MATA Presents at Carnegie Hill Concerts

MATA Presents at Carnegie Hill Concerts
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 at 7:30 PM

AZALEA TWINING Enough Rope (2023-2025) World Premiere

Azalea Twining, Soprano
Sebastian Grinberg-Bly, Piano
A new song-cycle

ANNA HEFLIN: The Wonderland Series (2019)

Shannon Reilly, Violin/Vocals
a one-act opera for singing/acting violinist
by Anna Heflin
for Shannon Reilly

Featuring:

Anna Heflin - composer, librettist, director, videographer
Shannon Reilly - acting violinist in the roles of Scholar, Charles Dodgson, Alice, Queen(s), Flowers
Katie Weissman - animal handler, bird trainer, rabbit keeper
Evan Courtin - electronic track support
Molly the cat - Dinah

Enough Rope (2023-2025) is a song cycle of miniatures set to poems from Dorothy Parker’s collection of the same name. I first came across Parker’s poetry the Summer after graduating High School and instantly fell in love with her writing. Concise and cutting, yet sensitive–her  work articulated my own experiences and feelings, so I began composing while reading. I chose six poems: “Prophetic Soul,” “The Thin Edge,” “Anecdote,” “The Small Hours,” “Portrait of the Artist,” and “August” to string together into a song cycle which describes the protagonist's loss of a relationship and identity, followed by her struggle to reclaim and grow into herself through the restorative properties of her artistic process.

Anna Heflin’s The Wonderland Series (2019) is “fascinating and impossibly concise…a dense, 33-minute fever dream in which music is fully integrated in a one-woman play that investigates numerous facets of author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s life and his work under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.” (Roc City News) In this opera for singing/acting violinist Shannon Reilly, Reilly is joined onstage by accompanying pre-recorded audio and video, all of which features her portraying the various characters. There are three layers to the piece: the music which is inspired by Lewis Carroll’s writings, scholarly research about the work and Carroll, and the character of Lewis Carroll himself (i.e. Charles Dodgson) which uses quotes from the author. After falling into Wonderland, the listener will encounter Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson, The Scholar, Alice, The Queen, the Garden of Live Flowers, the Playing Cards, Dinah the Cat and others over the course of their journey. Themes in the work include Dodgson’s campaign against voter manipulation, his obsession with 42 and its relevance to Christianity and the Jabberwocky, the Carroll/Dodgson split identity, how Darwin’s work influenced Alice in Wonderland and more.

Host or Publisher MATA Festival