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Donald E. Osborne, Director California Artists Management 564 Market Street, Suite 420, San Francisco, CA 94104-5412 415 362-2787 / fax: 415 362-2838 / Skype: calartistsdon / Email |
Susan Endrizzi Morris, Director California Artists Management P.O. Box 2479, Mendocino, CA 95460-2479 707-937-4787 / cell: 415-302-1083 / Skype: sueendrizzi / Email |
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RINDE ECKERT
With his virtuosic command of gesture and language, songwriter, composer,
librettist, musician, performer, director and total theatre artist Rinde Eckert
moves beyond the boundaries of what a 'play,' a 'dance piece,' an 'opera' or
'musical' might be. In the service of grappling with complex issues, his
work is a series of variations on a smart, slightly cock-eyed Everyman who
begins his journey with a pure sense of mission and descends into the maelstrom.
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Rinde Eckert, the 2009 recipient of The
Alpert Award in the Arts for his contributions to Theatre and finalist for the
2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is a writer, composer, performer and director. His
Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America, and to
major theater festivals in Europe and Asia. Eckert’s career began as a
writer/performer in the 1980’s, in collaboration with composer Paul Dresher.
Eckert and Dresher created several operatic works and dance theater works
over their ten year collaboration, among them:
Slow Fire, Power Failure, Pioneer, and
Shelf Life (with The Margaret Jenkins
Dance Co.) During that time he also
began composing dance scores:
Shorebirds Atlantic, Woman Window Square,
Steps Midway, And So They…(with Margaret Jenkins)
Evol,
Invisible Wars (Contraband and Sarah
Shelton Mann). He began composing and performing his own music/theater pieces
with
Dry Land Divine in 1987,
The Gardening of Thomas D in 1992,
The Idiot Variations, in 95 and
Romeo Sierra Tango in 98.
In 98 he also wrote the libretto for Steven Mackey’s
Ravenshead, performing the lead (and
only) role in addition.
Recent writing and composing credits
include Horizon (2007-2008 Drama Desk
Nominations for Best Play and Best Director, Lucille Lortel Award: "Unique
Theatrical Experience"); Orpheus X
(Pulitzer Prize finalist); Highway Ulysses
and Four Songs Lost in a Wall (The
American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award);
And God Created Great Whales (OBIE Award: Best Performance, Drama
Desk Nomination: "Unique Theatrical Experience"); and an evening of two one act
pieces An Idiot Divine, performed at
Zankel Hall/Carnegie Hall in New York City.
Eckert received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007 for music composition.
In 2011 he was nominated for a Grammy Award (best Orchestral Performance)
for Dreamhouse, Steven Mackey’s
oratorio for which Eckert co-wrote the
libretto and sang the solo role.
Eckert has recently directed or written and directed several concert/theater
works:
Schick Machine with virtuoso percussionist Steven Schick in a
solo-theater work composed by Paul Dresher,
Imaginary City with So Percussion
(premiered at BAM), Sound Stage (composed by
Paul Dresher) for the ensemble Zeitgeist,
Slide with composer/guitarist Mackey and the ensemble ‘eighth blackbird’,
The
Gurs Zyklus
by Trimpin (prem. Stanford U.),
and Necessary Monsters by
Carla Kihlstedt.
In 2009 Mackey and Eckert, along with percussionist Jason Treuting and bassist
Mark Haanstra, formed BIG FARM, a
‘prog-rock’ quartet. Eckert’s CD’s
are available on the ‘Intuition’ label and through Songline/Tonefield
Productions, including the critically acclaimed Sandhills Reunion (music by
Jerry Granelli) for which he wrote and recorded the text.
Eckert has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University since 2009.
He lives in New York with his wife, Ellen McLaughlin, the playwright and
actress.
Touring Projects
AND GOD CREATED GREAT WHALES
OBIE Award Winner for Best Performance
2000
Drama Desk Nomination for "Unique Theatrical Experience"
Mid-September through Mid-October 2012 tour
An extraordinary and haunting musical adventure into the psyche of an artist, And God Created Great Whales follows a gifted composer on a quest to finish his opus: an opera based on Moby Dick. Desperately fighting the advance of a disease eating away at his memory, he is forced to rely on a tape recorder hung around his neck, each day pressing "Play" and hearing yesterday's instructions to himself.
"One is overwhelmed by the power of quest and
loss and by the beauty of the music."
"It made me feel alive at a time
when little in the musical theater does."
-
The Village
Voice
“One of the most
strikingly original works to be seen in New York, Eckert creates theater that
touches the heart and engages the mind.
