Alone in the woods, a young man is pursued by a horrifying specter and by visions of his deceased sisters. A meditation on the precarious uncertainty of the American Dream and the role that uncontrollable forces play in our lives, The West is a Land of Infinite Beginnings is inspired by a harrowing scene from the opera Proving Up, by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek. 

Available January 15-29.

Pianist Jeremy Denk performs Missy Mazzoli’s Bolts of Loving Thunder as part of a streaming recital presented by Friends of Chamber Music. Available January 20-27.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra performs  Mazzoli’s Set That On Fire for chamber ensemble, which takes its title from a phrase used by the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, on their newly recorded New Beginnings video series. The performance will stream from January 28 through February 27.

Ensemble for These Times performs Mazzoli’s Heartbreaker for solo piano on their concert Rhapsody: Music by Women Composers at the San Francisco Center for New Music.

Stream here

From FEDORA:”The Listeners is an opera about our desperate desire to belong, our search for community and meaning, and the power of charismatic leaders who exploit these desires.

“A middle-class mother living in a southwestern US suburb notices a ‘hum,’ a high-frequency environmental noise that only a select few people, ‘the Listeners,’ can hear. A community organization quickly forms to solve the mystery of the hum, but when a de facto leader suggests a spiritual significance the meetings become increasingly cult-like, ritualized experiences. It becomes clear that this community of ‘Listeners’ is on a collision course of destruction.

“This opera examines the lengths to which we are willing to go in order to find a sense of place and purpose, and the way in which charismatic leaders can exploit these needs to their own ends. An enduring part of our American identity is a sense of deserved and inevitable success and happiness. When this imagined future collides with the realities and struggles of everyday life, dazzling and predatory leaders offering a ‘quick fix’ can easily prey on the vulnerabilities of the lonely and lost.”