Lonely Motel: Music from Slide
Orchestra 2001 at Princeton Sound Kitchen
Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017 8:00 pm
Orchestra 2001 with Rinde Eckert present composition faculty Steven Mackey's Lonely Motel: Music from Slide, a GRAMMY Award-winning song cycle directed by Mark DeChiazza. The evening will also feature new works by graduate student composers Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade and Noah Kaplan.
Orchestra 2001 (O2001) is dedicated to performing and promoting the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, premiering new works, providing a major focus for the best new music of our time, and reaching out to regional and international audiences. Its name pointed to the future when the ensemble was founded by James Freeman in 1988. Today the name, by now indelibly associated with landmark performances and recordings of new music, points in a new way to the future of the music of our time.
Orchestra 2001 appointed Artistic Director Jayce Ogren in July 2016, following a two-year search with candidates from all across the US and six continents. Mr. Ogren begins his tenure in Fall 2016.
Currently in its 29th season, in addition to concerts in Philadelphia and at Swarthmore College, the ensemble has brought new American music to countless new audiences through tours abroad and through our recordings for CRI, Bridge, Albany, Innova, and Centaur.
The orchestra has had great influence on the lives of composers, young and old, in particular, in the relationship it has with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Crumb. All of Mr. Crumb's "American Songbooks" – his unique settings of American folksongs – were all written for, premiered by, and recorded by James Freeman and O2001. The "Songbooks," receiving a 2015 Grammy Award nomination.
Orchestra 2001 has performed in Denmark, England, and Slovenia, on five trips to Russia including the Soundwaves Festival, the Salzburg Festival in Austria, the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music in Cuba, on an Arabian Gulf tour to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Qatar, and in two tours to China at the Beijing Modern Music Festival, Shanghai Spring International Music Festival, Hong Kong Performing Arts Academy and Hong Kong University, Tianjin Grand Theater and Nanning ASEAN Music Days. O2001 has also performed at Carnegie's Zankel Theater and Miller Theater in New York, the Library of Congress, and at the Kimmel Center. O2001 has presented US regional tours to audiences in rural Appalachia and the southwest's Navajo Nation, supported by NEA touring grants.
O2001's dedication to the performance of American contemporary music speaks for itself: 85 world premieres, over 100 Philadelphia premieres, over 200 works by 135 American composers, of which more than 140 works were by 80 Philadelphia-area composers.
Rinde Eckert is a writer, composer, librettist, musician, performer and director. His Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America and to major theater festivals in Europe and Asia. With a virtuosic command of gesture, language and song, this total theatre artist moves beyond the boundaries of what a 'play,' a 'dance piece,' an 'opera' or 'musical' might be, in the service of grappling with complex issues. Eckert describes many of his characters as "little men with big ideas whose consequences of their hubris are often disastrous." Sometimes tragic and austere, sometimes broadly comedic, entirely grounded by presence, his work is alchemical: moving from rumination and distillation to hard-won illumination, or its lack.
Rinde Eckert began his career as a writer and performer in the 1980's, writing librettos for Paul Dresher (Pioneer, Power Failure, Slow Fire, Ravenshead). He composed dance scores for choreographers Sarah Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins, including the evening-length Woman, Window, Square for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.
Rinde began composing and performing his own music/theater works in 1992 with The Gardening of Thomas D, an homage to Dante which subsequently toured the United States and France. Staged works for solo performer include Becoming…Unusual: The Education of an Eclectic; three one-act plays: An Idiot Divine, Romeo Sierra Tango and Quit This House; and works for radio including Shoot the Moving Things and Four Songs Lost in a Wall. In February 2017 Rinde opened the inaugural season of Renée Fleming's Voices Series at the Kennedy Center where he premiered his recital Rin: Tales from the Life of a Troubadour.
"...he finds vivifying parallels between the theological quest of one man and the theatrical quest to capture and illuminate life.
— Ben Brantley, on "Horizon," in The New York Times
Writing credits for the theater include Highway Ulysses, Horizon, Orpheus X, And God Created Great Whales, which has been produced three times with the original cast and director, for a total of 227 performances. And God Created Great Whales, Horizon and Orpheus X have run off-Broadway, garnering Drama Desk Nominations and the Lucille Lortel Award.
