Presented by the American Academy in Rome and Mahler & LeWitt Studios, in collaboration with Fondazione Carla Fendi.  

Postglobalization identity and hybridity in urban environments have shaped the personal background of Baldwin Giang, the 2024 Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellow in musical composition at the American Academy in Rome and a 2024 pianist in residence at Mahler & LeWitt Studios.

‍Scenes from the Post-Diaspora explores these themes and develops them in a multimovement, multimedia opera where Giang’s music, masterfully interpreted by the German Ensemble Garage together with artists from Taiwan, Vietnam, the Netherlands, and Italy, is accompanied from by footage made in urban environments that have marked the composer’s personal journey.

“For the movement set to Rome,” Giang comments, “I am working with the Italian video artist Andrea Bancone. We are interested in how queerness and migration intersect with the palimpsestic nature of Roman city life: just as Rome is built on many layers of history, which are often submerged but can emerge in ruptures of historical time in unexpected places in the city, queerness is largely invisible but is made visible during opportune flashes and clandestine encounters. Immigrants also rise and fall in the social imaginary of contemporary Rome. I am interested in how this constellation of ideas can suggest new approaches to the revelation and layering of musical material, the unfolding of musical time, and to a nonlinear perspective on the future.”