About
OZET is an ongoing artistic collaboration that encompasses live performances, films, music recordings, and a band. Each piece of the project draws on and expands the fictional history of the Collective Sphere OZET.
OZET began in 2007, when Aaron Meicht started writing and performing musical forms inspired by his encounter with J.D. Bernal’s prophetic 1929 scientific treatise The World, The Flesh, and the Devil. Scott Blumenthal joined Aaron in 2008 evolving the project, and together they developed the idea of the Collective Sphere OZET.
That year they presented there’s a distance at which control returns to us for the Ontological Theater’s Incubator Series, which combined saxophone, trumpet, and broadcasted spoken text to explore the story of one of the OZET’s first settlers.
“LULLABY FROM THE FIRST GENERATION OF THE [YOUR SHIP NAME HERE] TO THE LAST” performed on March 6, 2009 at Listen/Space was a full-out audience-participation sing-along, celebrating the pioneers who left earth for OZET, and the legacy they bequeathed to their children.
A year later to the day, they returned to the Ontological with Koba / OZET Songbook, a two-part piece consisting of a thirty minute murder mystery for saxophone quartet, banjo, guitar, trumpet, and three actors, followed by a performance of six songs drawn from the official and folk cultures of the OZET, backed by a full rock band.
In August 2010, Aaron and Scott presented Alberts I-V at HERE. This theatrical-music work, produced with the help of a dozen collaborators, delved into the pre-history of the OZET. From 2012 to 2014 OZET made its home at the Incubator Arts Project.
Common Hall Village 20 (January 2012) was an immersive, multimedia, performance featuring the OZET Band and a rotating cast of over twenty performers.
The most recent major piece, Katorga (June, 2014), was a tale of imprisonment and mushroom-hunting in the turgid, waning days of the Fifteenth Generation.
Currently in development is our newest piece: OoRT. It is a theatrical-music work for five actors and five musicians.