Here's what some local publications are saying about the past weekend at OtB:
"Songs of Wars I Have Seen is defined by tension. Stein's deceptively colloquial prose is a slick surface hiding rugged, polyphonic topography, while Goebbels's composition bobs and weaves between almost pastoral peace and brooding, martial passages.
Zach Carstensen posted some more background on how Seattle Chamber Players came to find Heiner Goebbels and why this composer is making important waves in the contemporary art scene:
Last night, with so much to look at, listen to, and comprehend, I found myself ebb back and forth between both overwhelming curiosity and peaceful enjoyment. Listening to the music of Heiner Goebbels, performed by Seattle Chamber Players and Pacific Musicworks was a mind whirling treat.
I'd like to take the opportunity of having opera in our theater to post a few short cartoons that shaped my understanding of opera.
Yesterday morning I got a phone call from my mother. She had received word from Austria that her cousin, a woman I called an aunt, had died. In 1943 my mother was 6 years old. She and the rest of my family had been moved out to the countryside after an Allied bombing of Innsbruck destroyed their apartment building and killed her sister. When my mother talks about the war now, her memories are of the farm life, of how her siblings and cousins all played together in the barnyard and helped their grandfather tend the beehives.
Michael Upchurch at the Times has this to say about Heiner Goebbels Songs of Wars I Have Seen:
Spoken word, musical theater, sound collage, brass-and-percussion blasts, baroque strings and recurring passages of something slinky, dreamlike and jazzy all combine in Heiner Goebbels' "Songs of War I Have Seen."
The piece, it should be clear, draws on a startling variety of influences as it casts its spel
Did you attend Songs of War I Have Seen? Did anything in particular stick with you after the performance? Leave a comment and tell us what you thought!
Yesterday Brendan Kiley began trying to piece together Goebbels and what will be happening onstage this weekend:
This weekend at On the Boards, German composer/spectacle maker Heiner Goebbels will present his Songs of Wars I Have Seen, based on Gertrude Stein's memoir about being an American expatriate during WWII.
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