Sonic Vanguard: Opera at the Edge of Possibility

Sonic Vanguard is a new speaker series from Mount Holyoke College that explores the work of some of the most active creators and scholars of music today. In a time of increasing cross-pollination between music and other disciplines, speakers discuss the myriad influences that continue to impact their work today.

Our speaker this week is producer and writer Cerise Lim Jacobs.

Cerise Lim Jacobs has repeatedly broken new ground in the world of opera with her work at the intersection of virtual reality, computer gaming technology, animation, puppetry, animatronics and music, all in service of one of the few activist opera companies in the US, with groundbreaking works like I Am A Dreamer Who No Longer Dreams, Sing Out Strong: Decolonized Voices, and Sing Out Strong: Immigrant Voices. Her latest opera, Alice in the Pandemic is a deep dive down the rabbit hole of the coronavirus pandemic, using CGI animation, real-time facial motion capture, and a new plug-in that enables synchronous singing among socially distant singers.