The Haunting Of Alvin Cohan

The inaugural live performance of The Haunting of Alvin Cohan will be presented as a workshop production on 21st April 2024, at the Studio Gallery home of the work of renowned artist Dennis Spiteri in Highlands, Victoria.

Doors open 1.30pm

Performance 2pm

Entry by Donation

The Haunting of Alvin Cohan

A dramatic masque

Composer | David Adams

masque (noun): a type of theatre entertainment including poetry, singing, and dancing, performed in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially at a royal court 

Cambridge dictionary

: The Haunting Of Alvin Cohan

Programme Notes

This workshop production is the first preview presentation of the full score of The Haunting of Alvin Cohan to an invited audience, with live performance of the vocal parts, and further abstractions of its philosophical themes with physical theatre and digital art. A cast recording of the performance will be created and audience members are invited to join the cast for a post-performance discussion and informal social.

The Haunting of Alvin Cohan is a complex cascade of classical rhythms and haunting choruses, which buffet the senses with a maelstrom of motifs. Adams’ composition is an evocative evolution of his body of work in a modern classical style, with layers of atmospheric and emotionally laden elements in a complex mosaic of sound.

The Haunting of Alvin Cohan juxtaposes multiple allegorical narratives which follow a collection of characters who could be otherworldly beings, mythical gods or the spirits of ancestors, surfacing from the unconscious mind of an ordinary person into an extraordinary (un)reality. The storyline meanders through worlds past, present and future, peering into the murky depths of the celestial dimensions that hover just beyond our awareness…. sensing the scorching desert dust which blows through the cracks from the “real” to the magical realms we believed were lost to Time and Fate… but which are really only a fraction if a meme-ory away

This dramatic musical exposition of fleeting figments of our collective memory, counterpointed by encounters with our inheritance of mutable civilisational history, morphs into an manifestation of a virtual reality allegory on the nature of consciousness; forerunning the present global concern with the possibility of the Creation of “artificial intelligence” which might weild “god-like” influence.

The questions posed by this magical parable consider our connections to the past and the present; what happens when we intervene and our attempts to misdirect Fate; and what consequences we bequeath upon those we inculpate.       

Hillcrest Gallery

33 Old Highlands Road

Highlands, Victoria

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