EYE OF MNEMOSYNE is a 21' seven-movement multimedia orchestral work that explores memory as a deity while illuminating the advent and influence of George Eastman's Kodak and its lens of nostalgia.

In this narrative, composer Sarah Kirkland Snider and I reimagine George Eastman as a vessel of the Greek Goddess of Memory, Mnemosyne, and focus on the essential role that women -- the Kodak Girls -- played in Kodak's success in advertising and film processing. Here the Kodak Girls are presented as descendants of Mnemosyne, muses who influenced and inspired how Americans began to arrange, capture, and experience their lives’ recollections using the instrument of the camera and the power of the snapshot.

The projections were mapped to the architecture of the Eastman Theatre — paying further homage to its founder and legacy.

DETAILS

INSTRUMENTATION

2.2.2.2/2.2.1.1/timp.2perc/hp/str

DURATION

21'

COMMISSIONED BY

Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

PREMIERED BY

Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, April 18 and 20, 2024

MORE INFO

Email Andrew Stein-Zeller

I.      Mnemonic

II.      Mori (Memory of the Dead)

III.     Vivere (Power of the Snapshot)

IV.     Memento (Defense Against Time)

V.      Nostos (War Story)

VI.     Ephemera (Fragmented Memory)

VII.     Psyche/Epilogue: (Legacy/Spirit)