Consider yourself warned: Aztec apocalypse coming to Southern Illinois University (3.27.09) and Chicago (5.3.09)

If you were an Aztec, A.D. 1519 was a very bad year for you. Part crass western hegemony, part taste-of-your-own-medicine irony, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire was not pretty, bringing to an ugly end one of the most powerful and productive societies of the pre-Modern world.

Yet, if the accounts recorded in the Florentine Codex are to be believed, the ten years preceding the overthrow of Tenotichtlan brought the Aztecs more than fair warning that something truly grisly was on its way. Decades later, missionary Bernardino de Sahagún recorded, in the local Nahuatl language, accounts of the eight bad omens which preceded the arrival of the conqistadores. Beginning with multiple sightings of fire in the sky, the apparitions permeate Aztec life: a boiling lake, wailing woman in the streets each night, a myserious bird, and finally (my personal favorite), two-headed Mesoamerican zombies.

Under a commission from astounding vocalist Julia Bentley, I set these rich and evocative texts (some in the original Nahuatl, but mostly from Miguel León-Portilla’s brilliant translation) for mezzo-soprano, viola, and piano. Premiering the work with Julia are the prodigiously gifted Kuang-Hao Huang and Claudia Lasareff-Mironoff (who, long story, once attempted to teach me viola…). Titled Eight Bad Omens, you can hear the piece at Southern Illinois University’s Outside the Box Festival in Carbondale, Illinois at 7:30pm on March 27. The Chicago premiere is planned for May 3, 2009 in Lincoln Park, on the Mostly Music house concert series.

In writing the piece, I drew an enormous amount of inspiration from The Aztec World, a truly superb exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum. If you’re in town, I highly recommend a visit.