Melancholy Is Like a Plume of Smoke Aliana de la Guardia & Maja Tremiszewska

• Gordon Eagle:
• 1 Blear Pity 03:46
• 2 Feeling of Dreams 04:30
• 3 Melancholy Is Like a Plume of Smoke 04:10
• 4 Sister's Awareness 04:19
• 5 Tenderness That Passes Through Ages 03:38
• Total Runtime 20:23

Info for Melancholy Is Like a Plume of Smoke

“A poet who composes,” Chinese artist Gordon Eagle presents cross-cultural sounds and styles in his music for soprano and piano. MELANCHOLY IS LIKE A PLUME OF SMOKE features a collection of five songs with music and lyrics penned by Eagle. This new Ravello Records album mingles ancient Chinese poetic traditions and Western sounds in one forward-thinking recording.

MELANCHOLY IS LIKE A PLUME OF SMOKE presents five concise poems, most divided into quatrains with lines no more than a few words in length. This brevity belies the imagery bursting from each word. Eagle’s lyrics reflect Chinese poetry styles which favors harmony of tone, evocative images, and creating a state of mind. Each reflection on life, relationships, and the past is framed by the performances of soprano Aliana de la Guardia and pianist Maja Tremiszewska. Their deft handling of the tonal, melancholic melodies and short but image-packed phrases completes the atmosphere of this album.

Eagle’s debut Ravello Records album brings together old and new, East and West, poetry and music, all in one successful release.

Aliana de la Guardia, soprano
Maja Tremiszewska, piano

Aliana de la Guardia
As a co-founding artist an now Co-Artistic Director of the intrepid Boston-based Guerilla Opera, she has produced twenty-five newly commissioned operas with many lead roles tailor-made for her ferocious stage presence. Recent projects include the premiere of Hannah Lash’s Beowulf, in which she enraptured audiences with her “beautiful fragility and strength,” (I Care If You Listen) and the newly released Loose, Wet, Perforated by Nicholas Vines on Navona Records, an evocative opera in which de la Guardia “struts her stuff” (Opera News).

Other favorite new roles include the Doctor in Persona, based on the Ingmar Bergman film, by Keeril Makan and under the music direction of Evan Ziporyn with Beth Morison Projects, and the Voice in Oration by Line Tjönoi with the Center for Contemporary Opera under the music direction of Lidiya Yankovskaya. The Arts Fuse lauds de la Guardia’s “natural sound [as] lovely, as clear and powerful as grain alcohol.”

A consummate interpreter of new classical concert repertoire, she has enjoyed collaborations with many ensembles featuring today’s most eminent composers including “Scenes from a Novel” and “Kafka Fragments” with violinist Gabriela Diaz by György Kurtág, “Aspen Suite” by Salvatore Sciarrino and “Nenia: the Death of Orpheus” by Harrison Birtwistle conducted by Jeffery Means, and world premiere of “Earth Songs” by Ronald Perrera with New England Philharmonic, among others. She has enjoyed additional collaborations featuring today’s most eminent composers with American Lyric Theater, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston New Music Festival, Dinosaur Annex, Enigma Chamber Opera, Ludovico Ensemble, Monadnock Music, New Gallery Concert Series, the PARMA Festival, Transient Canvas, and Winsor Music, among others.

Specializing in new music and garnering skills as a theater artist make her especially fit for premiering new operas as well as genre-bending performance art, devised works and intimate performances such as with Mountain Time Arts and Atlas Unlimited. She has also been featured on television guest starring on ABC’s “Body of Proof.”

She was recently selected as a protégée for OPERA America’s Women’s Opera Network Mentorship Program for Women in Opera. She has been paired with Lee Anne Myslewski, Vice President of Opera and Classical Programming, Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in Vienna, VA. The Mentorship Program was created in 2018 to help advance the goals of the OPERA America Women’s Opera Network, an action-oriented affinity group dedicated to addressing and advancing gender parity in the opera field, and identifies the most promising up and coming female-identified leaders in the field of opera..

She is also the recipient of a Public Art Learning Fund grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. She is pursuing a custom-tailored mentorship program with Double Edge Theatre shadowing producing director Adam Bright and co-artistic director Carlos Uriona focused on the development and production of public art, events and community engagement. The Public Art Learning Fund provides grants to support professional development opportunities for New England artists to strengthen their public art practices.

As an educator, she has been a featured artist at Harvard University, Lawrence Conservatory, Vermont College of Fine Arts, University of Memphis, and served on the performance faculty at Hubbard Hall Opera Theater for three seasons. Other guest speaking engagements include those sponsored by Boston Lyric Opera, Boston Singer’s Resource, the Classical Singer Convention, and the National Opera Association Convention.

She is the owner and founder of Dirty Paloma Voice Studio in Haverhill, MA, treasurer of Granite State National Association of Teachers of Singing, and is on the Haverhill Multicultural Festival 2020 planning committee. Aliana has a BM in vocal performance, emphasis in opera and an MM, vocal performance from the Boston Conservatory.

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