pg 12 pg 1 attract the Loa and become their ‘ves- RECORDING CREDITS sels’ are social misfits: a pair of cokehead Produced by Anne LeBaron nurses, a drag chanteuse, men who kill. Recorded May 26-27, 2012, (These characters become possessed by final two live performances: their archetypal Loa, so that each singer Atwater Crossing, Los Angeles takes on two roles.) Marie Laveau, like an improvising composer who is expert E. M. Gimenez - Production Sound at putting different things together, truly Designer & Recording Engineer understands the old maxim, as above so Ryan Ainsworth - Associate Sound below. In Scene 6 she declares, “All my Designer & Mixing Engineer power don’t come from Loa. Some of it Michael Marshall - Sound Intern/ comes from lower,” and makes a sugges- Deck Audio tive movement. These two power sources Mastered by Greg Reierson at Rareform – as well as an appetite for poetry and pun, gods and lowlifes – make themselves avail- Innova is supported by an endowment able to you when you have one foot in dirt from the McKnight Foundation. and one foot in water and are home on Philip Blackburn, director, design land and in the river. And when you have Chris Campbell, manager all that, so what if your name is mud? Steve McPherson, publicist pg 2 pg 11
CREDITS Crescent City was performed a dozen times at Harry Partch took the Gesamtkunstwerk lery that populates Bertolt Brecht’s city of Music and electronics by Anne LeBaron Atwater Crossing in Los Angeles throughout May idea so seriously that he built his own in- Mahagonny as it rises and falls makes it an Libretto by Douglas Kearney 2012. Additional credits related to these perfor- struments as objects of sculptural beauty, essential precursor for Crescent City. The Directed by Yuval Sharon mances: Conducted by Marc Lowenstein tuned them to his own just-intonation fundamental vision of LeBaron’s hyperop- REVELERS: Jordan Baker, Stacia Hitt, Justo Leon, system, and featured them onstage in his era, however, is not the political analysis of CAST (in order of appearance) Gabriel Romero, Chelsea Spirito, Max Wanderman music theater works. They were played by Brecht and Weill but rather the common Jonathan Mack: COP/BARON SAMEDI costumed musicians who not only inter- concern of Partch and Falla and Britten Ashley Faatoalia: JESSE DESIGN and PRODUCTION: Laura Kay Swanson acted with singers, actors, and dancers, and Stravinsky: our fatal, catastrophic dis- Gwendolyn Brown: MARIE LAVEAU (Producer); Philip Curtis (Musical Sound Designer); but also were charged with singing, act- connect from the undying spiritual forces Marc Lowenstein: BOUND GHOST Ivy Chou (Costume Designer); Sibyl Wickersheimer ing, and dancing. But woe to those who that surround us. People have settled for Maria Elena Altany: MARASSA JUMEAUX/NURSE (Scenic Designer); Elizabeth Harper (Lighting Ji Young Yang: MARASSA JUMEAUX/NURSE Designer); Jason H Thompson (Projection call what Partch did any kind of “opera.” As what they can buy and sell, what they can Timur Bekbosunov: ERZULIE/DEADLY BELLE Designer); Eric Nolfo (Technical Director) Partch explained in his notes for the pre- eat and fuck, and none of that helps when Cedric Berry: GOOD MAN/BARON CARREFOUR miere of Water! Water! (1961), “Singing is the waters start rising. Lillian Sengpiehl: HOMESICK WOMAN VISUAL ARTIST INSTALLATIONS always involved in these works, recitatives Mason Cooley (Good Man’s Shack); Brianna and choruses frequently, yet they are nev- Throughout Water! Water! Partch wove ORCHESTRA Gorton (Cemetery); Katie Grinnan (Junk Heap); er opera.” his own English rendition of the first two Sarah Wass FLUTE Alice Könitz (Swamp); Jeff Kopp (Hospital); Olga lines of Chapter 8 of the Dao De Jing: “The Brian Walsh REEDS Koumoundouros (Dive Bar) Erin Breen Armstrong REEDS An apocalyptic satire that features a Del- highest goodness is like water. It seeks Christoffer Schunk KEYBOARDS Special thanks to the California Institute of the Arts uge, Partch’s Water! Water! – although not the low place that all men dislike.” Water Daniel Corral ACCORDION, for pre-mastering studio and equipment; to the an opera – serves as a kind of missing link does indeed seek the lowest point, and CHROMELODEON Los Angeles Opera, Todd Reynolds, and Jeff between Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the no place is lower or more detestable than Austin Kowalczyk SAW Kleeman from the Los Angeles Opera for the City of Mahagonny and Anne LeBaron’s the shambles that is Crescent City. . .which Matthew Setzer ELECTRIC GUITAR sound equipment used to make the live record- ings; and to the MAP Fund, along with all the indi- Crescent