United States Yvette Janine Jackson, Harvest: Artists of Radio Opera Workshop / Yvette Janine Jackson (conductor). The Nimoy at UCLA, Los Angeles, 2.10.2026. (JRo)
Ensemble:
Yvette Janine Jackson – octatrack, eurorack
Mattie Barbier – trombone
Dawn Norfleet – C flute, voice
Jessica Shand – C flute, bass flute
Ava Porter – video projections
In a composition incorporating elements of found sound, electronics, jazz and classical forms, Yvette Janine Jackson has crafted a powerful musical experience. She and her ensemble created an aural and visual environment in which the audience had the freedom to explore with the artists what food production looks like in this century in the wake of advances in science and technology. However, this was neither a literal and didactic work nor a linear, theatrical piece. Jackson positioned the improvisation within the structure of the sonata form, allowing her musicians the agency to create their own interpretations. Because of this, the performance is never the same way twice, constantly remaking itself.
Jackson, a Harvard music professor and winner of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, founded Radio Opera Workshop, which debuted in 2022 at the Venice Biennale. The title of the ensemble has a number of references: first, the performances are collaboratively workshopped rather than traditionally rehearsed; and second, Jackson’s inspiration springs from the golden age of radio when text, music and sound effects were gathered together to create a unique form. Though opera may be misleading in the title, it seemed to encapsulate for me the merging of sound, voice and image to be distinctly what her designation suggests – a radio opera.
Jackson on octatrack and eurorack (producing electronic music) collaborated with and conducted her musicians from stage right. An immense video screen, the full length and height of the stage was the backdrop for the ensemble. Mattie Barbier on trombone was able to call forth nuanced sound with cup and harmon mutes. Dawn Norfleet played flute, but it was her improvised vocals that mesmerized and offered emotional context. Jessica Shand on flute and bass flute lent the group just the right lightness and vibrancy to contrast with the tension of darker strains in the composition.
The piece opened whimsically with the baaing of sheep but grew in tension over three acts. Snippets of news broadcasts, recorded narrations, rural and urban ambient noises and radio static were part of the soundscape. A deep, insistent rumbling recurred over the course of the composition, bringing to mind the imagined hum of the earth’s interior or a rocket during liftoff.
Video artist Ava Porter was the fifth member of the ensemble. Her elegant projected images were in dialogue with the music, and like a choreographer, her visuals moved with and interpreted the score. Even moments of the dark, blank screen (written into the score by Jackson) were akin to silence and spoke to the rhythm of the 50-minute piece. The video opened with the image of the sun and a jagged expanse of mountain that soon gave way to a solar eclipse – a giant disk in the middle of the screen – putting me in mind of a Suprematist painting. Soon the circle became the lens of a microscope enlarging tiny seeds that bounced and darted across the viewfinder in a microscopic ballet. There was footage of solar farms, crop dusting, robotic farming, NASA rockets and cotton fields. The pace was measured, never bombarding the spectator with images but rather taking the time to reflect the music and enhance the non-linear narrative.
Harvest is a deeply satisfying piece and speaks to the universality of human experience: the gathering together for the simplest of endeavors – the sharing of food. It asks questions about our food supply and its manufacture but proposes no solutions. Just to listen to the music, see the images and drift into a state where life merges with art is enough. What more should a thoughtful work of art offer?
Jane Rosenberg
Featured Image: Photo of video still © Ava Porter