It is an intriguing and often funny evening.”
-
Billboard
University of
Southern California – September 2009
“In less than 80-minutes, Rinde Eckert
makes a frightfully compelling case for genius.
Some have powers of mind; others of body.
Eckert, miraculously, was gifted with both - a rare privilege to behold.
And God Created Great Whales is
the highest kind of performance art – crazily ambitious, deeply felt and
occasionally sublime. Eckert’s performance nearly engulfs the room, even in his
quieter moments. He can convey great
feeling with the simplest gesture;.
Elation is but a smile; longing, but one far-off glance.
And when he sings – whether in rich baritone, arms fully extended, or
vulnerable falsetto, hunched painfully over, nothing can stop him.
In perhaps an even greater feat, Cole matches Eckert’s incandescence.
Eckert and Cole play essentially the same inseparable person, but they
are also worlds apart. She is the
lighthouse to his ship, the shore to his sea.
Neither can exist without the other. Cole plays her opera diva to
perfection. Heaven’s gates are flung
wide when she opens her mouth. With
piercing vibrato and inhumanly high notes, she does the Muses proud.
Few shows are as good and few men are as visionary as
And God Created Great Whales and
Eckert. ‘Consciousness defines genius,’ writes Harold Bloom. Eckert proves Bloom
right.”
THE TROJAN
Dance Theatre Workshop in New York: June 2000
“Total
magic
is what Mr. Eckert delivers. He has the gift of writing both words and music
very well, and from one moment to the next for 75 intense minutes he
delightfully subverts every expectation he arouses. Mr. Eckert, as Nathan the
composer, looks like a great ruin. But he has a command of gesture that lets him
fly from fear to fury and from dancing to dying in an instant. To watch Nathan
degenerate from a nimble prankster to a blank lump is scarcely bearable. And his
singing, whether in falsetto or baritone, can be thrilling. He is a wary
explorer of mindlessness in theater and a fiendish detective of moribund trends
in opera. There is a constant sense of opening up – intellectually, emotionally
and visually.”
NEW YORK TIMES
“Despite its seemingly disjunctive nature, the piece overall has the smooth
solidity and assurance of a gorgeous marble sculpture, plus an emotional
febrility that keeps it from lapsing into sculptural impassiveness. What Eckert
does, cannily, is create the novel’s atmosphere – with particular reference to
the musical world on which Melville drew – while letting its drama seep from our
memories into the analogous story of Nathan’s mad quest. Big, shaven-headed,
seemingly weighed down by woe, Eckert is an imposing figure from the start….a
master. Gifted with a heldentenor voice, he can growl out Ahab’s low baritone
squalor or render a folk song in unearthly countertenor tones. Easy to take, his
compositions always have a songlike clarity of line, over an inventive array of
harmonies. Make no mistake, opera’s what we’re talking about here – pure drama
expressed by way of music. Rich with ideas, the piece made me feel alive at a
time when little else in the musical theater does.”
THE VILLAGE VOICE
“ ‘Whales’ is a tight, polished event
that simultaneously stimulates mind, heart and senses, a quirky, visually
enthralling and emotionally moving music-theater piece. The richly layered work
suggests Melville’s novel. Nathan’s obsession with his opera is as total as
Ahab’s quest for the white whale. The depths of art, Eckert implies, are as
mysterious and cannot be fathomed. But the joy is the artistry with which
director David Schweizer smoothly weaves text, Eckert’s muscular, haunting
music, and the performance. The
tall, large, bald Eckert is by turns graceful and purposefully lumbering, even
whale-like. ‘Whales’ is the inside of the poet’s mind: striving, confused,
human.”
THE STAR-LEDGER
45 Bleecker Theatre in New York: September 2000
“Buoyed by rave reviews at his June opening, lapsed opera singer Rinde Eckert
will revive ‘And God Created Great Whales’ – one of the season’s most exciting
and accomplished performance pieces. Eckert plays a twisted character who is all
his own: a gifted but bumbling piano tuner who attempts to compose an opera
while losing his mind and memory.
Inspired by his muse, the tuner relies on dozens of color-coded tape recorders
to refresh his mind, alternately singing, mumbling, shouting and rambling in a
performance of surprising grace and humor. A terrific production.”
NEW YORK MAGAZINE
“There’s nothing inauthentic about Rinde Eckert, a talent whose ‘Whales’…is
fashioned around his oddities – the portly, shaved-head, young Alfred Hitchcock
look contrasts winningly with his homey, Midwestern accent, manic energy and
penetrating singing voice.”
