Tom Baker Music

Wings (in progress)

Live Recording from the premiere (2013)

Electronic Opera in Three Acts
for Four Voices (Two Sopranos, Two Mezzo-Sopranos) and Electronics

Premiere: Act 1  - April 2013, Poncho Concert Hall, Cornish Music Series - Natalie Lerch, soprano; Gretchen Conrad, soprano; Tom Baker, electronics.

PDF SCORE

PROGRAM NOTES

Wings Act I (2013) 
excerpts from an electronic opera

ACT I
1. Prologue
2. I Dream
3. If You Could Have Wings, Would You Want Them? 

Wings is an electronic opera in four acts, each reflecting on a different manifestation of the human obsession with flight. Act I is called Wings, and profiles a well-respected plastic surgeon, Dr. Jane Rose, who is secretly convinced that her work should be concerned with much more than nose jobs and breast augmentation. She has radical ideas about extensions of the human body; she feels that only through bodily augmentation can we become whole, or more than whole. In these songs, she presents her ideas, and interviews a prospective patient. 

The texts are compiled from the Guide to the Plastic Surgery Exit Exam, an article from Harper’s by Lauren Slater, and the poem Wings, by Susan Stewart.

Live Recoding:
Natalie Lerch: Dr. Jane Rose, soprano
Gretchen Conrad: Patient X, soprano
Tom Baker, live-electronics