Cutting Edge Concerts Presents The World Premiere of Eric Salzman's Opera BIG JIM & THE SMALL TIME INVESTORS

On Monday, April 9 at 7:30 pm at Symphony Space, Victoria Bond's Cutting Edge Concerts New Music Festival, Gramercy Opera, and Quog Music Theater, Inc. present the world premiere staged production of the late Eric Salzman's Big Jim & the Small-time Investors. It's the first event of Cutting Edge Concerts 21st season, which continues with performances by Sybarite5 with shakuhachi player James Nyoraku Schlefer (April 16), Hub New Music (April 23), and Cygnus Ensemble (April 30). Details are below.

In Big Jim & the Small-time Investors, the title character claims to have invented a virtual reality machine that allows users to experience their wildest fantasies. A charismatic genius, Jim is also an ambitious L.A. business man who walks the line between con-man and cult leader. As he lures Small-Time Investors into his operation, his plan starts to spiral out of control, threatening to ruin the Investors and promising disaster for his wife and assistant.

With a libretto by Ned Jackson, and conducted by Victoria Bond, Big Jim & the Small-time Investors is Salzman's last major work and his only true opera. The work gets to the heart of Salzman's ideals and encapsulates our current epoch, where perception and technology are tools in a battle for the modern mind.

Composer and music critic Eric Salzman died in his Brooklyn home in November, 2017. Beginning in the 1960's, he composed exploratory works, many of them created collaboratively, that mixed music, text, dance and other elements in ways not generally seen on mainstream stages. More about Eric Salzman is in a tribute in the The New York Times.

Over the course of 20 years, Cutting Edge Concerts has presented 304 new works by 191 composers on 65 concerts. Each program highlights the music of living composers, all of whom attend the concert. Along with performances by world-class ensembles and soloists, each program features on-stage discussions between host Victoria Bond and the composers.

Inspired by Pierre Boulez's series, "Perspective Encounters", the composer and conductor Victoria Bond founded Cutting Edge Concerts in 1998. CEC has been called "a full-throttle commitment to contemporary music" by Chamber Music America.

CEC's 2018 season will take place at Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Peter Norton Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at 95th Street on the upper west side of Manhattan). Tickets are $20 in advance ($30 day of show) and are available at SymphonySpace.org.

Tickets are $20 in advance ($30 day of show) and are available at symphonyspace.org