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
“One of the most strikingly original works to be seen in New York in a while,
‘Whales’ cunningly parodies the conventions of opera yet still manages to take
advantage of that medium’s power. Nathan is brilliantly played by composer /
artist Eckert. He creates a piece of theater that is able to touch the heart as
well as engage the mind. It is an intriguing and often funny evening.”
BILLBOARD
“Mr. Eckert is mocking operatic conventions, but he is also
teasing Melville. Nathan’s muse, a figment of his imagination, is to obeyed in
all esthetic matters. She is kind but firm when Nathan’s mind and talk wander
futilely. This is Mr. Eckert’s joke, since the last thing Melville wanted or
needed was a female muse. What writer explored masculinity more profoundly and
abjured femininity more completely? The jokes are fun. But in the end one is
overwhelmed by the power of quest and loss and by the beauty of the music.”
NEW YORK TIMES
Center
Stage IN Baltimore: May 2002
“This is a dense, hypnotic little piece about creativity and dying, written in a
daring combination of theatrical and operatic styles. Rinde Eckert is a striking
performer – acting with brio, dexterously playing a grand piano at the center of
the stage, singing with a sturdy classical tenor voice. He even dances with
nimble aplomb now and then. Yet this is a deeply intriguing show…and has no
trouble making itself clear. It’s a dark emotional journey, and Eckert puts it
together in a searching original way.”
THE WASHINGTON POST
“A JOURNEY TOO DIFFICULT TO FORGET-HEARTFELT AND REWARDING DRAMA.
No doubt about it, the Center Stage subscription series has never included
anything quite like Rinde Eckert’s ‘And God Created Great Whales.’ Part chamber
opera and part performance art, as eccentric as Rinde Eckert’s piece may be, it
strikes an empathetic chord with themes ranging from mental deterioration to the
nature of creativity, the importance of leaving a legacy and even the struggles
between life and death. A distinctive and rewarding journey.”
THE BALTIMORE SUN
“In Rinde Eckert’s challenging new music theatre work we get a tantalizing
glimpse of a magnum opus that will never be, a huge opera adapting Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick for the stage.
Director David Schweitzer allows his two multi-talented leads to really take
flight, showing the full range of their magnificent voices and acting abilities.
And God Created Great Whales is a
modern tragedy examining the way cruel circumstance can often put an end to the
most noble ventures. It is the type of theatre that we don’t get enough on the
British stage.”
THE ALIEN ONLINE
“Madness is rather the point of And God
Created Great Whales, a mesmerizing 80-minute piece of music theatre
conceived by the American composer, singer and actor Rinde Eckert, and performed
with terrific verve by him and the equally virtuosic Nora Cole. Much of the
result is wickedly funny. The absurdities of operatic conventions are
deliciously mocked in scenes that border on vaudeville, even slapstick, yet
never diminish the poignancy of Eckert’s immaculately detailed portrayal of a
man pathetically clutching at the shards of his mental faculties. Touching,
tragic and witty, this is one of summer’s surprise packages.”
Richard Morrison: THE (London) TIMES
“Written by the multi-talented Rinde Eckert, this two-hander approaches the
novel Moby Dick from a cranky angle.
What’s brilliant is how tantalizing Eckert’s incomplete notes are, and how
technically polished the performance is within a deliberately rough frame. The
music – overlaying American folk and slave songs with ethereal choiring – is
thrillingly eerie. And with pulsing bass lines and meandering atonal duets, it
conveys both the eddying ocean and a mind adrift.”
THE INDEPENDENT
Becoming….Unusual: The Education of an Eclectic
A work-in-progress, solo concert of song, dramatic monologues, lecture and video
from RINDE ECKERT’s anthology of theatrical loners.
Since the early 1980s, Rinde Eckert has been
writing, composing, performing and directing evocative and haunting performance
pieces and plays that have pushed at the edges of recognized theatrical form.
With a virtuosic command of gesture and
language, he moves beyond the boundaries of what a 'play,' a 'dance piece,’
an 'opera' or a 'musical' might be. In the service of grappling with
complex issues, his
work is a series of variations on a smart, slightly cock-eyed Everyman who
begins his journey with a pure sense of mission and descends into the maelstrom.
The Clarice Smith PAC co-commissioned two of Rinde Eckert's works: HORIZON
premiered in 2005, toured throughout the country, and had a successful
off-Broadway run in 2007; and SLIDE, with eighth blackbird and
composer/guitarist Steve Mackey, was recorded and toured to major university
venues in the 2009 and 2010 seasons.
