
Photo by Markus Sepperer
Preview the performance program
Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas has become one of the most provocative and important voices in contemporary music. As a composer, he often bring his life and his family into his work. HYENA is a concerto for orchestra and narrator, featuring a remarkable score to accompany the autobiographical story told by his American wife, the writer and storyteller Mollena Lee Williams-Haas. She was an alcoholic for years and wrote a searing story about her long journey to sobriety. In concert, Williams-Haas reads her story, as the music reinforces her narrative’s hallucinatory qualities. HYENA will be performed by Boston’s own Sound Icon Ensemble led by Jeffrey Means. The hyena is Mollena Lee Williams-Haas’s inner demon, which encouraged her to drink and with which she is now settling scores once and for all.
HYENA is a bold and courageous journey of into the mind of an alcohol-addicted woman who must fight her worst demon—the titular “hyena”. It is a lavish and gorgeous treatment of light, color, words, and performance.
Are there other access accommodations that would be useful to help you fully participate in this program? Let us know at accessibility@icaboston.org or learn more about Accessibility at the ICA at icaboston.org/accessibility.
This performance of HYENA is a coproduction of the Boston University Center for New Music and the ICA/Boston.