ROKSANA ZEINAPUR
"Wanting" An Improvised Opera performed with Maksim Velichkin at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles. Excerpts from Youkali by Kurt Weill, Soleil, fuis de ces lieux by Rameau and Se Pieta by Handel.
"The satisfaction of wanting, the surrender, the power of it taking control of your mind and guiding you through the flow of time with a singular focus. Complete obedience to the present moment because now is when I don't have what I want and I can define myself with all that lack, all that emptiness—I conform to it and gather emotional filigree until I have a garden full of crying fountains, wanting, wanting, wanting. I became a virtuoso. "
Approach Gesture Response, documentation from the premiere performance at Redcat in Los Angeles on March 8th 2020
Enigmatic soprano and performance maker Roksana Zeinapur plays herself playing a performer attempting to sing an aria. From a schizophrenic mother to the loneliness of twilight to the humorous absurdity inherent in anonymous sex, Artist Barnett Cohen, poetically explores the interstice through which emotional pain passes from the interior of being into the light of performance
“The Central Mountain and The Central Mountain is Everywhere” is an ongoing body of collaborative performance sculptures which stem from a mystical vision of Universal Subjectivity created by American sculptor and musician Conrad Freiburg.
“Central Mountain Eleven” for the 11th staging of this ongoing series, created in collaboration with soprano Roksana Zeinapur and performed at Mimoda Studio in Los Angeles.
Amarilli Mia Bella is a live improvisation created by Roksana Zeinapur, Maksim Velichkin and Liza Barskaya, using Caccini's Amarilli Mia Bella as a musical springboard. Performed at Mimoda Studio.
"Theodora", an improvisation created using Handel's "In darkness deep as is my woe" from Theodora. Performed at Paloma Studio in Los Angeles with Maksim Velichkin at the piano.
"With darkness deep, as is my woe,
Hide me, ye shades of night;
Your thickest veil around me throw,
Congealed from human sight.
Or come thou, death, thy victim save,
Kindly embosomed in the grave." Thomas Morell