Darkness. A quiet fills the space. Then, a few strong, confident bass notes played by a piano fill the air. The lights rise to reveal a band of performers dressed to seduce, their eyes dazed, their fingers snapping. Softly, snidely, their voices ring out in a cabaret-infused melody-memory of the opening notes of Igor Stravinsky’s ballet and orchestral composition, Rites of Spring:

We’re the performers of bad news, we’re here to sing and dance for you

So begins Ammon Taylor’s song cycle, Rites of Warming. Buckle up - you’re in for a ride.

Through a variety of ensemble and solo numbers, Rites of Warming is told from the perspective of the Performers of Bad News, a cabaret from our dystopian future that has traveled back in time to confront us at this crucial moment in our planet’s history and plead with us - through narrative turns both nostalgic, tragic, and campy - to affect change now, and thus prevent the disasters waiting for us on the other side of history. Following the melodic through-lines of Stravinsky’s own work, itself an avant-garde concert piece “unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring” (Pieter van den Toorn, Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring), Rites of Warming is at once a lament for the Spring that once was, and a furious fist shaking at the United States’s complicity in climate change, mass extinctions events, and human suffering. Weeps one performer in “Miami” as they watch the sea levels rise and drown the city they love:

I remember Miami - every street, every palm tree - in my Miami memories

But Rites of Warming centers, above all, human resilience - which means it’s not all grief and rage. Humans date even when pandemics rage and fires burn, and it’s in these moments of levity and winking that Rites of Warming follows in the footsteps of all queer performance before it, finding the funny in the devastating:

When it starts to precipitously precipitate, ambiance evacuates and our romance evaporates

At the conclusion of the narrative, where other shows might indulge in ostentatious showstoppers, Taylor instead opts for a restrained, quiet moment of tenderness as the Performers of Bad News gather around one another and gaze out into the audience, inviting us to sit with the ultimate power of love and determination:

This is a nice place… Don’t go away please…

Taylor’s Rites of Warming is the piece you’ve been waiting for. The cabaret you’ve needed to help inspire laughter about dating on Tinder during a pandemic. The jazz concert you’ve longed for to help you move through those prickly feelings of despair, rage, and grief. The moving narrative you’ve hoped for to help re-inspire your courage. And the classical re-interpretation your institution has been looking for to introduce Stravinsky to new audiences, young and old.

We’re the performers of bad news - and we’re here, to sing and dance for you, and help you leave our space a little more able to handle the world we now live in.

Ammon Taylor is a pianist, composer, and music director based in Austin, TX. With a Bachelor of Music in composition from UT Austin, Ammon has a background in classical, jazz, and musical theatre - and, as an active member of Austin’s theatre community and The Paramount Theatre’s Education Music Director, does everything from setting children’s narrative inventions to music with Story Wranglers (The Paramount Theatre) to creating scores for improvised musicals on-the-spot with The Hideout Theatre’s house shows and troupes. The winner of B. Iden Payne awards for his original scores in 2015 and 2016, and for his live music performance in 2018, he attended the National Winter Playwright's Retreat in 2019, and enjoys collaborating with playwrights, improvisers, and musicians from varied disciplines.

Rites of Warming sits at the crossroads of Ammon’s experiences as both a jazz and classical musician - or what he calls his “constant genre identity crisis.” “For myself,” says Ammon, “this project was about finding a way to merge these two disciplines that both have really different techniques and backgrounds.” His approach nods to the multiply-marginalized, experimental jazz musicians throughout history who also played with Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, particularly because the classical world wouldn’t let them in - musicians like Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker, and Leonard Bernstein (who famously called The Rite of Spring “prehistoric jazz”). (Interestingly enough, even Stravinsky himself admitted to being influenced by jazz standards.) When Ammon casts the parts for Rites of Warming, he makes sure to hire classical singers to perform alongside jazz instrumentalists, and the lyrical content is stripped of any pronouns in the tradition of jazz standards that aimed to be as universally applicable as possible at the time of their creation. “The more I leaned into [the history] of it all,” he says, “the more interesting [the project] became.”

But while the inspirations for this project have always orbited Ammon’s life, the project really solidified in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Irma. With the devastating effects of climate change on his mind, Ammon took a long drive one night and cranked up the New York Philharmonic’s rendition of The Rite of Spring. “I listened to the whole thing and just thought, ‘This sounds like climate change, it’s so beautiful but in a terrifying way - it’s about the power of nature, but we’re the ants in front of a volcano that could kill us all,” says Ammon. “It just had that cataclysmic feel that’s fascinating and beautiful and terrifying all at the same time.” Whether audiences leave the performance feeling grief, anger, or a sense of urgency, Ammon’s hope for Rites of Warming is that it can achieve what both classical and jazz pursue in equal measure: striking awe, both terrible and beautiful, in the hearts of those who hear it.

Since our first one-off run at Frontera Fest in 2018, Rites of Warming has come a long way, with a worldwide premier in Austin, TX and virtual showings during the pandemic - and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big dreams for this experimental work, from scripting a theatrical show around the musical numbers to showing with international organizations to applying for more funding to enable more artistic and ethical collaborations. Interested in working with us? Reach out in the contact form below and we’ll get the conversation started!