David T. Little's GRAMMY-Nominated Opera Film BLACK LODGE to Stream Live

"Electric Cerberus," a new video from composer David T. Little's GRAMMY Award-nominated opera Black Lodge is newly available today. With libretto by celebrated poet Anne Waldman and performances by Timur and the Dime Museum and Isaura String Quartet, Black Lodge is nominated for Best Opera Recording - a powerful statement on the evolving opera landscape and the impact of new forms on the genre. The album was released in June 2023 on Cantaloupe Music.

On Thursday, December 28, 2023 at 6:00pm PT / 9:00pm ET, the artists will present a special holiday viewing of the full Black Lodge film, streamed live on YouTube. The opera's 78-minute film version was produced during the pandemic by director Michael Joseph McQuilken and Beth Morrison Projects and had its world premiere with live music at Opera Philadelphia during the Festival O22 in October 2022. In 2025, productions of Black Lodge will be staged in New York City and Los Angeles, and the work will receive its European debut.

Black Lodge is set in a nightmarish Bardo, a place between death and rebirth. The work follows a tormented writer (identified as the "Man") as he confronts demons of his own making, in search of escape. Little describes "Electric Cerberus" as "a fever dream of fractured revelation, in which the Man grasps at fragmented texts for meaning, trying both to understand the strange world he finds himself in, and futilely seeking a way out. Pursued by his demons - here embodied by the image of a howling Cerberus, a mythical three-headed dog that guards the underworld to prevent the dead from escaping - 'Electric Cerberus' represents the Man's first step on his Bardo-journey, which continues throughout the work."

Drawing on the complex mythologies of such artists as William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch) and David Lynch (Twin Peaks), Black Lodge fuses industrial metal and punk with classical string quartet and opera to create something wildly vivid and new. Writing on the premiere of the art film adaptation, The New York Times' Zachary Woolfe commented that "...the music embraces Little's longstanding interest in the grittier side of pop, the dark, pounding industrial 'nu metal' style of (I'll date myself) Slipknot, Korn and System of a Down." Others will pick up influences ranging from Nine Inch Nails and The Cure to Monteverdi, Mozart, and Mahler.

While Black Lodge echoes the dark, existential feel of previous David T. Little projects - Dog Days, Haunt of Last Nightfall, Soldier Songs - this new work leans into a new beauty that Little describes in his album notes. "I was seeking something beautiful in Black Lodge," he writes, "though deep down I still believed Burroughs' notion that 'you have to live in hell to see heaven.' I now see that I had both written myself into and out of that hell. In going through it, I found a new and healthier way of being that I didn't consciously know I was seeking - a resolution the Man in Michael Joseph McQuilken's artful screenplay is not granted."

Little's opera Soldier Songs, also produced as a film and presented by Opera Philadelphia, was nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording in the 64th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2022.

Black Lodge Viewing Information
Thursday, December 28, 2023 at 6:00pm PT / 9:00pm ET
Watch Live at www.youtube.com/davidtlittle

About the Artists
David T. Little - www.davidtlittle.com
Anne Waldman - www.annewaldman.org
Timur and the Dime Museum: www.theoperaoftimur.com, www.timurandthedimemuseum.com
Isaura String Quartet: www.isaurastringquartet.com

Black Lodge Tracklist

David T. Little/Anne Waldman - Black Lodge
1. Magic Pain [1:51]
2. Electric Cerberus [6:09]
3. Punishment Deserved [7:17]
4. My Childhood [5:26]
5. The Hungry Ghost who Sings in Lamentation [3:51]
6. The Strange Light in the Lodge [2:38]
7. Premonition of the Worm [0:31]
8. You Find a Severed Ear in a Field [4:17]
9. Petrograd, 1917 [4:45]
10. Here, my Severed Digit (part 1) [2:05]
11. Here, my Severed Digit (part 2) [3:52]
12. The Warring Gods [2:27]
13: A Theory of Puncture [4:20]
14. Introduction to the God Realm of the Shamans [1:07]
15. Old Shaman on the Wheel [5:21]
16. Coming at You through Frames of Sleep [6:42]Total time: 1:02:39

Album Credits

Soundtrack produced by David T. Little, Andrew McKenna Lee and Beth Morrison
Edited and mixed by Andrew McKenna Lee at Still Sound Music, East Chatham, NY
Mastered by Reuben Cohen at Lurssen Mastering, Burbank, CA
Recorded by Jim Lang, Knobworld, Los Angeles, CA and Tommy Simpson, Macroscopik Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Additional recording by: Matthew Setzer, David Tranchina, Daniel Corral, Andrew McKenna Lee, Michael Joseph McQuilken, David T. Little
Film originally produced by Beth Morrison Projects
Executive Producers: Beth Morrison and Thurston Moore

*Photo courtesy of Beth Morrison Projects

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