Comedy Theater. The evening's program traces Penn’s personal journey through musical settings and recitations of femme poets Virginia Woolf, Jane Bowles, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Tatiana de la Tierra. The performance begins promptly at 7:30pm on October 4th and 5th and runs approximately 90 minutes with a brief intermission.
This show was born out of collaboration between Hannah Penn and Third Angle Artistic Director, Sarah Tiedemann, who writes, “So much vocal music is deeply intertwined with gender—voice types, ranges, roles, themes, texts, costumes. What percentage of the time do we need to hear a woman in a ballgown pine for a man? That doesn’t adequately represent the full breadth of our society or its artists. Hannah faces the musical patriarchy head-on, crafting a journey toward authentic personal expression and queer joy.”
The sung musical program for Slipping Off the Petticoat includes Dominic Argento’s Pulitzer Prize winning work, From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, which dramatically sets some of the poet’s most personal reflections; Eve Beglarian’s Farther from the heart which sets Jane Bowles’ poetry above waves of murmuring, muted piano; and selections from Sheila Silver’s Beauty Intolerable, which sets Edna St. Vincent Millay’s lyrical reflections on femininity in jazz-inspired songs. To accompany spoken recitations of poetry, Garcia will perform solo piano works by Johanny Navarro, Angélica Negrón, and Clarice Assad.
Hannah Penn maintains a diverse calendar that ranges from traditional opera to contemporary performance. She has appeared as a guest artist with Portland Opera many times, most notably as Julie in Show Boat and L’enfant in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges. Most recently she appeared with OrpheusPDX in their production of Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters.
This show is not the first time Third Angle has examined gender through vocal music. In 2018, Third Angle gave the West Coast premiere of Contralto, Sarah Hennies’ audio-video work which spotlights trans, gender nonconforming, and non-binary people’s existence through the process of retraining their voices. Oregon ArtsWatch called the program “a troubling sonic evocation of the difficult undercurrent running through the life-affirming experience of transition.”
Reserve your seats today at thirdangle.org.
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DATE & TIME: WED-THU, OCT 4-5, 2023 / 7:30 PM
TICKET PRICE $35 / $30 / $25 ($5 Arts for All)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Hannah Penn
Maria Garcia
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS
Dominic Argento
Eve Beglarian
Sheila Silver
Angélica Negrón
Johanny Navarro
Clarice Assad
ABOUT THE VENUE
Curious Comedy Theatre
ABOUT THIRD ANGLE NEW MUSIC
Third Angle’s mission is to perform, present, and record adventurous contemporary sonic works while commissioning new works from a diverse spectrum of composers.
Since its founding in 1985, Third Angle has created and presented more than 200 events, commissioned more than 90 new works, and released 15 recordings to critical acclaim. Sound of the Five: the chamber music of Chen Yi, was named a top 10 recording for 2009 by National Public Radio.
Third Angle’s roguish programming crafts experiences that are mind-altering by design, including concerts created to work in harmony or dissonance with their environment, wildly divergent repertoire, and a blending of the arts that redefines the genre.
At a Third Angle performance, you never know quite what will happen next.