PRESS RELEASE

THIS ART BURNING –A STAGED PERFORMANCE FEATURING 
NEW EXPLORATIONS IN SETTING POETRY THROUGH VIDEO, 
SPOKEN WORD, MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT, OPERA AND SONG AT THE PHILLY FRINGE.

THIS ART BURNING, a multimedia musical and 
literary event by the composer Ellen 
Fishman-Johnson and the poet Michael Heller will 
be presented on Saturday, September 11 at 7:30 PM 
and Sunday, September 12 at 4 PM at the 
Performance Garage at 1515 Brandywine Street, 
Philadelphia, 19130.  Admission $10.00. For 
tickets, contact the Festival Box Office at (215) 
413-1318 or visit www.livearts-fringe.org.


This Art Burning brings to the Philly Fringe 
Festival the collaborations of composer Ellen
Fishman-Johnson and poet Michael Heller. Their 
unique multimedia works integrate
Fishman-Johnson’s music and video with Heller’s 
modernist texts on autobiography,
art, history, religion and culture, several of 
which were created especially for this performance.

Fishman-Johnson and Heller have been working 
together since they met at the Yaddo
artist colony in 1990. Their first collaboration, 
Heteroglossia, for taped music and text (1991),
earned them an invitation to the 1991 Montreal 
International Computer Music Conference.
Their next work, Freedom, after all? premiered at 
the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore
in 1992. Their Internet film, After Montale, 
produced in 2002 and based on a poem by Heller,
creates a musical score paced to the visual unfolding of the text.

Their most extensive undertaking to date, 
Benjamin, is a multimedia opera based on
the life and tragic suicide of Walter Benjamin, 
the 20th century German-Jewish literary
critic and philosopher. It was presented at the 
Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2000. The
Philadelphia Inquirer praised the work for the 
“palpable commitment from its creators,”
its “ideal musical language” and a score “that is 
perfectly communicative.” Portions of
the opera are in this program.

This Art Burning, a work based on Heller’s poem 
“Autobiographia,” is a highly-charged
multimedia exploration through music and words of 
the Jewish cultural and musical heritage
the two artists share.

A highlight of this performance is the premier of 
a new piece for violin and video,
Out of Pure Sound, featuring four of Heller’s 
poems, and performed by violinist Leah Kim.

Other artists involved in the program are 
percussionist Harvey Price and pianist,
Sheri Melcher who will accompany singers Shannon Coulter, Amanda Matyas,
Brian Vandenberge and Robert Brandt. Christopher G. McGinley will direct a
small choir. Lighting is by Catherine Lee and sound design by Simon Rogers.

This project is partially supported by a grant 
from the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Composers Forum.



ELLEN FISHMAN-JOHNSON writes for traditional ensembles as well as those
incorporating electro-acoustic sound and video. 
She often works with choreographers,
dancers, artists and poets. She recently 
collaborated for a third time with choreographer
and former Martha Graham dancer, Jeanne Ruddy, on 
a piece titled Lark (2009). Merilyn
Jackson writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer 
cited Fishman-Johnson’s “sprightly,
complex 21st-century score whose swirling 
arpeggios harmonized well with the choreography.”
Her choral piece, Women Who Came Before Us, based 
on a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye,
was described by David Patrick Stearns, music 
critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, as “compelling.”
Fishman-Johnson is currently the Director of New 
Media at Springside School in Philadelphia.

MICHAEL HELLER has published over twenty books of poetry, essays and memoir,
most recently Eschaton (2009) and Beckmann Variations & other poems (2010). Mr.
Heller has won numerous awards for his work, which The New York Times described
as “intent on inquiry, filled with illumination.” 
His poems and essays have appeared in
such publications as The Paris Review, The 
Nation, The Atlantic Review and The New
York Times. He has taught at New York University 
and at colleges and universities in
the United States and Europe. He lives in Manhattan.

[]

CONTACT INFO
Ellen Fishman-Johnson (215) 687-6763, [log in to unmask]
Also see www.efjcomoser.com.

Website: www.michaelhellerpoetry.com. Recent 
publications: Beckmann Variations & other poems 
(Shearsman, 2010), Eschaton (new poems) (Talisman 
House Publishers, 2009), Two Novellas: Marble 
Snows & The Study (ahadada press, 2009) are all 
available from their publishers, at good 
bookstores and from SPD and amazon.com. Speaking 
The Estranged: Essays on the Work of George Oppen 
(Salt, 2008); Uncertain Poetries: Essays on 
Poets, Poetry and Poetics (Salt, 2005) and 
Exigent Futures: New and Selected Poems (Salt, 
2003) are available from www.saltpublishing.com, 
amazon.com and good bookstores. Survey of work at 
http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/heller.htm 
Collaborations with the composer Ellen Fishman 
Johnson at 
http://www.efjcomposer.com/EFJ/Collaborations.html 
Recordings at http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Heller.html



Website: www.michaelhellerpoetry.com.  Recent 
publications: Beckmann Variations & other poems 
(Shearsman, 2010), Eschaton (new poems) (Talisman 
House Publishers, 2009), Two Novellas: Marble 
Snows & The Study (ahadada press, 2009) are all 
available from their publishers, at good 
bookstores and from SPD and amazon.com. Speaking 
The Estranged: Essays on the Work of George Oppen 
(Salt, 2008); Uncertain Poetries: Essays on 
Poets, Poetry and Poetics (Salt, 2005) and 
Exigent Futures: New and Selected Poems (Salt, 
2003) are available from www.saltpublishing.com, 
amazon.com and good bookstores. Survey of work at 
http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/heller.htm 
Collaborations with the composer Ellen Fishman 
Johnson at 
http://www.efjcomposer.com/EFJ/Collaborations.html 
Recordings at http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Heller.html