..and Ben Katchor Collaborate on Revolutionary New Opera. In an innovative new opera, the legendary, eclectic, and uncompromisingly funky Bang on a Can teams up with cult cartoonist and this year's MacArthur Award winner Ben Katchor to create The Carbon Copy Building, a dynamic trip through the gritty side of urban life. The opera is directed by and Obie-Award winner Bob McGrath.
..and Ben Katchor Collaborate on Revolutionary New Opera.
In an innovative new
opera, the legendary,
eclectic, and
uncompromisingly funky
Bang on a Can teams up
with cult cartoonist and
this year's MacArthur
Award winner Ben Katchor to create The
Carbon Copy Building, a dynamic trip
through the gritty side of urban life. The
opera is directed by and Obie-Award
winner Bob McGrath. The Carbon Copy
Building will show twice, Friday and
Saturday, August 4 and 5, in MASS
MoCA's Hunter Center for the Performing
Arts. Both performances are at 8 pm.
With a plot involving a simple package
delivery from one building to the other,
this opera explores the very different
lives these twins buildings lead. One
building is upscale, while the second
building, in the Bent Spoon District,
deteriorates and subdivides into tiny
offices housing an endless list of
unlikely businesses - an emergency
chewing-gum-removal service, an
eternal flame maintenance company,
even a dessert embalmer who preserves
uneaten food as memoirs of special
events.
Set by Cult Cartoonist Ben Katchor
Recent MacArthur Award winner Ben
Katchor has been an innovator in comics
since he was a teenager. His strips
have been syndicated all over the
country, appearing in the Forward,
Metropolis Magazine, and dozens of
other newspapers, and have developed
an almost cult following. His works
include Julius Knipl, Real Estate
Photographer; The Cardboard Valise;
and The Jew of New York. He has
received the Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation Fellowship. He was the
subject of a lengthy profile by Lawrence
Wechsler, entitled A Wanderer in the
Perfect City, which appeared in The New
Yorker and in 1994 was named Best
Cartoonist by New York Magazine.
Katchor collaborated with producer
David Isay on a series of radio dramas
for NPR.
The four singers play nearly a dozen
characters and expertly handle the
difficult task of adding depth to the
characters without robbing them of the
comic book ambience. Director McGrath
maintains the comic book feel right
down to the voice balloons. For the set
Katchor's detailed drawings are
enlarged and layered through slide and
video projection techniques.
Bang on a Can Create Eclectic Score
The innovative music composed by Bang
on a Can founders and artistic directors
Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia
Wolfe bring irreverence and wit to
Katchor's comic book backdrops. (The
musical imagery, for example, includes
a funeral march for uneaten food.) The
New York-based Bang on a Can is
dedicated to creating a forum for the
most innovative and adventurous music
of our time. Lang calls the music
they've written for this opera eclectic
saying, This is opera, but it's definitely
not a 400-pound lady with a big
vibratto. It's music for people who live
below 14th Street-very urban, very
downtown.
Michael Gordon's background includes
underground rock bands in New York
and formal composition studies at Yale.
His recent opera Chaos is a fast-paced
science fiction spectacle, which
premiered at The Kitchen in New York
to rave reviews and packed houses.
Sunshine of Your Love, a commission
for the new Ensemble Modern
Orchestra, toured Europe last summer,
premiering at the Edinburgh Festival.
Trance, a work for London's Icebreaker
Ensemble, has been performed at
Lincoln Center and The Kennedy Center.
Composer David Lang has been
commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera,
the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the
San Francisco Symphony, the Saint Paul
Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Singers,
and the American Composers Orchestra.
He is composer-in-residence at the
American Conservatory Theater in San
Francisco. His awards include the Rome
Prize, a Kennedy Center/Friedheim
Award, the Reveson Fellowship with the
New York Philharmonic, and grants from
the Guggenheim Foundation, the NY
Foundation for the Arts, and the
National Endowment for the Arts.
Composer Julia Wolfe has received
commissions from the Kronos Quartet,
the American Composers Orchestra, the
Koussevitzky Foundation, the
Huddersfield Festival, and the
Rotterdam Arts Council. Her work has
been performed by The San Francisco
Symphony, Margaret Leng Tan, and Le
Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. Her awards
include a Charles Ives Scholarship and
an Academy Award from the American
Academy and Institute of Arts and
Letters, two ASCAP Foundation grants,
a fellowship at Princeton University,
residency at the MacDowell Colony and
Djerassi Institute, and a Fulbright
fellowship.
Bob McGrath is the Artistic Director of
Ridge Theater where he has directed
and staged all productions since the
theater's inception. A two-time Obie
winner, McGrath recently staged several
productions at the American Repertory
Theater including Susan Sontag's Alice
in Bed and Robert Coover's Charlie in
the House of Rue. He is currently
developing a play with Ridge Theater
based on Outsider artist Henry Darger
by Mac Wellman.
The Carbon Copy Building was produced
in association with Ridge Theater.
Tickets Available Now
Tickets to The Carbon Copy Building are
$28 for orchestra seating and $22 for
mezzanine seating. Tickets are
available by calling the MASS MoCA Box
Office at 413.662.2111 or online.
Tickets may also
be purchased in person from 10 - 6 daily
at MASS MoCA at 87 Marshall St. in
North Adams, Mass.
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art
87 Marshall Street North Adams, Massachusetts 01247
ph 413.664.4481 fx 413.663.8548