Ben Frost: Cold Air Rises
World premiere (first section of forthcoming opera) commissioned by The Great Northern
Performed by MPLS (imPulse)
With dancer Amanda Sachs
Libretto by Robert Macfarlane
In partnership with Minnesota Opera’s Luminary Arts Center and American Composers Forum
Sat, Feb 4, 2 pm & 4 pm
Luminary Arts Center
Drawing upon J.A. Baker’s prophetic 1967 book The Peregrine, Australia-born/Iceland-based artist Ben Frost presents a new choral performance and installation Cold Air Rises. This new work in development is a collaboration with acclaimed British nature writer Robert Macfarlane. Local ensemble MPLS (imPulse) and dancer Amanda Sachs will perform this first movement of what will eventually form Frost's next opera, commissioned by The Great Northern at Minnesota Opera’s newly renovated Luminary Arts Center. Join us for a sound experience like none other, a beautiful story of obsession and transformation.
Ben Frost is a composer, producer, sound artist, and director. His work includes the studio albums Theory of Machines (2007), By The Throat (2009), A U R O R A (2014) and The Centre Cannot Hold (2017) and spans an array of other forms including installations, live performance, scores for dance, theatre, and various studio collaborations. He has composed several scores for film including the Palme d’Or-nominated Sleeping Beauty, the series Dark, 1899, and Raised By Wolves with director Ridley Scott. Frost has collaborated extensively with the Irish artist Richard Mosse and American cinematographer Trevor Tweeten to produce three multi-channel video and sound installations: The Enclave (2013) and Incoming (2017) and Broken Spectre (2022). He has written and directed two operas The Wasp Factory (2013) and The Murder of Halit Yozgat (2021)—a collaboration with research agency Forensic Architecture. In recent years Frost has expanded his work to include several installation projects, focussing on pure exploitation of the physical properties of sound.
MPLS (imPulse) is a fully professional festival chamber chorus based in Minneapolis. Founded in 2014 by Samuel Grace, the ensemble re-imagines the traditional choir through creative collaborations, narrative style programming, and engaging audiences in the most diverse and unusual spaces they can find. Audience members describe their performances as “an experience.” For them, simply performing music isn’t enough. MPLS (imPulse) is proud to connect and engage new and seasoned audience members to the choral art through their programming.
Image by Bill Cameron
Amanda Sachs grew up in New Jersey studying R.A.D. before moving to San Francisco for the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program. In 2014, Amanda joined The Francesca Harper Project in NYC, and in 2017 she joined TU Dance in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the direction of Toni Pierce-Sands and Uri Sands where she performed Alvin Ailey’s solo Witness and in the ensemble piece Night Creature, Walking with Pearl…Africa Diaries by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and many other works. She is an original member of Come Through, the Liquid Music produced collaboration between Grammy-award-winning musician Bon Iver and TU Dance, which toured to the Hollywood Bowl, the King’s Theatre, and the Kennedy Center, among others. Amanda performed internationally with Metamorphosis Dance under the direction of Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich, and has assisted Uri Sands and Francesca Harper during choreographic residencies. She is featured in Bon Iver’s Naeem and We lyric videos, and has performed at Bonnaroo and Eaux Claires music festivals. Amanda joined NW Dance Project in Portland, Oregon under the direction of Sarah Slipper in 2021, where she performed works by Ihsan Rustem, Yin Yue, Joseph Hernandez, Sarah Slipper, Yoshito Sakuraba. She will be joining the Lyric Opera for their production of Carmen this spring choreographed by Stephanie Martinez. Amanda has performed locally with Hatch Dance and Honeyworks Live @ The Shed productions and is thrilled to be part of The Great Northern performing Ashwini Ramaswamy's Invisible Cities at the Cowles as well as Cold Air Rises with music by Ben Frost.
Robert Macfarlane is the author of internationally best-selling books about nature, people, and place including Underland (2019), Landmarks (2015), The Old Ways (2012), and, with artist Jackie Morris, The Lost Words (2017) and The Lost Spells (2020). His work has been translated into 30 languages, and widely adapted for music, stage, film, radio, and television. Over recent years he’s worked increasingly with musicians including Johnny Flynn, Cosmo Sheldrake, the Spell Songs ensemble, writing for opera, choir, and song. Macfarlane is presently writing Is A River Alive?, about the rights of nature movement and the new-old idea that the world is far more alive than is often allowed. In 2017 in New York he was awarded the EM Forster Prize for Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Special thanks to Dr. Tom von Sternberg and Eve Parker for their generous support of this work.
Specialty cocktail offering by Vikre Distillery:
At the performance, enjoy Vikre Distillery’s Cold Air Rises-inspired cocktail “The Pear-egine”—with pear infused Vikre Aquavit, Vikre Spruce gin, pear vermouth, Vikre Herbal Liqueur, sage syrup, and lime.
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