PASSOVER
Commissioned by thingNY, PASSOVER is a performance-ritual by Obie-winning writer-composer Rick Burkhardt for a sextet of speaking instrumentalists, all seated at a dinner table on which there lies a double bass.
Each performer relates the story of a friend's escape: from a bad marriage, from an unfair situation at work, from a run-in with a traffic cop, from an ethically compromising opportunity, from an awkward family dinner. Ultimately, it becomes clear that all of these friends form one collective identity.
Written specifically for thingNY and its unique blend of chamber music, theatre and improvisation, this tabletop work explores the vocalizing instrumentalist in disjointed modes of storytelling. This commission was made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.
Each performer relates the story of a friend's escape: from a bad marriage, from an unfair situation at work, from a run-in with a traffic cop, from an ethically compromising opportunity, from an awkward family dinner. Ultimately, it becomes clear that all of these friends form one collective identity.
Written specifically for thingNY and its unique blend of chamber music, theatre and improvisation, this tabletop work explores the vocalizing instrumentalist in disjointed modes of storytelling. This commission was made possible by the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program with generous funding provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Chamber Music America Endowment Fund.
Currently, thingNY is recording PASSOVER for their next album.
Recording Engineered and edit by Zach Herchen.
Produced by thingNY and Rick Burkhardt.
01 Prologue A
02 Movement I
03 Interlude B
04 Movement II
05 Interlude C
06 Movement III
07 Interlude D
08 Movement IV
09 Movement V
10 Coda
56 min.
thingNY is:
Jeffrey Young (voice and violin)
Dave Ruder (voice and Bb clarinet)
Erin Rogers (voice and tenor saxophone)
Paul Pinto (vocals and percussion)
Andrew Livingston (double bass)
Gelsey Bell (voice and percussion)
Recording Engineered and edit by Zach Herchen.
Produced by thingNY and Rick Burkhardt.
01 Prologue A
02 Movement I
03 Interlude B
04 Movement II
05 Interlude C
06 Movement III
07 Interlude D
08 Movement IV
09 Movement V
10 Coda
56 min.
thingNY is:
Jeffrey Young (voice and violin)
Dave Ruder (voice and Bb clarinet)
Erin Rogers (voice and tenor saxophone)
Paul Pinto (vocals and percussion)
Andrew Livingston (double bass)
Gelsey Bell (voice and percussion)
(L-R) Dave Ruder, Andrew Livingston, Paul Pinto, Gelsey Bell, Jeffrey Young, Erin Rogers. Photo by Rueben Radding.
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Passover. Score example.
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Rick Burkhardt. Photo: New Music USA.
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About the artists:
Rick Burkhardt is an Obie-award-winning composer, playwright, director, and performer whose original music theater pieces have been performed in over 40 U.S. cities, as well as in Australia, Europe, Taiwan, Canada, and Mexico. He studied Music Composition (PhD 2006) at the University of California, San Diego, with Chaya Czernowin, and playwriting (MFA 2016) at Brown University with Erik Ehn. His plays have been produced by organizations such as New York Theater Workshop, the American Repertory Theater, P. S. 122, LaMama NYC, and River-to-River NYC, as well as numerous U.S. and international festivals, and published by New York Theater Experience. As a songwriter, he has shared stages with artists such as Pete Seeger, the Indigo Girls, Holly Near, and Utah Phillips, and his original songs have been featured on radio programs like NPR's "Morning Edition" and Pacifica's "Democracy Now." As playwright and composer, he has collaborated with theater makers including Lisa D'Amour, Anne Washburn, Erin Courtney, Kristin Kosmas, Dave Malloy, Sylvan Oswald, and Rachel Chavkin. In addition to workshops across the US and in Europe, he has taught full courses in playwriting at Brown University, in music composition at Harvard University, and in music theater at the Evergreen State College.
thingNY is a quirky New-York-based collective of composer‐performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, song, and installation. Founded in 2006, thingNY performs experimental works created by the core ensemble and by adventurous composers such as Robert Ashley, Frederic Rzewski, John King, Pauline Oliveros, Rick Burkhardt, Miguel Frasconi, Vinko Globokar, John Cage, Julius Eastman, James Tenney, David Snow, and Andrea La Rose. The musicians of thingNY have collaboratively created three concert-length operas: This Takes Place Close By (2015), Time: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts (2011, with Panoply Performance Lab), and ADDDDDDDDD (2009). In 2016, thingNY released minis/Trajectories on Gold Bolus Recordings. thingNY also created In House (2011), a sound installation with music created for each of the rooms commonly found in a home; SPAM (2009-2012), marathon performances of hundreds of premieres culled from a mass call for scores and including every single response; Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Public Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment: an Opera by Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young, a 30‐minute, politically‐charged, theatrical work. thingNY has also collaborated with Helado Negro at the Ecstatic Music Festival, Face the Music, and Varispeed for their arrangement of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives for Performa.
