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- News from the 07 - 08 Season
News from the 07 - 08 Season
06/09/2008 - By David Gonzalez
DG "feeling it"
News from an extraordinary year of presentations, travels, and adventures.
News from David Gonzalez
September 2007 – June 2008
I’ve got to put it all down somewhere or I’m afraid I’ll lose track of the many extraordinary events of the past eight months. I promise that I’ll keep it as short as possible. C’mon…
The season started with the completion of a circle. On September 8th I had the distinct honor of performing Finding North at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, in Cincinnati. Finding North was commissioned in 2004 by the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park to commemorate the opening of the Freedom Center, but because of construction delays I was not able to present the show there until this year. The production was made possible by the Cincinnati Opera as part of their community outreach for the world premiere of Rise for Freedom (more about that later). I had done quite a bit of research on John Parker at the Freedom Center and it was a special day to bring the work to that dedicated and inspired institution.
I returned to Ohio two weeks later for a special trip to John Parker’s hometown of Ripley, where the extraordinary cast and creative team of Rise for Freedom where given a tour of the historic sites, and we offered an overview and excerpts of the opera at Rev. John Rankin’s Presbyterian church. To speak from the pulpit of that highly significant place was humbling beyond words – it simply made me re-commit to the work of human freedom and dignity.
Early October took me to the hills of Tennessee for the International Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro. I had been waiting for an invitation for years, and boy, was it worth the wait. A quaint town with a meandering stream, enormous white pitched tents, thousands upon thousands of people, a gathering of raconteurs, rascals and world-conjurers, and glorious early fall weather. I had the pleasure to hang with Kevin Kring, Valerie Tutson, Teju, Bill Harley, and many other wonderful storytellers. And the audience – are these people crazy?! They sit for hour after hour listening, laughing, sighing and crying with us. There was so much love and support, so much appreciation. It was a great surprise to find this place, this festival. And no kids (or very few), so I could read my poems and tell stories to a thousand adults – something storytellers rarely have the chance to do. It was a marvelous experience. And then someone from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tapped me on the shoulder (more about that later).
And then Rise for Freedom. October 13th, 2007 will forever stand as a highlight of my professional life. In early 2005 the Cincinnati Opera commissioned the libretto for an opera that would celebrate the life of John P. Parker. When it was done the libretto was given to the great composer Adolphus Hailstork, who set my words to a magnificent score. I had attended several rehearsal, had visited with the cast, had discussed the project in depth with the creative team, had met with the directors of the opera company, but nothing truly prepared me for seeing/hearing/feeling the piece onstage at the gorgeous Aronoff Theater. The evening began with a gospel choir singing from the upper balcony of the lobby. Then I met the great-granddaughter of John P. Parker. I told her that I hope that I treated her family history with the honor it deserved. We filed into the auditorium, sat, and for the next 70 minutes I was enthralled. The Cincinnati Opera lifted the bar for performing arts for young people to a whole new level. The production was excellent; the casting, the singing, the musical direction, the orchestra, the costumes and sets, the phenomenal lighting design, the care and discipline with which the opera was brought to life brought me to tears. We received a rousing ovation the likes of which I had never known. Writing the libretto was long hard work and I received lots of support along the way. The seed of activism that was planted in me when I saw and felt the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement as a child came to fruition. I was able to contribute something to the terrible wound that was, and continues to be, central to the American experience. My gratitude to the Cincinnati Opera, all my collaborators, and especially Professor Hailstork, is enormous. I only hope that Rise for Freedom can live on and is produced by other companies in the future.
