Airline Icarus

Product Description

Leading young Canadian composer Brian Current, recipient of numerous distinguished international prizes, has collaborated with award-winning writer Anton Piatigorsky in an exciting work for voice and accompanying ensemble. Airline Icarus is set aboard an airliner in which, taking the myth of Icarus as the central image, the composer "explores themes of hubris mixed with technology". The result is a powerful, resonant work which won Current the Italian Premio Fedora Award in 2011.

Review

"The opera's award-winning composer, conductor and music director, Brian Current, presents a cohesive vision for this impressive, multi-layered work that incorporates the myth of Icarus, whose wings melted after flying too close to the sun. It serves as a reminder that our technological advances can have devastating results." --Dr. Rea Beaumont, The Whole Note, December 2014

"Airline Icarus," a punchy, emotionally redolent chamber opera by Canadian composer Brian Current, joins the list of artworks you might not want to encounter at 30,000 feet. But heard safely on the ground, this 45-minute one-acter is full of inventive writing and an elusive dramatic flavor that comes through even without staging. Anton Piatigorsky's contrapuntal libretto tracks the thoughts and interactions of several passengers on a flight to Cleveland that hits turbulence and comes to an ambiguously bad end. The characters flirt, make small talk and consider whether air travel is inherently an act of hubris, and all the while Current's bright, inventive score both depicts the action and gets at an underlying layer of anxiety. In the score's crowning moment, the pilot unleashes a long, rapturous aria that absolutely soars. This premiere recording, conducted by the composer, provides a fine introduction to the piece." --Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Gate, December 2014

"2015 Juno Award Winner: Classical Composition of the Year"
--Juno Awards, 2015

"Airline Icarus, Canadian composer Brian Current's edgy new chamber opera with a shape-shifting libretto by Anton Piatigorsky, traffics in dualities - the mythic and the mundane, the sublime and the terrifying, and the dangerous combination of hubris and technology...The penultimate track is an ethereal "Pilot's Aria," first solemnly and then soaringly intoned by baritone Alexander Dobson...Current, who also conducts the performance, has the skill to make the most of the contrapuntal implications of Piatigorsky's colorful and resonant libretto." --Joshua Rosenblum, Opera News, June 2015