Samadhi-lila (2000-01) 80' for mezzo-soprano, actor, actress, three dancers, violin, clarinet, oboe/English horn, percussion, live electronics, tape

This is the multimedia opera I wrote at Yale. It was performed five times in April of 2001. Read a review of the performance here. It won the John Golden Prize at Yale for best musical and was a finalist in the 2002 Pete Carpenter Film Composing fellowship and the 2002 ASCAP Young Composers Awards.

Here is an exceprt from the synopsis I wrote for showing the opera to several theaters:

The title, Samadhi-lila, comes from two Sanskrit words, Samadhi, from Hinduism and Zen Buddhism meaning "the achievement of sameness or identity with the object of meditation," and Lila, meaning "dance" or "drama." It is the story of an accidental spiritual journey from this reality to another.

The person who undertakes this journey is a businessman, apparently successful, and who until recently has been thoroughly and unquestioningly engrossed in his work. In Scene 1, he is in a in a coffee shop with a woman, an old friend of his. The woman has been away for a while; they are catching up. She notices that he seems somehow different: distant, strange, no longer interested in his job. He describes a dream he has had, which has come as something of a revelation for him; he talks about a new, strange isolation he feels from the material world. There is little music in the scene at first, but as the two talk – as the man describes his dreams and feelings – disconnected fragments of the music from later scenes become more present. The scene ends as the man becomes more and more agitated about his current feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction with modern culture. As he makes his final speeches, the music crescendos behind him, and then ends abruptly.

Following the first scene is the first of two rituals. These rituals take place in an indeterminate location, at an indeterminate time. Dramatically, they act as brackets around the hyperreal or surreal events of the middle four scenes, separating them from the standard reality represented by outer two. In the first ritual, we see the mysterious woman for the first time. She is dressed in a full, strange regalia, and she sings in Sanskrit and Latin. She performs some kind of magic or ritual activity on the stage, and lights incense, which she holds before her as she sings. The stage is filled with fog and suffused with a soft glow. She prays before an altar, and moves very slowly to face the audience only in the last section of the scene.

In the second scene, the mysterious woman now wears the blue blazer of an airline attendant, and stands behind a check-in counter. The man enters. He looks somewhat more haggard than he did previously. The man wants to book a flight to Tibet, but doesn't want to wait even for a flight that would leave the next day. During their conversation, the man speaks as if he is having a normal conversation, but all of the woman's replies are sung; she is the only character in the work that sings, and she sings exclusively. After a few strange questions, she tells him that she knows what he needs and that his flight "leaves in half an hour from gate G3." The man never learns where the flight goes, but he acquiesces to get on it.

The third scene takes place in another airport, where the man disembarks. The mysterious woman is there as well, and she greets the man, who is confused to see her there. She makes no sign of recognizing him. She tells that he that he "needs to get ready." He is hungry, and wants to find somewhere to eat, but every time that he tries to go towards one of the things that he sees – a newsstand, a restaurant – he sees it disappear. The woman explains to him that needs to let go of "the pictures in his mind." The airport dissolves.

The fourth and fifth scenes are basically wordless. At the beginning of the fourth scene, the mysterious woman leaves, and the luminous beings appear. These parts are played by the dancers, and although they never speak, we hear their strange alien speech as part of the electronic music. Speakers behind the audience, which have up to this point never been used, start sounding, and the ethereal voices travel around the room. The luminous beings are dressed in bodysuits, and every inch of skin – on hands, feet, neck, and face – is painted in psychedelic patterns with flourescent bodypaint. Furthermore, they wear strands of electroluminescent wire, so that when the lights are black, we see them as blue lines moving through space. At first they move slowly, and the man is entranced by them. They move around him, and speak to him, and they won't let him touch them. Finally, they make him sit on the floor, and they dance for him. After the first dance of the luminous beings, the blacklights are turned on, and the room is transfigured; patterns emerge across ceiling and walls, and the beings truly glow.

In the fifth scene, the luminous beings leave, and the world becomes frightening; the man is lost, confused, cold, and scared. Eventually, the luminous beings and the mysterious woman return, but are now sinister in aspect. Their voices are transformed into demonic laughter, and they begin slowly, to dance around the man, in circles. This dance speeds up until it becomes a wild frenzy, with the mysterious woman singing at him accusingly in a language he cannot understand. As the music and energy build, the lights dim, until there is cacophony and blackness. Then, abruptly, the music stops and the whole performance space is flooded with blindingly bright white light. The man falls to his knees, stares at something above the audience, and says "It's so beautiful." The lights dim, and a soft electronic music plays. A luminous being enters, whispers her strange language in his ear, and takes the man's head on her lap. He sleeps.
Following the fifth scene is the second ritual. Here the mysterious woman conducts a ritual paralleling the first one. The luminous beings stand around the audience, playing singing bowls. Musically, this ritual is a fragmented echo of the first one.

In the sixth scene, we are back in reality – or almost back. We are in the coffee shop again, and the man is talking to the same woman that he saw in the first scene. She had been very worried about him, as he disappeared for several days right after their last meeting. He tries to explain to her what happened, but the memories are difficult for him to hold on to. The experience has changed him somehow, but it is hard to articulate how. During his speeches, the mysterious woman enters unseen, and stands behind him, singing wordlessly. She retreats after a bit, and returns, now visible, wearing a waitress's apron. She asks the man and his friend whether they would like anything more to drink. The man is struck by her appearance, but her response to him is ambiguous. The show ends.