Program Note

An imagined night sky of words and music: LA Signal Lab presents URSA, an interstellar cantata. Featuring new music by Erika Oba, Nick DePinna, Dan Marschak, Noah Meites, and Hitomi Oba, with a libretto by Sarah Thompson, URSA is a suite of fourteen works linked by the enigmatic mythos of the Ursa Major/Minor constellation. Over the course of this continuous evening length work, audiences follow a path of interrelated musical and literary reference points ranging from Greek mythology, chamber music, and Mark Twain, to Inuit legend, jazz improvisation, and NASA technical data.