Tanglewood Recital Series: Music for New Bodies 

American Modern Opera Company (AMOC)
Matthew Aucoin, conductor
Staged by Peter Sellars
Meryl Dominguez, soprano 
Taylor Raven, mezzo-soprano
Paul Appleby, tenor 

Matthew AUCOIN Music for New Bodies 
(Libretto based on poetry by Jorie Graham, selected by Matthew Aucoin and Peter Sellars) 

Matthew Aucoin’s Music for New Bodies (2024) is an uncategorizable work of music-theater: part opera, part song cycle, part vocal symphony. Based on poetry by Jorie Graham, the piece is a portrait of our moment in history as seen through the eyes of a cancer patient undergoing a drastic medical procedure. As the patient experiences the transformation of her own body, she meditates on questions that range from the personal to the cosmic: in a time when life is more and more virtual, what does it mean to have a body? And above all, after our species has poisoned the planet with uncountable toxins, can we still listen to what the earth has to tell us?