Players - Downbeat

JOHN SEYFRIED
Jazz On Campus
Oberlin
Stages
Pekar’s
Jazz Opera
Harvey Pekar (left) watches Oberlin students perform Leave Me Alone
Emotional divas, portly tenors, over-the-top
drama and preposterously broad comedy, all
performed before tuxedo-clad audiences in
gigantic concert halls. These are the conventions
of opera—easily identified by anyone over the
age of 10 with a working knowledge of Bugs
Bunny. “[Theater and opera director] Peter
Sellars called it a lobotomized art form,” said
Paul Schick, artistic director of Real Time
Opera, a small New Hampshire-based production
company. “Opera defines classification
because its premises are so absurd.”
This is why Real Time is dedicated to creating
shows that go way out of the box to challenge
preconceptions about operatic subject
matter (physicist Richard Feynman), venue
(New York’s Knitting Factory) and musical
composition (one show created and performed
by John Trubee and the Ugly Janitors of
America). Now it has created an opera with a
libretto by Harvey Pekar, the professionally
misanthropic author of the comic book
American Splendor.
“Once you’re thinking in terms of reinventing
an art form,” Schick said, “Harvey’s a natural
choice.”
The result of that choice is Leave Me Alone,
a comic jazz opera in the form of a meditation
on how art clashes with modern culture and
everyday life, composed by California-based
saxophonist Dan Plonsey and written in collaboration
with the Pekar. The show, which had its
premiere—and only performance—on Jan. 31,
was staged at Finney Chapel on Oberlin
College’s Ohio campus. It was simulcast live on
leavemealoneopera.com.
For the students at Oberlin’s Conservatory of
Music who performed Plonsey’s offbeat music
behind this equally offbeat take on opera, Leave
Me Alone offered an opportunity for growth that
isn’t as readily accessible through older works.
“In academia we are constantly looking
backwards, but it’s equally critical to look
toward the future,” said David Stull, dean of the
86 DOWNBEAT April 2009
conservatory, which also staged the 2007 U.S.
premiere of an Austrian composer’s operatic
interpretation of David Lynch’s film Lost
Highway. “Harvey’s not trapped by convention
and he’s not afraid for the show to have jagged
edges. What’s interesting about this is that it’s
doing something that hasn’t been done before.
No student can say, ‘Oh, I understand this
because I’ve done it.’”
That was particularly true for Noah Hecht, a
drummer and one of the students who provided
the show’s musical backdrop. “I was intrigued
by a jazz opera,” Hecht said. “Dan doesn’t have
drum parts written, so it’s been exciting for me
to get inside of the music and find out what to
channel and where things are coming from.”
Plonsey initially conceived Leave Me Alone
as the loosely fictional story of a musician struggling
to make his art in the face of domestic
responsibilities. When he brought fellow
Cleveland native Pekar on board, the show
began to change.
“Before I could even get far in describing the
show, Harvey said, ‘I’m in the habit of taking
any work that’s paying me,’” Plonsey said. “But
he sees things in a unique way.”
Pekar’s vision was something experimental
and reality-based, a show about its own creation,
peppered with personal monologues by himself,
Plonsey and both of their wives, with everyone
involved playing themselves.
The opening, developed and performed by
Pekar, is a polemic about modern society’s
intolerance of and failure to support avant-garde
and cutting-edge art, which he believes will lead
to the destruction of a worthwhile mainstream.
“I used to work at a Veterans Administration
hospital and a doctor there had a subscription to
the Cleveland Orchestra. When they’d play
something even mildly challenging, like
Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird Suite,’ this guy would be
furious,” Pekar said. “I wanted to lecture people
about that—at the beginning—so they had no
chance to misunderstand me.” —Joshua Karp
School Notes
Grammy Lessons: Saxophonist Gerald
Albright (above) performed with high
school students from the Grammy Jazz
Ensembles at Spaghettini Italian Grill &
Jazz Club in Seal Beach, Calif., on Feb. 2.
Terence Blanchard also performed with
the ensembles that week. The high school
musicians from across the country were
selected for the week of instruction, which
included lessons from Justin DiCioccio of
the Manhattan School of Music and Ron
McCurdy of the University of Southern
California Thornton School of Music. They
also recorded a CD at Capitol Studios.
Details: grammy.com
Kentucky Bear Hug: The University of
Louisville’s School of Music has marked
four years of its Open World Leadership
Cultural Program with the new two-CD set
Jazz Connection (Sea Breeze). The discs
feature collaborations between the
school’s students and faculty and Russian
jazz musicians. Details: louisville.edu
Northwest Voices: Vocalists Nancy King
and Billy Gaechter sat in with the Mt. Hood
Community College Jazz Ensemble in
Oregon for the group’s new disc, Doin’ The
Best Deeds (Sea Breeze). Details: mhcc.edu
Skidmore Summer: Skidmore College in
Saratoga Springs, N.Y., has announced
details for its summer Jazz Institute, which
will run from June 27–July 11. The program
accepts students high school age
and older. Instructors include Curtis Fuller
and Bill Cunliffe. Details: skidmore.edu
Canadian Fellowships: Canadian universities
are offering postdoctoral fellowships
for studying the social value of improvisation.
The grants are for the University of
Guelph, McGill University and Université
De Montréal for the 2009–’10 academic
year. The application deadline is April 30.
Details: improvcommunity.ca