TELEKINETIK

THE STORY

“Telekinetik” is a 10-minute Digital Opera Short written by Chicago-based artist, Khary Laurent that explores the intersection of hip-hop and opera. Directed by George Cederquist, the video stars Khary Laurent as a would-be vigilante and Fresnel Laurent as the telepathic shaman who “tortures” and teaches him a difficult lesson about the difference between justice and bloodlust.

Khary Laurent is a composer and classically trained baritone who received his M.Mus. in vocal performance from the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. Laurent uses his operatic training to explore the dichotomy of the two art forms and how they interact. While hip-hop is mostly a spoken, rhythmic art form, and opera is a sung art form, exploring the boundaries of speech and song is nothing new to music. 19th-century recitative has long been described as heightened speech, and Schoenberg’s 20th-century invention of Sprechstimme were both contemporary explorations into this question.

Catapult’s Artistic Director Neal Goren first became acquainted with Laurent’s work in 2021, when a colleague sent him an extraordinary video starring and produced by Laurent, entitled Corsair, which you can watch for yourself here.