Mikylvxka Hllupo
Composed by Nicholas Bentz, Text by Robert Feng
For Bass Voice and Pierrot Ensemble
Mikylvxka Hllupo (2017) monodrama for bass voice and Pierrot Ensemble with music by Nick Bentz and text by Robert Ellsworth Feng.
"The text follows an unnamed speaker’s hallucinatory journey through its crests and troughs, reaching ecstatic highs and ultimately a sublimely horrifying descent into the dark plains of the human un-conscience as they come face to face with an incomprehensible terror.
The piece travels along this mental odyssey as the speaker unravels their consciousness and is exposed to rapturously illuminating beings, but then is led to a cataclysmic realm of unheralded dismay and unadulterated monstrosities . . .
Mixing [inspirations from H.P. Lovecraft’s various works and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House] with Robert’s original text yields what I hope is a piece steeped in a sense of contrasting euphoria and horror, meaning and non-meaning, and the sublime." - Nicholas Bentz
To contact the composer, please visit http://www.nicholasbentz.net
Painting by Robert Ellsworth Feng
Premiere: November 2017 at Peabody Conservatory
Length: 15 Minutes
Premiere Ensemble:
Robert Ellsworth Feng, bass
Lily Josefsberg, flute
Andrew Im, clarinet
Shannon Fitzhenry, violin
Kahler Suzuki, cello
Aaron Thacker, piano
Alan Buxbaum, conductor