ADORATION
Alan Pierson, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Silvana Quartet
FOR YOUR
GRAMMY® CONSIDERATION
Best Opera Recording
Best Engineered Album, Classical
Daniel Neumann
The Harry Belafonte Best Song for Social Change
This Time of Year by Mary Kouyoumdjian
ABOUT
LISTEN
Adoration is the world premiere live recording of an electroacoustic chamber opera by composer Mary Kouyoumdjian and librettist Royce Vavrek, adapted from Atom Egoyan’s film of the same name. Produced by Beth Morrison Projects, the work follows a high school student whose fictional story about a terrorist plot goes viral, unpacking how grief, racism, and media distortion collide to obscure the truth. Conducted by Alan Pierson, the cast features Miriam Khalil, Omar Najmi, David Adam Moore, and Grammy Award winner Karim Sulayman, alongside Naomi Louisa O’Connell and Marc Kudisch. They are joined by the Grammy-nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street under Thomas McCargar, the Silvana Quartet, and sound designer Daniel Neumann, with electronics by Kouyoumdjian.
MARY Kouyoumdjian, composer
Photo Credit: Desmond White
I believe that artists are the speakers of difficult truths. As a member of a family displaced from both the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, I consider my freedom of expression here in the United States to be an immense privilege, and so I am drawn to stories that are both challenging to confront and to speak––stories that examine the darkest moments in our history, create space to listen to our minds’ most hushed thoughts, and to connect with complicated and incredibly human characters who reflect complex positions in our society. Filmmaker Atom Egoyan has created such a story with his film Adoration, and I am incredibly grateful to have spent the last several years living in this wonderfully challenging space in adapting his film into an opera.
While Egoyan’s film was released in 2008, its commentary on religious and ethnic differences and prejudices is all too timely. Our world continues to be fractured over unresolved multi-generational traumas that can cause horrifying divisions, globally and often in the closeness of our own families; however, like the story behind Adoration, individuals and communities, at their very best, also find beautiful ways through these divisions. Like the film, this opera is about big, complicated ideas around identity and our concealed biases that we all inherently have, but what I love most about Egoyan’s story is that these are all explored through the lens of a grieving family––these uncomfortable and larger-than-life ideas feel closer-to-home as we watch the characters move through immense psychological changes with their evolving grief. This family, like any other, invites you to empathize with them, for better or worse.
In addition to Egoyan’s film and my own family’s histories, my collaborators and dearest friends have been immense inspirations behind the world we have all created together for this opera. Librettist Royce Vavrek, director Laine Rettmer, creative producer Beth Morrison, music director Alan Pierson, and the entire extraordinary creative team have been working through these truly difficult ideas together and have somehow all been able to leave their own creative stamp on this project all while building the same stunningly strange project together. My immense gratitude goes out to all involved who have poured their hearts and creative energy into the sounds of this composer’s first opera––I adore you all so much. Royce, what an incredible gift for both of us to have grown up in different places in the world with Egoyan’s films as our creative compass. Thank you for your thoughtful words and for sharing this moment with me, friend.