Prayer for the World, live on June 1, 2014
Premiere by the Pasadena All Saints Coventry and Canterbury choirs
Piece Year: 2013
Prayer for the World
Meditation
For any number of voices and optional electronics. Duration is variable, to be pre-determined by the performers.
2015 press for Meditation
LA Times: “Corral’s wordless, a cappella “Meditation” enters into Ligeti territory with four singers treated to electronic feedback and mimicking what might be mistaken for an airplane in perpetual lift off. The performers looked terrified yet sounded amazing.”
Codec H Quartet
Codec H Quartet
Accordion quartet arrangement of Codec H, an earlier solo accordion piece.
Premiered in September, 2013 at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, in collaboration with writer Mandy Kahn.
Dislike
DISLIKE is a 21st century operatic documentation of a unique repository for the darker emotions swirling around the Internet. The sinister side of online anonymity and open-forum communication is examined by deconstructing 24-hours worth of comments on the most “disliked” video on YouTube. Taken as a singular libretto, the result is a surreal text full of anger, naivety, homophobia, desperation, and mischief. Meanwhile, eight accordions create a lush, post-ambient sonic environment inspired by a time-stretched interpretation of that video’s song. The resulting dichotomy depicts the Jungian shadow of the digital collective unconscious.
Dislike was premiered at REDCAT’s 2013 NOW Festival after a workshop at the Electric Lodge’s High Voltage Series! It featured Free Reed Conspiracy and The Peoples Microphony Camerata.
Read my article on LA Stage Times about Dislike
Dislike (live at Human Resources LA)
Performed by Dog Star Ochestra on June 17, 2017
2013 press for Dislike
Living Out Loud Los Angeles: “This was truly a treat for all, from our soft spoken dreamers to our extroverted realists, we all went home with a true image of how ugly we can be and how much help we all owe each other.”
Musings by a Dancing Poetess: “By the end of the piece, I hated YouTube; I hated the Internet, and I would have given anything to make it stop. But, my experience of discomfort was what created the power in the Corral’s social commentary.”
Local Looking Glass: “Its music was Baby’s chords played in discordant waves of sound a la Koyaanisqatsi.”
LA Weekly: “Composer Daniel Corral, whose work probes the weirdness of 21st-century living, has written a libretto called Dislike, about the most disliked YouTube video of all time.”
LA Stage Times: “Full of anger, naivete, homophobia, desperation, and mischief, these comments portray a Burroughsian narrative seemingly cut straight from the cloth of the collective unconscious.”
X-Ray Sunsets
X-Ray Sunsets album
Released July 1, 2013
A collection of songs written and arranged for Timur and the Dime Museum. We had played them live for a while before recording them.
All songs and words composed and arranged © 2013 by Daniel Corral, and published by Spinal Frog Music (ASCAP), except “Velvet Balloon” with music and words by David Tranchina, arranged by David Tranchina and Daniel Corral, and published by David Tranchina (ASCAP); “Distance of the Moon” with music, words and arrangement by Isaac Schankler, published by Process Pool Music (ASCAP); “Until the Break of Dawn” with music by David Tranchina, lyrics and arrangement by Daniel Corral, and published by David Tranchina (ASCAP); “Interlude” lyrics by Timur Bekbosunov (BMI). All tracks produced and mixed by Daniel Corral. Executive producer: Timur Bekbosunov and Art of Opera Foundation.
Recorded and engineered at Violahouse (1-11) except for keyboards, electronics, accordion, guitar, ukelele at Spinal Frog Studio (1-11) by Daniel Corral; bass, drums at Echo Manor by Chris Votek (8,10, 11) and Wonderland Recording Studio by Matthew Setzer (1-7, 9). Mastered by Michael Hateley at Lotus Mastering. Art design, photography and CD layout by Sandra Powers. T&DM name drawing by J.G. Quintel.
2013 press for X-Ray Sunsets
LA Weekly: “post-punk opera from the captivating Timur & the Dime Museum in support of their smashing, romantic, noisy, cabaret-infused new album, X-ray Sunsets”
New Classic LA: “The record, which was largely written, arranged, recorded, edited, mixed, and produced by band member and local composer Daniel Corral, is up on bandcamp now. Timur’s voice is as impossibly flexible as ever, and there’s an enormous range of sounds in the arrangements.”
Arches Magazine: “I know — on this page it looks like a total mess, but the ear loves it.”