A couple of years ago I was invited to the Mythic Journeys Conference – talk about wild intelligence! That gathering of myth mavens, seekers, Celtic musicians, and seraphs blew my mind. The event was convened by Honora Foah and Michael Karlin, a pair of visionary hope-holders with rubber-to-the-road smarts. The next project they had in mind was/is the course in Applied Mythology that started this year at the New York Open Center. I was delighted to partner with the great Diana Wolkstien to conduct the opening weekend workshop on Story. We began with Diana’s remarkable performance of the Innana myth, then I presented Orpheus, then we embarked on a three-day exploration of myth and personal psychology with a group of 12 dedicated artists/therapists/adventurers. The group has been meeting every month since then and will receive a certificate for their study. I look forward to more.
Smack dab in the middle of the Applied Mythology course I drove up to the Hartt Conservatory to see a student production of Mariel, the Afro-Cuban musical I’ve been working on for the past several years with the brilliant composer John Forster. We are making headway with the piece and are actively looking to have another production next season. (Please let me know if you have interest in this!)
Next stop…ALASKA. Yep, glaciers, blue ice, bear, moose, dael sheep (look them up), and Aesop Bops! with Daniel Kelly for a wondrous week of shows at the Alaska Junior Theater. We hired a “flight-seeing” pilot to take us on a mind-blowing tour of the Colony Glacier. Now I get it… the ancient earth is in constant evolution… it is alive… all things change… ah… and I learned a new word – geomorphology. Let me know if you’d like to see pictures. We made friends with Lanie, Mark, and the others at the theater and will return next season with The Frog Bride. Frogs in the frozen land… there’s a story there…
Next stop…THE ORDWAY THEATER (St. Paul, MN). What a way to spend a birthday week – six packed houses of 1500, Sofrito! and a killer Latin dance party in the lobby. Amazingly fun. Plus I got to visit the Walker Arts Center for the tragically beautiful Frida Khalo show, and visit the brand new Guthrie Theater. Big thanks to my agents Jeannette Gardner and Suzie Dowler for getting me so many great gigs!
November and December had me in San Jose, Costa Rica for an intense period of planning for the Alliance for a New Humanity Conference (right, more later), Jacksonville, Florida, and Ripley-Greer Studios for a couple of productive workshops for Jimi and Mr. B (later…) oh, about twenty local school gigs, and home for the holidays.
January is conference month so we offered Arts Presenters showcases of City of Dreams at the Hilton with a new lineup that includes Daniel Kelly on piano, Phil Palumbi on bass, Willie Martinez on drums and multi-reed player Eric Lawrence. I am delighted that City of Dreams has found a home at Bernstien Artists Management. Sue Bernstien is a experienced agent dedicated to bringing out compelling new work. Afterwards I went to Tampa for the International Performing Arts for Youth conference where I got to hang out lots of colleagues from the biz and saw a phenomenal two-man production of Jason and the Argonauts.
Next stop OUTER SPACE. The NASA lady from Tennessee, Rachel Brachman-Zimmerman, invited me to visit The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. How often does that happen?! So I worked it out that just prior to my run of Sofrito! at the Orange County PAC I got to have a four-hour private tour of the facility. Mars Rover heaven, gadgets, micro-magicians, macro-imaginers, a campus of 5000 brilliant souls dedicated to the exploration of space, and other things. I was given the official title of “Space Weenie” – actually a term of endearment for those who are fascinated by the cosmos. I made friends.
The tech night for Sofrito! at the Orange County PAC was pure magic. Wynton Marsalis was there with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. I ran into my friend and collaborator, the bassist Carlos Henriquez, who gave me a ticket and we got to hang together backstage with the musicians. Nice, and swinging.
MADRID, SPAIN. What? Yes! I taught a three-day class at the Universidad Autonoma medical school on musical improvisation for music therapists. A former NYU student, Alicia Lorenzo, has built a successful Music Therapy masters program there and has had me teach a weekend intensive every year for the past several years. I miss the challenge and exchange of teaching and was able to satisfy this hunger big time.
