The Green Wood

The Green Wood opera encompasses text, tale and meaning with sound and sculpture, painting, and lighting into a visual and sonic tour de force. Composed songs, poetic recitatives with improvised cello, and sonic landscapes borrow from woodland cultures around the world; from the forests of Renaissance England to the jungles of India, Brazil and Bali to American and aboriginal backwoods music. It uncovers the voice, point of view and inner life of the forest soundscape from the silence before dawn,… Show more through the ornate dawn call of the songbirds and voices of the rivers and trees, into the evening choir of frogs and wolves, ending in the stillness and reflection of the witching hours. Each section covers a two-hour period in the sounds of the wood.
The orchestra is composed of raw natural materials made into living instruments. The chimes and marimbas are made from driftwood. Samas has invented Dendrophones, fabricated assemblages of natural objects which are bowed and plucked. The touchstone of the piece is a large three dimensional painting, housing a live dove nest, organ pipes and an amplifier which allow Samas' voice to resonate through it.

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