In February of 2016, the Director of the ExCITe Center, Youngmoo Kim, began collaborating with composer Lembit Beecher and librettist Hannah Moscovitch to create Sophia’s Forest: an opera that focuses on the interior world of a 9-year-old child, Sophia, who has recently immigrated to the United States.

To evoke Sophia’s thoughts and memories, Youngmoo, working with architect Simon Kim and engineer Mark Yim of the University of Pennsylvania, created nine tree-like, sound-producing sculptures as part of the opera’s set.

In this podcast we talk with the composer, Lembit Beecher, and two ExCITe Center collaborators who were integral to the sculptures' function, Rich Vallett and Scott DelPrato.

Hosted by Alex Jones.