And Here We Are in Story Binge

Dear Friends

I am excited to invite you to Experiments in Opera’s presentation of seven new operas in our newest event: Story Binge. The event spans two different evenings featuring works by Roddy Bottum, Sam Hillmer, Gelsey Bell, Jason Cady, Nick Hallett Aaron Siegel and myself. It runs April 1^st and April 2^nd at Roulette in Brooklyn. My piece, And Here We Are, will be performed on April 1^st. Tickets here

And Here We Are, is the beginnings of a larger opera in progress. The story encompasses my maternal family and their time in the Philippines (ca 1905-1945) and especially their accounts of their three years in the Santa Tomas concentration camp in Manila (1942-1945).

Librettist and baritone Daniel Neer has reworked the memoir of my Great-Uncle Edgar, who was an aspiring opera singer trapped by the war. April 1 will focus on the character and songs of Edgar, based on his stories of camp atrocities, the progress of the disease beriberi and psychological numbness. Edgar’s songs also talk about the routine camp organizational duties and reveling in the small pleasures that kept him sane in such an environment. Neer not only has shaped the words, but will sing the role of Edgar as well.

Blarvuster will be the ensemble, and features Ben Holmes on trumpet, Joe Bergen on vibraphone, Emily Manzo on piano, Ian Riggs on bass guitar and Mike Pride on drums. The music is somewhat new for me, investigating a nexus of harmony between Duke Ellington and Frenchmen Debussy and Ravel. This is of course further filtered and mixed with my years of research in world music sonorities, to give birth to a sound world of many layers and places, but evocative of the time-period and representative of the complex interaction of cultures so central to this story.

Hope to see you there!