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Mezzo soprano Anna Pangalou gave a series of recitals in California where she is a visiting artist at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts), having also joined the teaching staff of the Voice Arts Department at the Herb Alpert School of Music at that same Institute. The scholar had the chance to teach the technique she has developed through her own personal involvement with classic song.
Anna Pangalou was also involved in “The drama of the dictionary” project which consisted of two main parts. The first entitled “Deconstructing Liederabend” was presented at the Wild Beast concert venue at CalArts on 12 April. Deconstruction was employed as a technique to build a new narrative of modern music based on classical music. During her recital Anna Pangalou presented Gustav Mahler’s ‘Kindertotenlieder' and two works by modern Greek composers, ‘Johann Sebastian is not any longer living here’ by Anargyros Deniozos and ‘Recitation No 9’ by Giorgos Apergis.
The second part included John Cage’s ‘Song Books’, a work which Anna Pangalou had originally performed at the Open Day at the Onassis Cultural Centre, and then in yet two further versions in Greece and the USA on 12 May at The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance Theatre at CalArts, while across the entire university campus singers performed some of the solos from the work. The performance entitled ‘The Land ‘ was devised as a ‘place’ where freedom from form dominates and where the scholar along with 14 other artists could present 70 of the 93 solos in the piece.
In March the artist was in Greece for a short time to attend the Open Day: Minimalism(s); Onassis Cultural Centre’s tribute to minimalist music, where she presented Tomas Johnson’s operas ‘The Door ‘ and ‘The Drawers’. Finally, on 11 June she presented yet another version of John Cage’s ‘Song Books’ in New York; this time in an experimental version with artists from different artistic disciplines, all of whom work out of New York.
