Meridian Project - Spring 2014

Working with an incredible group of my favorite people – Kirsten Volness, Josh Lantzy, Jamie Topper, Caroline Doherty, and Jeremy Chapman – on a multimedia performance series that will take place spring 2014 at the Cormack Planetarium at Roger Williams Park in Providence.  Performances will mix music, live-processed imagery using the Planetarium's historic Zeiss Star Projector (!!!), and presentations on topics in astrophysics and cosmology, including Jeremy's ground breaking work in Dark Matter Detection.

PLEASE HELP SUPPORT:
https://www.newmusicusa.org/?project_preview=7963&msg=preview






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Dissertation, Defense, Graduation, ¡CityArts!

Been a long time since I posted.  After last fall's successful performance of The (unfinished) Ballad... I completed the second component of my Ph.D. dissertation, my paper The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery: The Creation of a Multimedia Murder Ballad and The Development of a Working Method for Roving Performances.  It included a detailed listing and analysis of all the components of the piece, from musical scores to physical computing to the history of the Mathewson Street Church in which it was performed.  It continued with an analysis of other roving-audience performances such as one I previously collaborated on (Mercy Brown and the Devil's Footprint), and the most famous contemporary roving performance, Sleep No More.  It concluded with the listing of a working method for roving performances based on my previous work, collaboration, and observation.

I successfully defended my dissertation on April 12.  
•Thanks to my committee members Todd Winkler, Butch Rovan, Dana Gooley, and Erik Ehn!  

I graduated with my Ph.D. on May 26, 2013.
•Thanks to all my friends and family for their support!  Especially to my 96 year old grandpa Harry who made it all the way from California!!!

I was lucky to receive two job opportunities on the west coast, but decided to turn them down to focus on things here in Providence.

I was again very lucky to have gotten a job as a media consultant and video teacher at Providence ¡CityArts! for Youth, a fantastic, veteran non-profit organization that provides free art instruction to 8-14 year old, under-served students in Providence.  My job has been to use a $15,000 grant budget from the Angell Foundation to build a new digital medial lab for ¡CityArts!    I will then be teaching video class to middle-schoolers at the end of the month (eep!).

 

 Thanks to all my friends, family, and creative brothers/sisters in arms for their support getting me to this point.  I'm anxious and excited.  Will share more soon...

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Review of Meyers's "Tryouts"

A good review from Edge Boston about Adara Meyers's play Tryouts, for which I did video design earlier this month.

Congrats to all on a fantastic performance!






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"Tryouts" March 8/9, Factory Theater, Boston

I'm doing video design for the play:

TRYOUTS
by Adara Meyers
directed by Cecilia Raker
audio design by Kirsten Volness

When a group of mothers and daughters attempt to prove their “individuality,” the murky waves of love and death crash against generational angst and pseudo-religious understanding in this satirical play about womanhood.

Fri/Sat, March 8/9, 2013, 7:30pm
The Factory Theater

791 Tremont Street

Boston, MA (entrance to theater is in the back of the old Chickering piano factory, through the parking lot)

Tickets: $15 at the door or online.

Part of the Women in Action Festival

http://www.sleepingweazel.com/events/

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Station Nation: A Reflection on the Station Night Club Fire. Weds, Feb 20, 9:30pm. First Baptist Church, Providence.

I will be performing on bass for Kirsten Volness's piece, Long Winter Listen

Directed by Sylvia Ann Soares

for an event hosted by the group Station Nation memorializing the 2003 Station Nightclub Fire in which 100 people were killed in Warwick, RI.

9:30pm-midnight
First Baptist Church
75 North Main St.
Providence, RI
FREE






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The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery, Nov. 3rd + 4th

The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery 

dissertation performance piece by Jacob Richman


8pm, Saturday and Sunday, November 3rd and 4th, 2012
Mathewson Street United Methodist Church
134 Mathewson St. Providence, RI
FREE

 The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery is a multimedia installation and roving performance piece based on a murder story that took place in Rhode Island in the early 1990s. It is a setting which utilizes four dancers, nine musicians, and almost a dozen rooms of the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church in downtown Providence. It is a mobile murder ballad based on dreams and echoes, fragmented words, images, sounds, and objects inspired by this heartbreaking story. In The (unfinished) Ballad… the audience moves throughout the five floors of the building, filled with performers and various interactive media technology, from large video projections to nine-foot tall robotic curtains, cell phone buzzers, broken lobster traps, blue cellophane, cloth, and the haunting presence of the historic Mathewson St. Church itself, all unified to recreate and reinterpret a tragic and unexplainable act of violence and the folklore that surrounds it.

 Featuring:

Adrian Moore, Anna Muselmann, Brandon Shaw, and Stephanie Turner (dancers/choreographers)
 Yayra Sanchez (soprano)

Aliana de la Guardia (mezzo soprano)
Rossana Chung, Abigale Reisman (violin)
Ken Allen (viola)
Anna Seda (cello)

Kirsten Volness (piano/keyboard) 

Peter McGrath (trumpet)
Jeffrey Neilson (percussion)

Matt Desmarais (seismic activity)


For more information visit: http://www.jacob-richman.com/ballad.html

HELP FUND PERFORMERS WITH INDIE GO GO CAMPAIGN!!! (any little bit helps and it all goes to the amazing/talented performers) http://www.indiegogo.com/HelpFundPerformers 

Thanks for your support!
Jacob






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Presenting at Conference "Crusing in the Ruins" @ Northeastern U. Sept. 22

Saturday, Sept. 22nd, 2pm
Northeastern University
Curry Student Center, McLeod Suite B, rm. 320
346 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA

I will be giving a brief presentation at the conference Crusing in the Ruins, organized by the BABEL Working Group.

The talk will be entitled Rhode Island Murder and Horror Stories in Performance: Adam Emery, Mercy Brown, and the Devil’s Footprint and I will discuss setting past and contemporary Rhode Island folk, horror, and murder stories to performances, including the projects Mercy Brown and the Devil's Footprint and The (unfinished) Ballad of Adam and Elena Emery.

I will talk about reenactment, playing with bones, haunting the scene of the crime, seance, and using these things to try to understand incomprehensible stories.






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