Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812

14 Reasons I Love Dave Malloy's Opera based on War and Peace.

Phillipa Soo as Natasha in NATASHA PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812, Photo By Chad Batka

1. You get perogies and vodka.
   
   
2. Dave uses bass clarinet, english horn, and gut rumbling club music all in the same piece.
   
   
3. One scene inside of the opera is a hilarious parody of an opera.
   
   
4. A bunch of the actors, and almost all of the musicians, are also composers.
   
   
5. At one point two female singers in a tense situation sing the lyric “constraaaaaaained” a half step away from each other, and it is beautiful.
   
   
6. One of the actors passed me a tiny folded paper during the show that had “you are hawt” scrawled on it. (Data suggests this was part of the show, and not an impulsive appraisal of my hawtness).
   
   
7. Dave's melodies pour from the piece so effortlessly. I waited for something to be repetitive or predictable but each musical moment is an ingenious transformation and/or departure from the previous.
   
   
8. The opening number is a cumulative song
   
   
9. Mimi Lien created a magical Russian Cabaret.
   
   
10. I'm incredibly impressed that Dave could tell such a complicated story using no spoken dialogue, without the exposition ever feeling forced. This makes me hopeful about the potential of song to tell big stories in an authentic and light-hearted way. It cleverly triangulates musical theater and operatic tropes so it can make use of them, without ever being subsumed by them.
    
    
11. Every one of the actors approach singing differently. I love this. I like shows that have a few classically trained singers and a bunch of singers that are using their voices with folk, blues, rock, and experimental sensibilities. The sonic patchwork is what makes the piece feel current and authentic. Our culture is so heterogeneous that when a large group of performers stand up and sing according to a single musical orthodoxy, the product can feel institutional, dated or even corporate. This is the experience I have, though not always an unpleasant one, at many Broadway shows and big budget operas. Comet on the other hand feels homemade. It may not feel as homemade in its current commercial incarnation than it did at Ars Nova, but that leads to my next point.
    
    
12. I love seeing a commercial production of a truly downtown piece or performance. Rachel Chavkin and Dave have kept the core of the work intact even though there are now many more costumes and chandeliers. To quote the brilliant Taylor Mac, “The avant-garde IS commercial!” It is inspiring to see commercial backing for a work as quirky, honest and courageous as Comet.
    
    
13. The waitstaff are all actually Russian (or have convincing accents), and I think this actually adds a lot to the experience.
    
    
14. It's in a damn TENT!
    
    Go see for yourself.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

3 2's or AFAR by Mac Wellman (The Devil's Butthole)

I've been collaborating on a piece with Mac Wellman and director Meghan Finn. This has been a wild ride. Part japanese tinged puppet theater, part philosophical absurdist performance art, and then I added the childlike musical theater earnestness.

Devil's Butthole (DEMO) by musicisfreenow

"His script is a meditation on Heidegger’s Dialogue on Language Between a Japanese and an Inquirer. The Japanese philosopher in the dialogue, named Kuki Shūzō, spoke and wrote about iki, the concept of coquetry which influences Japanese culture on many things from architecture to the clothing of geishas. 'It’s basically teasing, like parallel lines that never meet,' Wellman says. 'It’s not about consummating anything, it’s about always maintaining that type of tension.' "

From an article in the Brooklyn Rail about the piece.

The play opens October 6 at Dixon Place.

UPDATE: New York Times Review

John Muther - Space Race

The Lisps played with John Muther twice in Milwaukee this year. Both times it was a joy. His songwriting is crafted so brilliantly. And he manages to talk about all the things I'm interested in just the way that seems to make sense. When I first heard is song Space Race, I was a believer.



Lyrics:

As kids, on our hands and knees

Around the warm glow of the radio,

We wondered if the space men will wear sweaters.

Will they still eat food?

Will all food be pills?

Will they still tie their shoes?

Ray gun. Velcro.

Time moves too slow.

Rockets. Space camp.

Air locks. Mars man.

I'll take a shower of dust; I'll take a moon bath.

We need a thruster boost; we gotta go fast!

We have a duty to ourselves and our solar system

To spread our society.

We can show the other planets how to kill all the mosquitos,

And prevent each cloudy day.

Bug bomb. Smart bomb.

A bomb. H bomb.

Box top. Moon base.

Free prize. Space race.

We put our backs against the floor. We put our knees up on the couch.

We put our backs against the floor. We put our knees up on the couch.

Brushes steel. Plastic.

High sheen. High tech.

Longing for the

Wood floor. Wood stove.

Warm bed. Wool clothes.

John Muther's Website

Singularity (a song)

After a few years of trying I finally got out a song about the technological singularity. Here's the demo (Recorded and mixed on an iPhone): Singularity [mp3]

UPDATE: Hear the Studio Recording HERE

Lyrics:

Singularity

I’ll live to see a million things That men were never meant to see

My senses and my faculties are super-computing factories

Auditory mesmerizers Touch and taste olfactory

Digitized into data streams that register but will not delete

They’ll store it up on carbon atoms lined up into nano-diamonds

Priced just right for maximizing special year end price surprises

Every piece of food you taste and every thought you cogitate

Every sound that you can hear and sight you see for years and years

All stored up so conveniently on peta-bytes of memory

So you can always reference them in case you forget anything

Now once all that experience can fit into an easy grid

existence is no longer something mentally projected

The wires that you have inside are very easily realized

Through artificial imaging you duplicate 10 at a time

Your consciousness can be enjoyed by anyone forever more

And you live in whatever state that you or anyone creates

You could be Giant Squirrel, a statue or a talking cat

The Goodyear blimp, an etch a sketch, An octopus or a yoga mat

You’d have each and every memory and feeling to the one

And now you can commence your life as an uploaded extropian

My mother is so horrified by this post-human fantasy

She says you’d lose that special thing that makes us human beings be

But I don’t know I’m not so sure if humans are so good and pure

Perhaps we’d be much better off if we took these violent bodies off

Once everyone is in the cloud we’ll move beyond this earthly ground

Expanding into outer space as an informational signal race

Matter in the solar system converts into computing mass

And the sun becomes a central orb of a brain that grows into the vast

Expanse of space and emptiness for light years and light centuries

It replicates exponentially like a Russian doll in a cosmic dream

When every spot of the universe is filled up it will promptly burst

Eradicating finally the experiment that we grew from earth

As it explodes the brain will breathe into the dark impossibly

and anti-matter all around will collapse the universe back down

and right away what you would see if you were a fly in the vacancy

All the light and color in the universe is collapsing

Time would stop

From a tiny pinhead point a massive bang erupts into space

And trillions of new particles fly away at a photonic pace

And once again the clock would start to tick and tock and tick and tock

Years would pass, billions or more before the tiny proteins locked

And once again in the boiling seas of a miniscule blue anomaly

A planet floating helplessly around a tiny ball so fiery

an unextraordinary corner of the universe would cradle it

The flicker of intelligence that led us here and brought us this...