||8ve: the parallel octave chorus

Now expanding our Greek choral frontiers beyond Baltimore to Warsaw, zapraszamy (we invite you) to a reading of an adaptation from Greek drama, on Sunday, June 3rd at 4 pm, at Komuna//Warszawa. Details below.

If you can get yourself to Warsaw, Parallel Octavians, we’ll rehearse from 11 till 3, take a dinner break, then perform at 4. The chorus is, as always, open to all.

Zapraszamy / we invite you
na czytanie / to a reading
spektaklu / of a play
po polsku, angielsku, i niemiecku / in Polish, English, and German
będącego adaptacją starogreckich komedii i dramatów / adapted from the ancient Greek dramas and comedies
Ajschylosa, Sofoklesa, Eurypidesa, i Arystofanesa / of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes
Projekt Chóru Parallel Octave / a project of the Parallel Octave Chorus

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that the screening of our next collaborative film, ANTHOLOGY II, will be held on the evening of Thursday, August 2nd at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore. Details are as they say, forthcoming.

Please join us this Sunday for a grouping of poems not in the first person. After this session, Parallel Octave will be on hiatus until July, when we will again hold open sessions and the screening of the second collaborative film, ANTHOLOGY II.

Poems Not In The First Person
Amiri Baraka, “A Poem For Speculative Hipsters“
Stephen Dunn, “In Love, His Grammar Grew“
Rita Dove, “Hades’ Pitch“
Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Foredoom“
H.D., “Helen“

See you at D. Schwartz’s house (email paralleloctaveATgmail if this is your first session and you need the address) on Sunday 4/29, 1-2:30 PM.

This very special extended session will feature only (mostly) acoustic instruments. Cause these poets are old. One is Shelley, and the other is medieval. Also, the recordings from this session are definitely going into the film. Please come, eat the free pizza, make fun of Shelley’s middle name (Bysshe?? Really?) and help us make this awesome.

Date: Sunday, April 1
Time: Starting at 1 pm as usual, but going until we have really good recordings of both poems.
Location: Danny Schwartz’s house in Charles Village (email paralleloctaveATgmail if this is your first session)

Poems (pasted below):
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
Opening verses from Yehuda Ha-Levi’s “Ayin Nedivah”

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Ladies and gentlemen, start your cameras! Our filmmakers are: Jake Appet & Tamar Nachmany (co-directing), Anamika Bandopadhyay, Alice Venessa Bever, Ellen Freytag, Adam Gray, Marie Ilene, Rachel Jendrzejewski & Theo Goodell (co-directing), Joseph Martin, Danny Schwartz, Valerie Smith, and Sandylee Triolo.

The screening of this filmic extravaganza will take place on Thursday, August 2nd.

We need to record some new sound for several of these people, so we’re going to have a very very special extended almost-all-acoustic perfectionist open session on April 1st for this purpose. (No joke! This is happening.)  Highly delicious food will be provided: free pizza. Details forthcoming in the very next post.

Applications for ANTHOLOGY II, Parallel Octave’s next collaborative film, are due by March 15. Check out the available sound files and the application information at the Call for Filmmakers page–or, for inspiration, here are two films from last year:

Marie Ilene’s film The Heart Asks, based on Emily Dickinson’s “588″ (The heart asks pleasure first…)

Adam Gray’s film The Space Between Her Eyes and Mine, based on Hart Crane’s “My Grandmother’s Love Letters”

Woe is us (and you) in our next open session, focusing on poems of SPLEEN–by Baudelaire, Mullen, O’Hara and Bennett–this Sunday, March 4, in Charles Village, from 1-2:30 PM. All are welcome.

We shall be recording the following splenetic poetic missives:
Charles Baudelaire (tr. Robert Lowell), “Spleen“
Gwendolyn Bennett, “Quatrains“
Frank O’Hara, “Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed]“
Harryette Mullen, “All She Wrote”

Email paralleloctave@gmail if it’s your first session and you need the address for the house.