.png)
‘Black Rock, USA’ workshop is an invite to join the following opera in progress
About 50 Southeast artists to perform music and lyrics for fictional 1890s mining town storyline as composer hopes recording will lead to full-fledged stage production
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
There’s no stage set or costumes, and the acoustics are a bit rough-and-tumble by opera standards. But Juneau composer Spencer Edgers says the artistic process itself will be part of the audience experience when a workshop performance of "Black Rock, USA" takes place at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center.
"That's the exciting thing about this, is that this is the proof of concept," he said before a rehearsal Thursday. "You're coming to hear an opera that is still a work in progress. It is complete in some way from start to finish, and it has been refined, but you're also being invited into the creative process."
"This is the first time this music has been performed in any way, and from there we are going to refine it even more so it’s kind of like getting in on the ground floor."
Edgers received a Juneau Community Foundation Arts Vibrancy Award a year ago for the project. He wrote the music for "Black Rock, USA," while local Juneau poet Tripp J Crouse wrote the lyrics, and more than 40 musicians from Southeast Alaska — including members of Juneau Lyric Opera and Orpheus Project — were recruited to perform.
The website offering tickets to and promoting Sunday’s workshop declares "it’s like if folk music and opera had a gay baby!"
"Black Rock, USA is a full length opera that explores themes of labor rights and queerness within the context of a fictional 1890s mining town," a summary at the website notes. "Penelope and her community navigate the coal mine by day, and the saloon/brothel by night, asking the question “what if we had a world guided by love, rationality, and equality?”
Edgers said the broad strokes of the story were in mind when he applied for the grant, and the libretto being performed Sunday remains true to that vision.
"I wanted to write something about what I'm passionate about — I'm very passionate about labor rights as well as queer visibility," he said. "I think I wanted, knowing that we were going to workshop it here, I wanted to give it an access point of an 1890s mining town could be anywhere in North America — it could be here, it could be Colorado, it could be from California — and kind of like taking inspiration from the history here a little bit, and then presenting a story that could be told like anywhere."
The end goal, Edgers said, is to be "pitching it across the country throughout the world." To pursue that, Sunday’s performance is being recorded by two videographers in the hope there will be outside interest in making "Black Rock, USA" a full-blown stage production.
Edgers said he and Crouse started conceptualizing the opera in January, and the music was largely written during the summer. The performers participating in the project received the music and lyrics about a month ago, and came together as a group for the first time for rehearsals during the past week.
"I'm still learning it," said William Todd Hunt, who is conducting Sunday’s workshop, before Thursday’s rehearsal. "I'm still learning the tempos, which is a little nerve-wracking. But you know, that’s what this week is about."
Hunt, artistic director for Orpheus Project, has already gone through a more challenging process as the originator of "The Princess Sophia," an opera commemorating the century-old sinking of a steamship near Juneau that killed 340 people. He said "Black Rock, USA" is a different type of production.
"The music, while tuneful and fun and interesting, isn't tremendously complex," he said. "So we're able pull things together really quickly."
Edgers said he composed the music knowing there would be a smaller group of available musicians than a convention full-concert orchestra, but that also allows more distinction with the instruments and voices that are used.
"I think this is an American story," he said. "This is full of emotion in a way that other works might not be. — it makes me cry every time. It really comes from the heart. And it’s representing a sort of historical fiction from a time and sort of environment that is perhaps underrepresented."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
