The percussionist and composer shares a new film of footage from his free jazz opera which premiered online during lockdown
“It’s important for people to get confused” New York based musician Jessie Cox tells Peter Kalal in The Wire 457, “because to me that means often they leave the space of comfort or that which they already know.”
Cox's recent projects as a composer have incorporated themes such as nomadic space travel, cyborgification and hacking, and are often presented in ways which underscore their ideas. His compositions have appeared as instructional TV programmes, guided tours of the solar system and as telematic ensemble performances.
This video, created by film maker Adrien H Tillmann, is an exclusive edited version of Cox's opera As A Song of A World, made up of footage from rehearsals and performance. The opera premiered in 2020 during the COVID pandemic in a telematic form, over the internet and three continents, in collaboration with the Either/Or Ensemble. The opera, which the composer describes as “a free jazz opera”, features the drum set as the narrator, rather than a human voice.
The plot is centred around a species of nomads that developed, and re-develops, a technology which allows them to travel at and beyond the speed of light and so allows for migration through time and space via music. In Cox's own words: “This story is about looking for a myth, a technology, a way of interacting with the world that allows for a different story than death and life — in other words, how do we relate to living?”
Read more about Jessie Cox, his online projects and his latest release When You're A Star inside The Wire 457. Subscribers can also access the interview via the digital archive.
