esperanza spalding / Wayne Shorter
… (IPHIGENIA)
Dates
sun 22 nov 2026 - 20:00
location
Blauwe zaal
price
€ 10 → 50
Experience (…) IPHIGENIA by Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding as a new opera.
With … (IPHIGENIA), Wayne Shorter (1933–2023) and esperanza spalding reimagined one of the oldest tales from the Western canon. Shorter was hailed by The New York Times as "jazz’s greatest living composer." Together with spalding, he created not a classical adaptation but an intervention - into the myth, into music, into opera itself.
Jazz and classical music merge in an orchestral score that remains in constant motion. Shorter's symphonic improvisation takes centre stage. This is music as something that emerges, shifts, and defies fixed forms.
Iphigenia does not appear as a single character but as a multiplicity. Her voice is shared, fragmented, and borne by a chorus of bodies on stage. Not an isolated heroine, but a collective that speaks back.
This opera stares the history of the genre in the face - and refuses to repeat it. Gone are the aesthetics of suffering. Gone are women dying in perfect harmony.
In the end, Shorter and spalding turn their gaze outward, beyond the stage. What are we creating today, at this precise moment, now that different stories are necessary?
Jazz and classical music merge in an orchestral score that remains in constant motion. Shorter's symphonic improvisation takes centre stage. This is music as something that emerges, shifts, and defies fixed forms.
Iphigenia does not appear as a single character but as a multiplicity. Her voice is shared, fragmented, and borne by a chorus of bodies on stage. Not an isolated heroine, but a collective that speaks back.
This opera stares the history of the genre in the face - and refuses to repeat it. Gone are the aesthetics of suffering. Gone are women dying in perfect harmony.
In the end, Shorter and spalding turn their gaze outward, beyond the stage. What are we creating today, at this precise moment, now that different stories are necessary?
Works
... (IPHIGENIA)
Credits
composition, orchestration
libretto, Iphigenia of the Open Tense
musical direction, orchestration, arrangements
musical performance
Usher
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