City. The same can also be said means that the oncoming flood must be a Andrew Lessman DRUMSET of a few other not-operas of roughly the good thing. (The imminent hurricane does T.J. Troy PERCUSSION vidual supporters for making The Industry’s pro- Jonah Levy TRUMPET duction of Crescent City possible. Also thanks to same time. Manuel de Falla’s scenic can- already have the name Charity.) Matt Barbier TROMBONE Jeremy J. Beck, attorney. tata Atlántida (completed posthumously Luke Storm TUBA by Ernesto Halffter in 1961 and revised Responding to Marie Laveau’s plea, the Thanks to photographers: Eric KM Clark VIOLIN Dana Ross (Digi cover and booklet, p.3); in 1976) includes the submergence of jaded Loa (gods and goddesses from the Orin Hildestad VIOLIN Joshua White
This album, culled from live perfor- era’s narrative simultaneously sprawled how different sounds relate. This talent LeBaron’s concept of hyperopera goes mances of our sold-out world premiere throughout a 25,000 square foot ware- for bringing together elements of numer- further by breaking down the usual hier- production, is a document of artists who house, with live and pre-recorded ous musical genres and cultures, as in her archical structures that define the roles decided to take opera into their own video, lighting, and sound creating an recent Breathtails (2011) for voice, string of individuals on creative and production hands. immersive environment. The audience quartet, and shakuhachi, springs from LeB- teams, and shifting into a more lateral and When I accepted Anne’s work for could have fixed seats for the duration aron’s recognition of the relationships – inclusive collaborative arrangement. inclusion in New York City Opera’s VOX of the performance or walk around the compositional, gestural, spiritual – through which seemingly disparate things connect For most of the 20th century, the cost Showcase in 2005, Anne and I both warehouse. In this way, the multiplicity and support each other. and logistics of opera production made hoped the work would find an estab- of perspectives that define Anne’s con- the genre increasingly inflexible, and no lished operatic institution as thrilled and cept of hyperopera was extended to the Her gift for creating dynamic connections modernist opera composer became the overwhelmed by the expansive work audience. There was no privileged per- was raised to a new level of expression kind of game-changer Wagner had been. as the VOX audiences were. But after spective or box seat with the ideal van- with the 2012 premiere of Crescent City It was the postmodern avant-garde – no- a second VOX reading in 2009 without ishing point; in our non-opera house, (produced by The Industry in Los Ange- tably Robert Ashley, Meredith Monk, and any significant signs of interest from each spectator had a partial view and les) which embodies LeBaron’s concept of Robert Wilson – who transformed opera in more traditional venues, two hard but a wholly individual point-of-view. The hyperopera, defined in her notes for the the 1960s and ‘70s. In his epochal video necessary truths became clear to me: audience became collaborators in their program: “an opera resulting from inten- opera for television Perfect Lives (1977- first, a work this unusual and boundary- own experience. sive collaboration across all the disciplines 1980) and the major works that followed, breaking would need to find an equally What drove me and all of my fellow essential for producing opera in the 21st Ashley used small groups of players to unconventional institution. And so The artists was the audacity of Anne’s mu- century – in a word, a ‘meta-collaborative’ create a non-dramatic multimedia form of Industry, my company for new and ex- sic and the poetry of Douglas’s words. undertaking. Collaborative relationships, music theater, centered in improvisation perimental opera, was born in Los An- While our adventurous visual realiza- which are normally, in opera, cemented and rooted in electronic sound, blending geles, conceived as a home for pieces tion has come and gone, I am grateful in established top-down hierarchies, are pop, jazz, rock, atonality, and noise. like Crescent City that fall far outside the that this record preserves this one-of-a- reassessed, encouraging a more holistic process of artistic collaboration among With Robert Ashley’s death in 2014, the mainstream but have the potential to kind opera, as well as the fearless per- composer, librettist, director, designers, question of new directions in 21st-century change the nature of opera. formances that brought it to kicking, musicians, and vocalists.” Hyperopera opera has become more