March 8th – 17th. COSTA RICA. Enough, I know… it’s just that, well, it’s the truth. I’ve been in on the planning of the Alliance for a New Humanity Conference – A Symphony of Transformation, for over a year, and now it was time to deliver. Some of the VIPs in attendence were Papa Jaime Aramillo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Medellin, Columbia, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Arsenio Rodriguez, and many other wonderfully evolved people. This entry could (and should) get several pages itself, but time is getting short, and I’m sure, dear reader, your patience is getting short too. Suffice to say that we pulled off an inspiring conference for 500 people from 40 countries, that I produced, performed in, and MC’d an historic concert at the Costa Rican National Theater, that I got to perform live a song I wrote (with the deeply talented Derrik Jordan) for Nobel Peace Prize-winning President Oscar Arias. Then the ARENAL VOLCANO AT NIGHT, THE ANTEATER IN THE TREE, THE SCARLET MACAWS OVERHEAD, THE HOWLER MONKEYS, ZIP-LINING THROUGH THE RAINFOREST, etc., etc. OMG.
Next stop THE GRAND CANYON. I took a couple of days off before bringing The Frog Bride to Prescott, AZ to visit the Grand Canyon, to hike a ways down Bright Angel Trail, to stand before the awesome majesty, to remember mortality and the shocking beauty of planetary truth. Then a drive through the red hills of Sedona. Damn.
Next stop RIPLEY-GREER REHEARSAL STUDIOS for a two-week process of discovery and development for THE STATE OF THE ARTS: JIMI AND MR. B.. Sue Webb, my very capable General Manager, along with the incredible stage manager Alex Senchak, the ever-imaginative director David Schechter, and I had been working for two years on the State of the Arts commission from the Empire State Plaza Performing Arts Center. After several workshops we were finally ready to bring this show to life. The assembled cast and creative team worked beautifully together from day one. We moved up to Albany for a week of tech, and then a miraculous week of performances. Jimi and Mr. B was/is a huge success. The board of directors and executive director of the venue were thrilled, the cast is proud, I am exhausted, but we made a great piece of work that truly accomplishes what it set out to do; to inspire and inform young people about New York as The State of the Arts. Seeing the sea of young faces enthralled with the music, dance, and drama of the play was reward enough. The plan is for the show to be re-mounted annually to accommodate the many thousands of students that visit the state capital every year.
In the middle of the Jimi and Mr. B rehearsals I went up to Albany for the World Premiere of OH HUDSON, a long poem commissioned by the Empire State Plaza Performing Arts Center (Albany again), to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s sail up the river. The poem is in three sections that introduce music written and performed by Mark O’Connor, Don Byron, and Daniel Bernard Roumain. It was a huge labor of love for me, but worth it to connect to the great river, the land, and the people of my home.
Immediately afterwards, and I mean “all-night-straight-to-the-airport” I left for Palm Desert, California for a six sold-out shows of The Frog Bride at the McCallum Theater. We had a day off and spent it exploring Joshua Tree National Park. I’d heard about the desert in bloom, but seeing is believing – especially at dusk as the opening chords of a perfect spring evening. It was pure, earthly beauty, with every square inch of the ground covered in wild flowers and bizarre-shaped rocks. Who needs mind altering anything when places like this exist as our planetary reality. The landscape is transcendent.
April is National Poetry Month and I was lucky to be asked to have my poems broadcast as part of the month-long celebration on New York Public Radio WNYC. It is a good thing when the words on the page find ears to hear them.
We produced a new DVD of Aesop Bops!, and finally my new website was hatched. Please visit at www.davidgonzalez.com
More is on the way: a sold-out show of Sofrito! at Brooklyn College (2200 seats!), back to Palm Desert with MytholoJazz in June, a performance at Carnegie Hall with the Little Orchestra Society, The Frog Bride at the Lincoln Center Institute in July, a new suite of poems for Saint Saen’s Carnival of the Animals, and Wounded Splendor, a new commission from the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, at the University of Maryland that will deal with science, ecology and activism.
Whew. Done. For now…
Best,
David
