BIOGRAPHY
JAMIE MAN/ 文珮玲 uses the forms of opera, live performance and dark room installations to create works primarily concerned with music and the poetic mystery of the transtopian body.
Outrenoir I, II, III and V are a series of live dark-room installation-performance works inspired by the black canvases of french artist Pierre Soulages exploring the different ways that darkness can allow us to see. Using auditory illusions, infrasound and visual phenomena such as physiological after-images created with light, the works were commissioned by Ensemble Xenon (Berlin, 2018), London Symphony Orchestra (2019), San Francisco Symphony (2022) and Sonotomia with Festival Terras sem Sombra using 4DSOUND (Alentejo, 2022).
四/Shi for voice and violoncello with text by 伊藤晴雨/Itō Seiu and various Japanese death poems was commissioned by the pioneering Nōh artist, Ryoko Aoki (Tokyo, 2017). In 2021, continuing their collaboration, Jamie created ZELLE: Wenn es Dunkel Wird as Director/Composer with writer Peter Stamm; a multi-lingual opera in Japanese, German, Ukrainian, music, light, water and darkness. (LOD Muziektheater, Gent with Theater- und Musikgesellschaft Zug, deSingel Antwerp, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam, Palau de les Arts Reine Sofia, De Munt / La Monnaie Bruxelles, Festival Aix-en-Provence and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lisboa).
Other large-scale works include PLAY: Episodes in Subspace (Gulbenkian Music Foundation Lisbon, 2016), Filth and Ecstasy (Ballet de l'opera du Rhin, 2021), DARK SKIES with Blixa Bargeld (Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, Slagwerk Den Haag, Holland Festival, 2023) and Connaissez-vous le cri du Chocard? for Orchestra, light and darkness, commissioned by l’Orchestre de Chambre de Paris and Théatre du Châtelet (Paris, 2020) supported by the Franco-British fund Diaphonique.
As a conductor, Jamie continues to work internationally conducting premieres of her own work as well as those of other living composers. Highlights include Les Enfants Terribles by Philip Glass (Arcola, UK premiere), The Transmigration of Morton F. with music by Anat Spiegel (La Monnaie, Brussels/ Holland Festival, Amsterdam), recordings of music by Frank Denyer for the label Another Timbre (UK) and The Blue Woman (Royal Opera House, London) by Laura Bowler directed by Katie Mitchell.
INTERVIEWS AND LINKS