Performatist
    Opera

    Keir GoGwilt: The Zarabanda Variations

    Illustration for Keir GoGwilt: The Zarabanda Variations

    Thursday, October 1, 2026

    8:00 PM

    National Sawdust

    Williamsburg, Brooklyn

    Scheduled

    About This Event

    Keir GoGwilt, a singer whose work sits between opera and the wider worlds of early and contemporary classical music, presents The Zarabanda Variations at National Sawdust. The program draws on historical sources as readily as new writing, with traces of Celtic song and period practice, shaped by close listening, spare means and a focus on precision and textual clarity over theatrical display.

    About The Zarabanda Variations

    At National Sawdust in Brooklyn, *The Zarabanda Variations* arrives as an opera framed for a live New York audience, with violinist Keir GoGwilt among the featured performers. The piece works through the idea of “variations” as a method of inquiry, returning to a central motif and testing what changes when context, voice, and pacing shift. In a city where new opera often lives between concert and theater, this production sits squarely in that in-between space. Its most pointed claim is procedural: repetition can be a form of argument, not decoration.

    About the Artist

    Keir GoGwilt

    Keir GoGwilt

    contemporary classicalearly musicceltic

    Keir GoGwilt is a singer whose work sits between opera and the wider worlds of early and contemporary classical music. Their repertoire draws on historical sources as readily as new writing, with traces of Celtic song alongside period practice.