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 <JWPICTURES.com> (disc trays); Atlantis; the Biblical story of Noah and Vodou pantheon) deign to manifest them- Cassia Streb VIOLA and Steve Gunther (all other photos). the Flood is retold by Benjamin Britten in selves, prowling the streets of Crescent Derek Stein CELLO Noye’s Fludde (1957) and by Igor Stravin- City like angels in Sodom as they search Dave Tranchina BASS Under the Sky, Mr. Moon, Where’s the Lyrics in sky in his “musical play” for television, The for good people to justify sparing the city Philip Curtis ELECTRONICA Party, and additional lyrics in scenes 1, 2, and 3 by & LIVE PROCESSING Philip Littell. Used with permission of Philip Littell. Flood (1962). Of course, the rogues gal- from disaster. But the only people who pg 10 pg 3 those masters of 19th- and 20th-century could write Marie Laveau’s part so star- opera. LeBaron, like Wagner, relies on the tlingly low only for a contralto of Gwen- voices of the operatic tradition; but as in dolyn Brown’s range! – the collaborations Ashley’s operas, you’re just as liable to in Crescent City‘s realization occurred on hear those voices in pop, blues, jazz, rock, an even deeper level. The world premiere or experimental stylings. She abandons production, conceived and directed by the Wagnerian orchestra and, like Ashley, Yuval Sharon, engaged six visual artists combines her singers with smaller and to participate in the collaborative process more specialized forces of instruments by designing and building installation set and electronic sound, which also move pieces as the various locales of the opera's readily among stylistic genres; unlike Ash- action. Lighting, video, and sound design- ley, the instrumental and vocal parts are, ers also worked together in the develop- for the most part, as faithfully notated as ment of Crescent City. Furthermore, the the score of Parsifal. LeBaron also differs orchestra itself performed guided impro- from Ashley in that she is not a minimalist. visations at specific musical junctures, such Her music at certain privileged moments as the ever-shifting sheen it created to col- can become completely still or hushed or the fully notated piano and voice parts with simplicity or lost to the world, but she in the Homesick Woman’s Aria. has not walked away from contrast, drama, and story. Like Wagner, she aspires to cre- Hyperopera can also claim inspiration ate a repeatable theatrical drama that will from Harry Partch, a composer especially rivet an audience; but like Ashley, she frag- relevant to Anne LeBaron and Crescent ments her opera through a prism of video City. When Deadly Belle headlines at The work and performance freedoms and si- Chit Hole, her wheezy and woozy accom- multaneities. paniment is a chromelodeon: a pump or- gan retuned to Partch’s system of 43 tones Also like Ashley (and unlike Wagner), LeB- to the octave. LeBaron has also written for aron believes in collaboration. For Ashley, Partch instruments in her 1994 chamber collaboration took place among the imme- piece Southern Ephemera and is writing diate musicmakers: himself and the other for them in her newest opera, LSD: The vocalists, along with the instrumentalists Opera, an investigation into the historical/ and sound designers. But while LeBaron cultural ramifications of LSD. suitably tailored parts to her players – she pg 4 pg 9 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.