Oracle
hysterical
Part Band, Part Book Club
Oracle
Bio
Oracle Hysterical is twin brothers Doug Balliett (double bass, viola da gamba) and Brad Balliett (bassoons), Majel Connery (vocals, keys), Elliot Cole (vocals, guitars, keys), and Dylan Greene (percussion). Part band, part book club, Oracle Hysterical combines eclectic musical influences with literary breadth. All members of the group perform and compose, with each project developed collectively.
Oracle’s works occupy the fluid space between classically-inclined song-cycle and art-rock concept album. The group’s songwriting illuminates fragments of great literary works like a child in a dark forest with a flashlight. Text sources have ranged from Grimms' Fairy Tales to Greek tragedy, and falsely-attributed Shakespeare, all in collections of songs that distill centuries-old writing through a unique contemporary lens.
Most recently, Oracle wrote Terra Nova, a cycle on problematic explorers, at the invitation of Hub New Music. Terra Nova premiered at Peabody Essex Museum March 2020 and included texts from Robert Falcon Scott, James Audubon, Amelia Earhart, the harrowing Spanish Requirement of 1513, and the highly controversial theory of pre-Columbian exploration of North America by Chinese mariners. Terra Nova has since been performed on the steps of Central Library (Grand Army Plaza) and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art (Snug Harbor, Staten Island), presented by 5 Boroughs New Music Festival, in May 2020. Zachary Woolfe, writing for the New York Times, called the performance “superb.”
The group’s project, Hecuba, on Euripides’ play of the same name was released on the National Sawdust Tracks label in May, 2018. Hecuba is a lush and experimental rock-leaning album based on Euripides’ tragedy of the same name. Written around 424 BCE in Athens, Hecuba is a savage story of revenge in which the disgraced queen of Troy, Hecuba, with her city razed and her children murdered, descends from nobility to primal violence.
Other touring projects include The Sea, a collaboration with the Grammy-nominated orchestra A Far Cry, which commissioned and premiered the work at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2016. In the song-cycle, Oracle Hysterical weaves music from texts by history’s greatest seafarers, explorers, and aquatic fabulists, from Shakespeare to Homer, and John Donne to the Book of Jonah. In 2017, Oracle Hysterical collaborated with period-instrument ensemble New Vintage Baroque on Passionate Pilgrim. The album, released on Naxos/Vision into Art, was called “music that is unstuck in time” by the Wall Street Journal, and what it would sound like if “Belle and Sebastian were to cut a record of Baroque-inspired folk songs,” by the New Yorker.
Other past projects include Cleopatra with the Metropolis Ensemble, and The Brothers Grimm with New Vintage Baroque. Oracle has appeared at the MATA Festival, the Berkshire Fringe Festival, The Stone (NYC), The Hideout (Chicago), (le) Poisson Rouge (NYC), National Sawdust (NYC), the Toledo Museum of Art, and at the Lucerne Festival Academy, where they were Spotlight Artists in 2011.
- DATES -
JANUARY 17, 2020
Metropolis, NYC
Hub New Music and Oracle Hysterical give a preview showing of their evening length semi-staged song-cycle collaboration Terra Nova as part of HNM’s creative partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum.
INFO
TICKETS
March 7, 2020
Peabody essex museum, Boston, MA
Hub New Music and Oracle Hysterical give the world premiere of their evening length semi-staged song-cycle collaboration Terra Nova as part of HNM’s creative partnership with the Peabody Essex Museum.
INFO
TICKETS
- PAST DATES -
+2018
May 6, 2018 - 5pm
HECUBA
at Princeton University
In Taplin Auditorium
Princeton, NJ FREE EVENT
May 11, 2018 - 2pm
LIVE on wnyc
3 hecuba songs
May 13, 2018 - 8pm
HECUBA release SHOW
at National Sawdust
Brooklyn, NY TICKETS / FACEBOOK
+2017
October 12
Concert Artist Guild Semi Finals
September 23
HECUBA live at the Toledo Museum of Art, OH
June 3
DELUXE Passionate Pilgrim album release & Babinagar, with New Vintage at National Sawdust, NYC.
May 26-31
Recording Session at Big Blue North Studios (Utica, NY)
May 13
Oracle Hysterical presented by Mainline Music/Starline Social Club
March 17
Passionate Pilgrim drops on VIA Records!
January 21
Passionate Pilgrim album release party! With New Vintage Baroque at National Sawdust, NYC.
+2016
November 1-5
Residency at Millay Colony, Upstate NY.
October 21
The Brothers Grimm with New Vintage Baroque, National Sawdust, NYC
October 6
The Sea with A Far Cry, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.
July 15
The Sea preview, Hyde Park Salons, Chicago
July 14
The Sea preview, The Hideout Inn, Chicago, with James Falzone and Cactus Tractor
July 13
The Sea preview, High Concept Laboratories, 7p
July 11-16
Residency at High Concept Laboratories / MANA Contemporary, Chicago.
July 10
The Sea preview, The Commons LNK, Lincoln, NE, 1-3p.
July 7
The Sea preview, Omaha Under the Radar, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, 5-7p (get tickets).
May 14
The Sea preview at Spectrum, NYC.
Oct. - Feb.
Passionate Pilgrim recording project with New Vintage Baroque, The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn.
Sep. - Mar.
Hecuba recording project with mix engineers Alexander Overington and Chris Botta, Staplechest Audio, Brooklyn.
+2015
October11
Cleopatra (Premiere) at Le Poisson Rouge with Metropolis Ensemble, NYC.
May 9
Passionate Pilgrim with New Vintage Baroque house concert - Mercer Street, Soho.
May 8
Passionate Pilgrim with New Vintage Baroque at White Box Gallery, NYC.
+2014
7 March
Fisherman and His Wife with Washington Square Winds at Center for Fiction, NYC.
7 November
Grimm's Songs at Hyde Park Salon Series, Chicago.
6 November
HECUBA with the Chicago Composers Orchestra at Constellation.
19 October
Babinagar at Spectrum, NYC.
7 February
Babinagar and Grimm's Songs at IBeam Gowns with Jordan Dodson, Gabriel Cabezas and Charlotte Mundy.
+2013
27 October Eleventh Night as Spotlight Artists-in-Residence of the Lucerne Festival Academy.
5 August
The Brothers Grimm as Spotlight Artists-in-Residence of the Lucerne Festival Academy.
17 April The Rake’s Progress with the Metropolis Ensemble at the MATA festival [NYC].
28 March Lucretia, a popera seria in three acts, at NYU. The Fisherman and His Wife with the Brentano Quartetat Princeton University [NJ].
5 January The Fisherman and His Wife, The Rake’s Progress and Babinagar, with the Franklin Quartet and Kevin Sims at Columbia University’s Remixing Opera conference [NYC].
4 January The Fisherman and His Wife, the Rake’s Progress, and Babinagar, with the Franklin Quartet and Kevin Sims, NYC
+Beyond
11 Sept 2011
Dover [Gloucester] with Peggy Kampmeier and Conor Hanick at Princeton University [NJ].
13 Dec 2010
Living room concert tour: over a dozen performances of Alcestis, Babinagar and Beatles reinventions in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Ft.
January 2010
Worth with Mollie Marcuson and Alison Fletcher [TX].
October 2009
Bonnie Brae Tierkreis - 12 new pieces based on Stockhausen's Tierkreis
Passionate Pilgrim RELEASE SHOW
with New Vintage Baroque
NATIONAL SAWDUST, NYC, JANUARY 2017
CLEOPATRA
WITH THE METROPOLIS ENSEMBLE
(LE) POISSON ROUGE, NYC, 2015
