Paola Prestini is one of the most experimental composers today. She creates pieces that combine music with film, dance, and virtual reality. Her album “Houses of Zodiac: Poems for Cello” features music from a single cello, with several poets and dancers. It's a celebration of her favorite mediums and collaborators. She’ll premiere the album this weekend at The Broad Museum.
She explains, “[‘Houses of Zodiac’] brings you through these deep emotions of these two characters that are in essence twin souls. … You get to travel through these rooms where you see flashbacks and scenes of these two characters’ lives. They range from an immersion into nature to … how a love story could go many different ways.”
Prestini says that as a woman composer, she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to have a career if she weren’t winning certain awards. “And honestly, it just didn't feel like that … was the path that I could take or should take. And now it feels like I'm finally breaking into a place where people can see that you can be more than one thing.”