The Industry Announces Album Release Of Acclaimed, Boundary-Pushing Opera Sweet Land

“A gut punch...Chaotic, conflicted, implacably honest.” –The New Yorker 

“A head-spinning abstraction of colonialism and whitewashed mythology.”— The New York Times 

Music by Du Yun and Raven Chacon

Libretto by Douglas Kearney and Aja Couchois Duncan 

Directed by Cannupa Hanska Luger and Yuval Sharon

Today, The Industry — the ambitious and acclaimed company that represents “the leading edge of operatic innovation” (WIRED) — announces the September 24 album release of Sweet Land, the history-reckoning opera that uses Western culture’s most high-brow medium to dismantle the consecrated myths of colonialism and white hegemony. The subject of fawning praise from The LA Times, The New York Times, and The New Yorker upon its debut in 2020, Sweet Land retains its potency in recorded form, placing emphasis on the striking compositions and cutting libretto that liberates opera from its rigid conventions. 

Listen to “First Light,” a movement from Sweet Land here.

Written as a reaction to a invitation from the Boston Lyric Opera to compose a piece about the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Sweet Land is a collaboration between a diverse group of acclaimed artists that sidesteps that challenge altogether by rewriting history in the form of a new mythology. These include composer Du Yun, a Chinese immigrant whose opera Angel’s Bone, which explores human trafficking, won a Pulitzer Prize for music; Raven Chacon, a composer and artist from the Navajo Nation who advocates for indigenous composers and musicians; librettist Douglas Kearney, a poet whose writing “pulls history apart, recombining it to reveal an alternative less whitewashed by enfranchised power” (BOMB); Aja Couchois Duncan, a mixed-race Ojibwe writer with a focus on social justice; Cannupa Hanksa Luger, a multidisciplinary installation artist of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent who was raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota; and Yuval Sharon, a 2017 MacArthur Fellow who founded The Industry and whose recent works includeHopscotch, Invisible Cities, War of the Worlds, and Meredith Monk’s ATLAS.

Librettists Douglas Kearney and Aja Couchois Duncan took as bold an artistic risk as possible in writing Sweet Land, wrestling with America’s troubled origins and inventing a new, elemental myth of Hosts and Arrivals. The often disquieting and cacophonous compositions provide an apt soundtrack to a tale that grasps at the unknowably dark truth behind settler colonialism and westward expansion. Using science fiction-inspired abstraction, the American story is cast as a collision between Hosts, The Arrivals, and Nature itself — a harrowing tale made ever more affecting by the masterful, otherworldly music of Du Yun and Raven Chacon.

Stripped of its singular, site-specific live production, Sweet Land’s two storylines — Feast and Train — remain bleeding-edge feats of narrative and acoustic innovation. Sweet Land unveils the uncomfortable truth behind our “Sweet Land of Liberty,” shedding the reliable tropes and giving voice to the despoiled and disposed victims of American empire. It’s an essential work that reinvigorates opera and imbues it with a rare sense of purpose and justice. 

Sweet Land was recorded live on set at the Los Angeles State Historic Park on March 15, 2020, the evening Los Angeles County issued the first lockdown orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to the incredible work of The Industry’s ensemble, creative, and production teams, they captured one final impassioned performance to preserve what the Los Angeles Times called "opera as astonishment." As the natural landscape and the undeniable remnants of industrialization stood in silence, the land itself was a central character, in stark relief to the fantastical world of an imaginary place called “Sweet Land.” Over the next year, The Industry collected additional studio recordings to complete the album.

Sweet Land will be available as both standard and an extended deluxe version.

Pre-order on Bandcamp

About The Industry

The Industry is an artist-driven company creating experimental productions that expand the traditional definition of opera. Through ambitious interdisciplinary collaborations in new contexts, The Industry produces works that defy boundaries and inspire new audiences for the art form. The Industry believes that opera can be emergent and responsive to new perspectives and voices, and that opera plays an essential role in shaping civic identity.  The Industry serves as an incubator for new talent and for artists predominantly based in Los Angeles.

Founded by director Yuval Sharon in 2010, The Industry has premiered critically acclaimed large-scale and site-responsive productions Crescent City (2012), Invisible Cities (2013), Hopscotch (2015), War of the Worlds (2017), and Sweet Land (2020). The Industry recently expanded its artistic leadership, appointing sonic artist Ash Fure and interdisciplinary artist Malik Gaines as Co-Artistic Directors with Sharon for multi-year tenures expanding the artistic range of the organization. 

The Industry also presents smaller scale yet artistically ambitious programs and releases high-quality recordings on the independent recording label, The Industry Records. Artists that have made a significant impact with the company form The Industry Company Members.