Composer and musician Paola Prestini – awarded by the Accademia di Cultura Americana – presents her multimedia project Houses of Zodiac: Poems for Cello: an immersive live / installation in which music, word, movement and image all explore the intersection between mind, body and nature. Created in collaboration with filmmaker Murat Eyuboglu and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler- a former member of the Kronos Quartet- Prestini combines texts by Anaïs Nin, Pablo Neruda, Brenda Shaughnessy and Natasha Trethewey, uniting the most disparate worlds and imaginings and reflecting on the themes of being, becoming, solitude, communion and freedom.
“On the album, Prestini’s gorgeous and mysterious, hypnotically complex compositions, performed by Zeigler with daredevil intensity and a kind of surgical “mad doctor” precision, are presented alongside thematically crucial “interludes”—brief passages of recited poetry, spoken aloud, inventively underscored..with vocals by the sensational Inuk folksinger Tanya Tagaq. ” Strings Magazine
Houses of Zodiac mixes various art forms to explore the intersection of mind, body, and nature. The ground-breaking, experimental production “brings word, movement, music, and image together to illuminate from within the verses of four poets: Pablo Neruda, Brenda Shaughnessy, Natasha Trethewey, and Anais Nin,” the creators explain in a helpful program note. – Total Theatre Review
