ADDDDDDDDD
AN OPERA BY THINGNY

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thingNY
2138 Crescent St. #D3
Astoria, NY 11105
"This ain't your daddy's jukebox musical,
unless, of course, we're your daddy. 
Then yes. 
This is your daddy's jukebox musical."
-Anonymous
Focus.  thingNY will tell you stories, sing you songs, scream in your face, try to sell you stuff and rant recklessly to themselves, filling your ears with the sweet sounds of excess.  Highlighting the everyday excesses of our lives (workaholism, vanity, the thrill of consumption, the joys of gluttony, the elation of libation) ADDDDDDDDD is thingNY’s opera of attention-deficient songs, monologues and infomercials sharply arranged into a sixty-minute joyride with five performers.

With influences ranging from Robert Ashley to Anthony Braxton to Bjork, ADDDDDDDDD is collaboratively composed and performed by Paul Pinto, Isabel Castellvi, Jeffrey Young, Erin Rogers and Andrew Livingston, whose poetically verbose performance blend instrumental dexterity with five-part harmony and charmingly absurd character ticks. 

Opening with the earnest and absurd prologue "Stories By Interesting People", ADDDDDDDDD quickly becomes a montage of chants, rants, jingles, and commercial interruptions.

Released in 2010 as thingNY’s first album (with an accompanying comic book libretto), the ensemble of composer-performers have continued to work at the intersection of performance art, chamber and electronic music, and multimedia theatre.​
Written and performed by:


Isabel “Storn Child” Castellvi
cello

Andrew “& FIST” Livingston
bass, electronics

Paul “Never make a bad decision again” Pinto
percussion, electronics

Erin “Put gauze on it” Rogers
saxophones

Jeffrey “I am America” Young
violin
Photo credit: Ammar El Seed
"...a stunningly effective mélange of singing, acting, electronics, and extended vocal techniques...I was consistently caught up in a conviction that I have rarely, if ever, seen an encyclopedic array of experimental effects so intimately linked with their expressive potential."
-I CARE IF YOU LISTEN

"blackly amusing, sonically rich...provocative, often hilarious performance"
-Lucid Culture

"ADDDDDDDDD takes rapid-fire, largely spoken-word lyrical content and plays it out across a pulseraising background constructed of sonic accents like dinging bells and remote control channel changing—multiple streams of content flashing by at warp speed. Even in its audio-only CD release format, it’s somehow all consuming."
– New Music Box