On May 15, 2021, Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) and the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art on Staten Island will present the New York City premiere of Terra Nova, a new concert-length song cycle composed by the members of Oracle Hysterical and performed in collaboration with the contemporary mixed-instrument quartet Hub New Music.

Terra Nova is inspired by a range of ambitious, gritty (and sometimes naive, cruel, and myopic) explorers. Among its songs is a playful setting of John James Audubon’s descriptions of wood warblers by Brad Balliett, Dylan Greene’s depiction of the pre-Columbian exploration of North America by Chinese mariners, a melancholy view from Amelia Earhart’s cockpit by Majel Connery, Elliot Cole’s haunting setting of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s final letter home, and a Beastie Boys-like shout of the cruel Spanish Requirement of 1513, set by Doug Balliett.