State of Minnesota

Isanti

Cambridge

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The mission of AMOC, founded in 2017 by Matthew Aucoin and Zack Winokur, is to build and share a body of collaborative work. As a group of dancers, singers, musicians, writers, directors, composers, choreographers, and producers united by a core set of values, AMOC artists pool their resources to create new pathways that connect creators and audiences in surprising and visceral ways. 


“…revitalizing what American music theater can mean with several of our most revolutionary young talents” - The Los Angeles Times 
“…blindingly impressive… preternaturally talented” - The New York Times


Most recently, AMOC served as Music Director for the 2022 Ojai Music Festival–the second ensemble and first explicitly interdisciplinary company to hold the position in OMF's 75-year history. Over the Festival's four days, AMOC offered 18 performances, eight world premieres, and six new theatrical productions.

“Everything for AMOC is sacred in that it needs to perform at the highest level, but nothing is so sacred that it can’t be rethought musically, socially, racially, sexually, theatrically, physically” - The LA Times
“Many in the arts these days talk a big game about interdisciplinary collaboration, but few walk the walk like AMOC” - The New York Times
“gloriously raucous” - The New Yorker

In July 2022, AMOC premiered a new production of Harawi at Festival d'Aix, an affecting interpretation of Olivier Messiaen’s song cycle that breaks open its explorations of love and death into a newly physicalized and theatrical dimension. AMOC’s 2022-2023 season will also see the world premiere of Bobbi Jene Smith’s Broken Theater, presented in partnership with New Dialect and Carolina Performing Arts; the New York premieres of Carolyn Chen’s How to Fall Apart and Anthony Cheung’s the echoing of tenses; and the world premiere of Comet Poppea at the Spoleto Festival USA, which includes an AMOC-commissioned opera by composer George Lewis.
 
Past projects include The No One's Rose, a devised music-theater-dance piece; EASTMAN, a multi-dimensional performance piece contending with the life and work of Julius Eastman; a new arrangement of John Adams's El Niño; and With Care and A Study on Effort, which have been produced at San Francisco's ODC Theater, Toronto's Luminato Festival, and elsewhere. CAGE, a production of John Cage's music for prepared piano, was cited as the best recital of the year by The New York Times in 2018 and The Boston Globe in 2019. In its inaugural year, AMOC created the Run AMOC! Festival at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA. The company has appeared at the 92nd Street Y, Big Ears Festival, the Caramoor Festival, National Sawdust, The Clark Art Institute, and the San Diego Symphony. AMOC has been in residence at the Park Avenue Armory and Harvard University.

VALUES

NEW WORK: We focus on the creation of new work. When we do engage with a canon of existing works, we ensure that we are adding new dimensions and perspectives to it.
POWER IN THE COLLECTIVE: We value the artistic agency and individual contributions of every company member, and we create work that is explicitly made possibly by the multi-disciplinary perspectives and accumulated learning we have fostered as a company. When a given project requires a hierarchical structure, we examine that structure and make sure it is being deployed appropriately for the project at hand.
FELLOWSHIP: We invest in holistic engagement and deep relationships among our artists. Our process promotes distributed authorship and varied forms of engagement across all artists and disciplines.
PARTNERSHIP: We recognize the limits of our knowledge, and because of this, we value relationships and collaborations with artists and other partners outside the company. When we engage with outside partners, we respect their contributions and welcome them fully into the creative process.
APPROACH TO AUDIENCE: We believe that the context in which an audience experiences a work is as important as the work’s content, and so we strive to create pathways to entry for our work.
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS: We ask what the intended outcome is of each work that we create as a company. We come to a consensus that the work at hand does not harm, and that it communicates clearly.
SUSTAINABILITY: We are a company that is generative and re-generative in its core values, creative process, and membership, and that strives to nurture, create, document, and reflect on a body of work.

American Modern Opera Company (AMOC) / Photos

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