Rinde had received numerous honors and awards for his body of work. In 2012 he was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist, was honored to receive the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award. In 2007 Rinde Eckert was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Eckert's work has been produced in New York by the Foundry Theatre, Culture Project, Theater for a New Audience and the New York Theatre Workshop. American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Center Stage in Baltimore, Cleveland's Dobama Theatre Company, REDCAT in Los Angeles at the Roy& Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, and Berkeley Repertory Theater have also produced his work. Directors have included Tony Taccone, Robert Woodruff, David Schweizer, Richard ET White and Ellen McLaughlin. Rinde Eckert has directed for The Asia Society, Juggernaut Theater, Opera Piccola and the Paul Dresher Ensemble. In 2013 he directed a remounting of Eye Piece for Barnard College students, and directed the two operas Theotokia and The War Reporter by Jonathan Berger and Dan O'Brien for Stanford Live.
Writing and directing new music projects have included I Have Stopped the Clocks for Roomful of Teeth; the critically acclaimed CD Sandhills Reunion (music by Jerry Granelli, text by Eckert); The Schick Machine a solo-theater work for percussionist Steven Schick composed/produced by Paul Dresher; Imaginary City with So Percussion; Sound Stage for the ensemble Zeitgeist; Gurs Zyklus, a new music/performance/multi-media installation and collaboration with sound sculptor Trimpin; and Steven Mackey's oratorio Dream House. Conducted by Gil Rose with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the recording received three 2010 Grammy Nominations: Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered Album, Classical. In 2014 Rinde performed Dream House with the New York Philharmonic.
Eckert wrote the text and performed in the multi-media production Slide with composer/guitarist Mackey and the new music ensemble 8th blackbird, which toured to major university campuses and the Ojai Festival. Renamed Lonely Motel by Cedille Records, the project won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Eckert and Mackey are members of BIG FARM, a 'prog-rock' super group with drummer Jason Treuting (So Percussion) and bassist Mark Haanstra. Rinde Eckert's own uniquely eclectic music is released on Germany's Intuition label and through Songline/Tonefield Productions. Writer/performer Eckert and composer/performer Ned Rothenberg expanded Five Beasts into a full-evening work during a 2-week residency at Les Subsistances, the Laboratoire international de création artistique in Lyon, France in March 2015. Imagining how animals might perceive human beings, Eckert brings the conceit to life with an array of unconventional sounds and gestures. Rinde Eckert curated an 8-concert series at Brooklyn's National Sawdust during 2016 and presented Five Beasts, Sandhills Reunion and other works. Five Beasts will tour 2017-2018. The Kronos Quartet's production of composer Jonathan Berger's monodrama My Lai, written for singer-actor Eckert, Vietnamese musician Vanh An Vo and the Kronos Quartet includes performances in the 2017-2018 season at the Singapore Festival, Brooklyn, major college campuses and Holland. The work debuted at Stanford University and the Harris Theater in Chicago in 2015-2016.
In February 2017 Rinde Eckert made his Kennedy Center recital debut as part of Renee Fleming's inaugural VOICES Series.
A Beth Morrison Production, the new music-theatre work Aging Magician uses a composite of sonic and visual elements to guide a man entering his final stages of life to the fantastical world of Coney Island. Composed by Paola Prestini with libretto by Rinde Eckert, design and direction by Julian Crouch, instrument design by Mark Stewart, and projection design by S. Katy Tucker, Aging Magician combines music, theatre, puppetry, instrument making, and scenic design to create an enduring work for the stage. Performances have been at Mass MOCA, the Walker Arts Center and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois. The productions went to Arizona State University in February 2017 and ran for two weeks at New York City's New Victory Theater in March. It will also be performed at UCLA this season.
Rinde has taught graduate students from the English Department and School of Music at Princeton University since 2007. His extensive writing and directing residencies began at the University of Nebraska where he created Horizon; the University of California at Davis Department of Theater and Dance to write and direct Fate and Spinoza; in partnership with Hancher and the University of Iowa to create, write, direct and perform in Eye Piece, a play exploring the loss of vision which Rinde again directed for Barnard College students in March 2013; and at Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts to create, write and direct theater students in The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy.
He led a 2-week teaching residency with the Departments of Theater and Dance at Towson University during spring 2015 and is currently co-teaching a course on creativity with Paul Dresher at the University of South Maine.
Rinde Eckert lives in New York with his wife Ellen McLaughlin, the playwright and actor.
Steven Mackey was born in 1956, to American parents stationed in Frankfurt, Germany. He is regarded as one of the leading composers of his generation and has composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, dance and opera. He has received numerous awards including a Grammy in 2012. His first musical passion was playing the electric guitar in rock bands based in northern California. He blazed a trail in the 1980's and 90's by including the electric guitar and vernacular music influence in his concert music and he regularly performs his own work, including two electric guitar concertos and numerous solo and chamber works. He is also active as an improvising musician and performs with his band Big Farm.
Orchestra 2001
Rinde Eckert
Steven Mackey
Last Updated: Nov 6, 2017, 2:07 PM