acute – and Anne Second, the piece’s chaotic, kalei- screaming life. might seem to have roots reaching back LeBaron’s development of hyperopera is doscopic sprawl resists the tidy frame to Richard Wagner’s vision of the Gesa- even more urgent. Like Wagner and Ash- of a proscenium. The production I —Yuval Sharon mtkunstwerk (the united/total/universal ley, she sees in opera the perfect nexus for conceived was consequentially spa- Original Director, Crescent City artwork that would synthesize architecture, the arts, and her hyperopera Crescent City tial and eschewed tableaux in favor of Artistic Director, The Industry scenic painting, singing, instrumental mu- (2012), with a libretto by Douglas Kearney, landscape: the six locations of the op- sic, poetry, drama, and dance). However, can be regarded as a bridge between pg 8 pg 5
Anne LeBaron, Hyperopera, Icons (1996) for orchestra, and Traces of and Crescent City: Mississippi (2000) for chorus, orchestra, Some Historical Perspectives poet narrators, and rap artists – and, for by Nicole V. Gagné that matter, her evocation of Edgar Allan Poe, Devil in the Belfry (1993) for violin and Four decades ago Anne LeBaron first won piano, as well as her setting of Gertrude audiences with Concerto for Active Frogs Stein, Is Money Money (2000). LeBaron’s (1975), a theatrical and amusing work inclinations toward theater are another for voices, winds, percussion, and tape, fundamental, from the harp solos I Am and today that piece can be regarded as an American ... My Government Will Re- something of an overture to her career as a ward You (1988) and Hsing (2002) to her composer. It offers a deft and memorable dramatic works for soprano and chamber statement of themes to come: concert the- musicians: Pope Joan (2000), Transfigura- ater, improvisation, and electronic sound, tion (2003), and Sucktion (2008), or the full- all infused with humor, ritual, and environ- scale operas Croak (The Last Frog) (1996) mentalism. Throughout the ensuing years and Wet (2005). she has embraced a wide spectrum of media and styles, producing memorable An essential factor of LeBaron’s compo- scores of every stripe, from orchestra to sition is her musicianship. A gifted harp- mixed chamber groups to soloist, with ist, she utilizes electro-acoustic set-ups and without electronics, as well as vocal and extended performance techniques, works ranging from art songs and choral many of which she has invented and dis- scores to music theater and opera. She has seminated. LeBaron is also a superb im- blended East and West in multi-cultural proviser and has honed her skills playing compositions such as Lamentation/Invoca- with an array of creative composer/musi- tion (1984) for baritone and three instru- cians, including Anthony Braxton, Muhal ments, with its Korean-inspired gestures Richard Abrams, Evan Parker, George and haunting long sustained tones for Lewis, Derek Bailey, Leroy Jenkins, Lionel the voice, and her large-scale celebration Hampton, Shelley Hirsch, Davey Williams, of Kazakhstan, The Silent Steppe Cantata and LaDonna Smith. Her ability to put to- (2011). Her music can be rich in Ameri- gether changing sounds in real time also cana, as in her blues-inflected opera The characterizes her composition, where she E & O Line (1993), the lively American likewise demonstrates a sensitive ear for pg 6 pg 7
I’ve come to think that a musical setting is a materialization of a composer’s reading of a libretto. As with the keenest readers, a great composer sees the rhythms of dialogue, conflict, and reflection, the mutability of time when considering recitative versus aria, the emotional possibility of the unfinished sentence—she sees all of this and finds more than what you put down. Anne’s reading of Crescent City was rich, richer than I had hoped. What I considered dilapidated, she saw as a grand ruin. A passage I wrote imagining a Blues became a deep Indigo. A man’s despair exploded into a seismic force of (super)nature. The poet, Paul Muldoon, quipped that a song is a poem with holes in it. The idea is that the music and its performance fill the holes — or, put another way, the poem is free to leave more unsaid and undramatized, inviting music to make meaning in cooperation, substitution, or tension with lyrics. Though I love Muldoon’s description, I would not say, regarding my work with Anne LeBaron, that I leave holes for her to fill. Rather, I scrawl something to her and she sings it back to me with a polyphony so vivid, it’s damn near Technicolor©. And for this, the least I could do was write a passage to be set to a swamp full of frogs.
— Douglas Kearney Santa Clarita, CA