Saxophonist and recording engineer Zach Herchen has over 15 years of experience recording/editing/mixing/mastering classical, jazz, and rock music in studio and at live concerts. Projects have included 20-track live recordings, full studio sessions, noise removal and pitch correction, sound design for video and theater, compliance for television broadcast and more. His recordings have included a Fulbright Scholarship, Q2's Meet the Composer program, and has worked with Carnegie Hall, PBS, Yefim Bronfman (GRAMMY award winning pianist), Glenn Kotche (Wilco, drummer), Abdullah Ibrahim (renowned jazz pianist/composer), New Focus Records, D’Addario Woodwinds, So Percussion, ETHEL String Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Meet The Composer, Richard Carrick (Guggenheim Fellow, composer), Sylvana Joyce and The Moment, The Documentary Group, Dohee Lee, Kati Agócs (Guggenheim Fellow, composer), Metropolis Ensemble, Music from China, Devin Gray, A/B Duo, Rhymes With Opera, Aerocade Music, Ibis Productions, Sue Maskaleris, Erin Rogers, Geoff Landman, Kendra Emery, Paul Pinto, Jeremy Lamb, Dave Cohen, David Fetter, Kevin Clark, Driven to Clarity, James Umber, Hungry Man, Jim Brown Productions and more. Zach and thingNY have previously worked together on the album Patriots.
Rick Burkhardt is an Obie-award-winning composer, playwright, director, and performer whose original music theater pieces have been performed in over 40 U.S. cities, as well as in Australia, Europe, Taiwan, Canada, and Mexico. He studied Music Composition (PhD 2006) at the University of California, San Diego, with Chaya Czernowin, and playwriting (MFA 2016) at Brown University with Erik Ehn. His plays have been produced by organizations such as New York Theater Workshop, the American Repertory Theater, P. S. 122, LaMama NYC, and River-to-River NYC, as well as numerous U.S. and international festivals, and published by New York Theater Experience. As a songwriter, he has shared stages with artists such as Pete Seeger, the Indigo Girls, Holly Near, and Utah Phillips, and his original songs have been featured on radio programs like NPR's "Morning Edition" and Pacifica's "Democracy Now." As playwright and composer, he has collaborated with theater makers including Lisa D'Amour, Anne Washburn, Erin Courtney, Kristin Kosmas, Dave Malloy, Sylvan Oswald, and Rachel Chavkin. In addition to workshops across the US and in Europe, he has taught full courses in playwriting at Brown University, in music composition at Harvard University, and in music theater at the Evergreen State College.
thingNY is a quirky New-York-based collective of composer‐performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, song, and installation. Founded in 2006, thingNY performs experimental works created by the core ensemble and by adventurous composers such as Robert Ashley, Frederic Rzewski, John King, Pauline Oliveros, Rick Burkhardt, Miguel Frasconi, Vinko Globokar, John Cage, Julius Eastman, James Tenney, David Snow, and Andrea La Rose. The musicians of thingNY have collaboratively created three concert-length operas: This Takes Place Close By (2015), Time: A Complete Explanation in Three Parts (2011, with Panoply Performance Lab), and ADDDDDDDDD (2009). In 2016, thingNY released minis/Trajectories on Gold Bolus Recordings. thingNY also created In House (2011), a sound installation with music created for each of the rooms commonly found in a home; SPAM (2009-2012), marathon performances of hundreds of premieres culled from a mass call for scores and including every single response; Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Public Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment: an Opera by Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young, a 30‐minute, politically‐charged, theatrical work. thingNY has also collaborated with Helado Negro at the Ecstatic Music Festival, Face the Music, and Varispeed for their arrangement of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives for Performa.
Saxophonist and recording engineer Zach Herchen has over 15 years of experience recording/editing/mixing/mastering classical, jazz, and rock music in studio and at live concerts. Projects have included 20-track live recordings, full studio sessions, noise removal and pitch correction, sound design for video and theater, compliance for television broadcast and more. His recordings have included a Fulbright Scholarship, Q2's Meet the Composer program, and has worked with Carnegie Hall, PBS, Yefim Bronfman (GRAMMY award winning pianist), Glenn Kotche (Wilco, drummer), Abdullah Ibrahim (renowned jazz pianist/composer), New Focus Records, D’Addario Woodwinds, So Percussion, ETHEL String Quartet, Alarm Will Sound, Meet The Composer, Richard Carrick (Guggenheim Fellow, composer), Sylvana Joyce and The Moment, The Documentary Group, Dohee Lee, Kati Agócs (Guggenheim Fellow, composer), Metropolis Ensemble, Music from China, Devin Gray, A/B Duo, Rhymes With Opera, Aerocade Music, Ibis Productions, Sue Maskaleris, Erin Rogers, Geoff Landman, Kendra Emery, Paul Pinto, Jeremy Lamb, Dave Cohen, David Fetter, Kevin Clark, Driven to Clarity, James Umber, Hungry Man, Jim Brown Productions and more. Zach and thingNY have previously worked together on the album Patriots.