Terra Nova

An evening-length song cycle on people who ventured into new lands — explorers, in all their glory and folly and tragedy. The texts come from Robert Falcon Scott, John James Audubon, Amelia Earhart, the Spanish Requirement of 1513, and the disputed theory of pre-Columbian Chinese voyages to North America. Oracle Hysterical wrote and sang it; Hub New Music played.

It was commissioned by the Peabody Essex Museum and the Five Boroughs Music Festival, and premiered at the Peabody Essex in Salem in March 2020. Later performances moved outdoors — the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza, and Snug Harbor on Staten Island. Zachary Woolfe in the New York Times called it “superb.”