You might have seen it referred to as OurEyesAreTouching or East River: You and I have Met Before.  The good news is, it’s still the same piece of music and Rhymes With Opera will still join with Baltimore’s hip hop quartet Soul Cannon to perform it in May.

Titles are funny. Did you know that Star Trek was once called Corporate Headquarters? And The Great Gatsby was almost called Trimalchio in West Egg? For music, I like to think of titles as a sort of free drink ticket to the listening experience. You’re not sure if you want to go, and then you find out there’s a free drink involved and you figure you’ll check it out, why not? If the title piques my curiosity, I’m slightly more excited to hear the music. Then again, if there’s no drinking at the venue, that doesn’t mean I won’t go. There’s a chance I might dig the music more when I’m sober anyway, pay a little more attention. My friend Nomi Epstein titles her pieces things like Untitled or Music for Seven Instruments and Voice because she doesn’t want the listener to be loaded with any baggage before they hear the music. Then there’s the goofy approach – I play in a band called We Used To Be Family who has song titles like Stop That Shit and For Barry Glazer and those Micturated on. In that case, the title just becomes a label, a place holder.

How about I Feel the Air (Of Another Planet) for a title? I’ve been really digging on that Stereolab song lately. It’s incredibly beautiful and I think the title really sets it up well. You can listen to it here.  Strangely enough, that’s also what a soprano sings (in german) in Schoenberg’s 2nd string quartet, which some say is the first expressionist piece of music. Does Stereolab dig on Schoenberg?!

Anyway, don’t miss Book Of Gazes on May 15, 16 and 17 in Baltimore, Philly and New York respectively.

Here’s a blurb to whet your whistle, straight from the composer herself:

“EAST RIVER is an imaginary dive bar on the outskirts of a dirty metropolis. It is an anti-memory space, a place where otherwise ordinary folks drop by to relieve themselves of emotional burdens, or cry on the shoulders of strangers over $2 shots of whiskey and the haunting sounds of the nameless house band. Tonight, an unwitting young woman named Jubilance will find herself at the East River, where she will meet a stranger who claims she has met Jubilance before, on a night two years earlier when an unknown woman was murdered. Jubilance remembers nothing of this event, but gradually comes to believe that she must have been so traumatized by it that she repressed the memory. Over the course of the evening, the stranger will guide Jubilance through the fragmented kaleidoscope of her psyche, in search of the lost memory and lost time, and in search of answers and clues that could help solve the murder. What they will discover locked away in Jubilance’s memory instead will change everything in Jubilance’s life forever.”

This is the summary (today) of the story thus far:

In brief, at the end of Act One, Scene One, William is languishing in a tower, having been kidnapped by a group of birds who are anxious for revenge after he has killed one of their number. Hans has promised to rescue him. The Woman With No Name is off to her biochemistry laboratory to make a potion to let people speak to the birds.

The Telegraph reported on this story, quoting the BBC Music Magazine’s Deputy Editor:

“Whenever there is a new fad you know somebody in the art world is going to grab hold of it by the horns,” he tells the London Evening Standard.

“They should be careful that it doesn’t overtake the serious stuff they do.”

(serious?) I don’t think much of opera was really considered particularly “serious” back in the day. i think any time a genre (like “opera”) is re-imagined, it’s always bound to be a good day.

Thanks for tuning in.
George and Ruby.

featuring music by Kathleen Bader, Mattias Sköld,
and the premiere of two new works written for RWO.

THOMAS LIMBERT (RWO commission)
Numbers/Dates
(Anxiety Leading to Panic)

Libretto by THIMBLE WIT
Music by RUBY FULTON and GEORGE LAM
Skeleton

• Saturday, March 7, 2009, 8pm
  Broad Street Cafe – 1116 Broad Street
  Durham, NC
  Free Admission
  




• Sunday, March 8, 2009, 7pm
  Metro Gallery
  1700 North Charles Street
  Baltimore, MD
  $7 / $5 students

• Friday, March 13, 2009, 8pm
  IWAA
  5045 Spruce Street
  Philadelphia, PA
  Free Admission
  




• Saturday, March 14, 2009, 6pm
  42nd st. / Times Square Subway Station
  New York, NY

• Sunday March 15, 2009, 5pm
  Gershwin Hotel
  7 East 27th St, New York, NY
  $10
  

Photo used under Creative Commons, from Streetwalker (www.flickr.com)

Can you donate to support our music? For a donation of $10 or more, we’ll send you a Rhymes With Opera sampler CD made up of tracks contributed by each of the members of our company. These unique CDs make equally good stocking stuffers, eggnog coasters, shattered christmas tree ornaments, shiny holiday frisbees and consumerist manifestations of “Cyber Monday”, and your donation will help us as we continue to explore the relationships between music, ideas and locality. No amount is too small! And your donation is now tax-deductible, because of our affiliation with American Opera Projects. There are two simple steps to make your tax-deductible donation to Rhymes With Opera:

• Send us a check, payable to “American Opera Projects”, be sure to put “Rhymes With Opera” on the memo line. Our address is Rhymes With Opera, P.O. Box 1921, Durham, NC 27702-1921
• Send an email to rhymeswithopera@gmail.com with the following information:
  1. name and mailing addres
  2. donation amount
  3. how many CDs you would like (up to one free CD for every ten dollars donation)

All gifts $50 or over enable the donor to become a member of Rhymes With Opera, who will receive (in addition to the sampler CD) a copy of our newsletter, be recognized as a member in our performance programs, as well as receive regular updates about upcoming RWO productions.

Thanks in advance for your support!

View Larger Map

We’ll be performing a few fiddle tunes, as well as some improvised opera (!), so come join us.

Durham Art Walk is sponsored by the Durham Arts Council and the City of Durham Department of Parks and Recreation. Check out the website at http://www.durhamartwalk.com.

AOP performs with Rhymes With Opera, Opera On Tap and the Collective Opera Company, 2:30pm – 4:00pm in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. AOP and Opera On Tap are also performing at noon over at Lincoln Square in Manhattan.

more information about AOP at their website. check out new videos from RWO’s recent performance in Durham, NC.