Alice Shields
- Composer
Alice Shields is a composer and librettist interested in ritual, theater and dance from around the world. Her work focuses on the unreal, with stories about women, the environment and the paranormal. Using music and movement techniques based on Japanese Noh Theater and Indian Bharata Natyam dance-drama, Shields creates operas, vocal music, electronic music, chamber music, and music for theater, dance and video. She has created experimental works for voice and electronics for New World Records and Atlantic Records as well as electronic and acoustic operas. In the opera "Zhaojün - The Woman Who Saved the World" (2018), to stop environmental destruction the sex slave Zhaojün steps out of ancient times into the 21st century to overthrow the Emperor, the modern ruler of the world. Performed in concert by the Association for the Promotion of New Music on Nov.20, 2018 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, this work incorporates anti-war Tang Dynasty poetry and Buddhist texts. Shields' feminist opera "Criseyde" (2010), performed by the New York City Opera VOX festival, is based on Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" which she re-wrote in Chaucer's medieval English. Used by her family as a sexual trophy, Criseyde struggles for survival while the opera morphs between the 14th century, the present and the future. " White Heron Dance" (2017) combines pre-recorded singing voice, dancer, and electronics with video by Thomas Barratt, and was performed by Noh dancer Mayo Miwa at the 2017 NYC-Electroacoustic Music Festival at National Sawdust.
While still a graduate student Shields created several works for film and television. "Line of Apogee" (1967) is an electronic film score composed with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Pril Smiley for the psychedelic film "Line of Apogee" by Lloyd Williams. "Incredible Voyage," the first feature-length electronic music score for television, was composed with Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening and Pril Smiley for a CBS-TV documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. Other early work includes electronic incidental music for the witches' scenes for director John Houseman's MacBeth (1968) at the Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare Festival, and electronic incidental music for Sam Shepard's radio plays "Icarus" and "4-H Club" (1966) with featured actor Joseph Chaikin, directed by Shepard, for Riverside Radio (WRVR). With Vladimir Ussachevsky Shields created the electronic music score for the Canadian Broadcasting System for "We" (1970), a radio play adaptation of Yevgeny Zamiatin's 1920's cult futurist novel.
Alice Shields received the doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has served as Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Director of Development of the Columbia University Computer Music Center. She has taught the psychology of music at New York University and has lectured on nonverbal communication in sound and movement for organizations such as the International Society for Research on Emotion, the American Psychological Association and the Santa Fe Opera.
While still a graduate student Shields created several works for film and television. "Line of Apogee" (1967) is an electronic film score composed with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Pril Smiley for the psychedelic film "Line of Apogee" by Lloyd Williams. "Incredible Voyage," the first feature-length electronic music score for television, was composed with Vladimir Ussachevsky, Otto Luening and Pril Smiley for a CBS-TV documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. Other early work includes electronic incidental music for the witches' scenes for director John Houseman's MacBeth (1968) at the Stratford, Connecticut Shakespeare Festival, and electronic incidental music for Sam Shepard's radio plays "Icarus" and "4-H Club" (1966) with featured actor Joseph Chaikin, directed by Shepard, for Riverside Radio (WRVR). With Vladimir Ussachevsky Shields created the electronic music score for the Canadian Broadcasting System for "We" (1970), a radio play adaptation of Yevgeny Zamiatin's 1920's cult futurist novel.
Alice Shields received the doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has served as Associate Director of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center and Director of Development of the Columbia University Computer Music Center. She has taught the psychology of music at New York University and has lectured on nonverbal communication in sound and movement for organizations such as the International Society for Research on Emotion, the American Psychological Association and the Santa Fe Opera.
