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Black Mountain Songs (2014)

At North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, erstwhile commune and artistic playground of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg and many others, a spirit of radical democracy prevailed. Students and teachers shared roles and work, boundaries between disciplines dissolved, and art bled into life, nurturing an atmosphere of unfettered creative collaboration.

In Black Mountain Songs, performed by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, commissioned and produced by BAM and Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and curated by Bryce Dessner and Richard Reed Parry, that collective thread is renewed. Seven composers—Dessner, Parry, Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Aleksandra Vrebalov, John King, and Tim Hecker—collaborate with filmmaker Matt Wolf (Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) to create an expansive choral and visual work that celebrates and rekindles Black Mountain’s utopian spirit.

Creator - Bryce Dessner
Co-curators - Bryce Dessner & Richard Reed Parry
Director - Maureen Towey
Music composers - Jherek Bischoff, Bryce Dessner, Tim Hecker, John King, Nico Muhly, Richard Reed Parry, Caroline Shaw, and Aleksandra Vrebalov
Choreographer - Jenny Shore Butler
Filmmaker - Matt Wolf
Set designer - Mimi Lien
Costume designer - Sarah Maiorino
Lighting designer - Ben Stanton
Sound designer - Jamie McElhinney
Video & projection designer - Grant McDonald
Dramaturgy - Anne Erbe

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