Aurora Borealis was founded in 2004 when percussionist Stephen Solook and soprano Tiffany Du Mouchelle were asked to collaborate in a performance of Roberto Sierra’s Invocationes for voice and percussion at the Mannes College in New York City. Since that time, their performances have taken them from New York to Los Angeles, Egypt, Cameroon, and even the remote villages of Papua New Guinea. As a duo, Aurora Borealis has premiered more duo and chamber works for voice and percussion than any other duo of this instrumentation. The works commissioned by Aurora Borealis focus on expanding the repertoire of voice and percussion composition, specifically in exploring new dimensions within the relationship between these two instruments. When the duo first began to work together, much of their repertoire came from neo-classical and neo-romantic musical traditions. It soon became clear that these traditions tend to favor the voice as a melodic instrument and percussion more in as accompaniment. The duo realized that for Aurora Borealis to be a true “duo” that the nature of their repertoire must then support each instrument equally. This realization has led Du Mouchelle and Solook into close relationships with many American composers, primarily through commissioning new works. Recent collaborations include works by: Carolyn Chen, Chen-Hui Jen, Stephen Lewis, Ignacio Baca Lobera, Lewis Nielson, Roger Reynolds, Stuart Saunders Smith, Jacob Sudol, and Christian Wolff.
Tiffany Du Mouchelle, Soprano and Stephen Solook, Percussion
