In conjunction with the UMMA exhibition Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life (on view February 25–May 20), UM Digital Music Ensemble presents In Memoriam... Kit Carson (1963), a non-linear opera by ONCE founder Robert Ashley. DME's director, Professor Stephen Rush, premieres a short opera on Ulysses Grant, rich with electronics and Civil War songs. According to Rush, “There is great freedom not thinking the only way to present ideas to performers is through the traditional 'dots-on-a-page' technique. Fluxus reinterprets performance as possibility and the celebration of the ordinary in contradistinction to the exceptional.”

The SMTD@UMMA performance series is made possible in part by the Katherine Tuck Enrichment Fund. The exhibition Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and was generously supported by Constance and Walter Burke, Dartmouth College Class of 1944, the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund, and the Ray Winfield Smith 1918 Fund. UMMA’s installation is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Arts at Michigan, and the CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund.