IN DEVELOPMENT
THE SESSION
Music and LYRICS by PHIL KLINE
THE SESSION
Frank is recording his new album, Lost in Space. It’s been going all night. Perhaps all week. The other singers are growing tense. One more take and there will be a breakthrough. One more take and there will be a break-up. One more take and there will be a breakdown. Just one more take…
THE SESSION is a new opera and a live recording that reunites composer Phil Kline, vocalist Theo Bleckmann, director Emma Griffin, and AOP, who collaborated on Out Cold / Zippo Songs, the hit of the 2012 BAM Next Wave Festival. THE SESSION is a story told through and about a series of songs that reveal the tension and dreamlike fugue state of artists pushed to their limits.
File under: Sinatra; Ella; Elaine Stritch in the Pennebaker doc Original Cast Recording: Company; The Twilight Zone; Ibsen's Peer Gynt; Solaris.
CREATORS
Phil Kline (music/lyrics) A veteran of New York’s downtown scene, Phil Kline stands out for his range and unpredictability. From vast boombox symphonies to chamber music and song cycles, his work has been hailed for its originality, beauty, subversive subtext, and wry humor. Early in his career he cofounded the rock band the Del-Byzanteens with Jim Jarmusch and James Nares, collaborated with Nan Goldin on the soundtrack to The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and played guitar in the notorious Glenn Branca Ensemble. Some of his early work evolved from performance art and used large numbers of boomboxes, such as the outdoor Christmas cult classic Unsilent Night, which is now an annual holiday tradition celebrated around the world. Other notable works include Exquisite Corpses, written for the Bang on a Can All-Stars; the politically-infused Zippo Songs and Rumsfeld Songs; John the Revelator, a setting of the Latin Mass written for early music specialists Lionheart; and the Sinatra-inspired song cycle Out Cold, written for Theo Bleckmann and premiered at BAM’s Next Wave Festival. Phil hosts a daily radio show on WQXR/Q2 in NYC and is currently collaborating with filmmaker Jim Jarmusch on a music theater spectacle about Nikola Tesla. His music is available on the Cantaloupe, Starkland, and CRI record labels.
Phil Kline
Composer / Lyricist
THEO BLECKMANN GRAMMY® nominated jazz singer and new music composer Theo Bleckmann’s diverse recorded work includes albums of Las Vegas standards, Weimar art songs, and popular “bar songs” (all with pianist Fumio Yasuda); a recording of newly-arranged songs by Charles Ives (with jazz/rock collective Kneebody); and his acclaimed "Hello Earth - the Music of Kate Bush." Bleckmann has most recently appeared as a special guest on recordings by Ambrose Akinmusire for Blue Note Records and Julia Hülsmann’s trio for ECM Records. In January 2017, ECM will release Bleckmann’s recording with his new Elegy Quintet, produced by legendary label head and founder, Manfred Eicher. Bleckmann has collaborated with musicians, artists, actors and composers, including Ambrose Akinmusire, Laurie Anderson, Uri Caine, Philip Glass, Ann Hamilton, John Hollenbeck, Sheila Jordan, Phil Kline, David Lang, Kirk Nurock, Frances MacDormand, Ben Monder, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kenny Wheeler, John Zorn, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, and, most prominently, Meredith Monk, with whom Bleckmann worked as a core ensemble member for over fifteen years. He has been interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air and appeared on the David Letterman show with Laurie Anderson. In 2015, Bleckmann premiered a new work for the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and in 2016 he brings new work to the New York Philharmonic Biennial and the LA Philharmonic. Bleckmann has consistently appeared in the top-five spots in the DownBeat Critics’ Polls for Best Male Vocalist, and top-ten spots in their Readers’ Polls, and his work on Phil Kline’s “Out Cold” helped place that production on WQXR's Operavore "Best Opera of 2012". In 2010, Bleckmann received the prestigious JAZZ ECHO award from the Deutsche Phono-Akademie in his native Germany.
Theo Bleckmann
Singer
EMMA GRIFFIN (Director) Emma Griffin is a theater and opera director; she is also the Managing Artistic Director of The Mannes Opera, a program at the College of Performing Arts at The New School.
Griffin has a diverse background in theater, musical theater and opera. Her productions have been seen in performance venues all over the country. She is a frequent collaborator on new music/theater pieces; projects include Phil Kline’s Out Cold & Zippo Songs at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Corey Dargel’s Removable Parts (winner of “Outstanding Performance Art Production” at NY Innovative Theater Awards) and Susan Bernfield and Rachel Peters’ Stretch, a fantasia. Opera highlights include La Fanciulla del West at Opera Colorado, the world premiere of Charpentier's La Feste de Ruel with Catacoustic Consort; La Boheme at Crested Butte Music Festival, Three Decembers at Atlanta Opera; Don Giovanni at Boston Lyric Opera; The Cunning Little Vixen and Don Giovanni at Juilliard Opera; Wozzeck at Opera Philadelphia/Curtis Opera Theater. She was the Artistic Director of the OBIE-award winning Salt Theater, based in NYC; highlights with Salt include Stage Door (FringeNYC Excellence Award as Best Director), The Cherry Orchard, Scenes from a Marriage and Conquest of the Universe. She has theater credits at many regional theaters including Perseverance Theater, Geva Theater Center, Syracuse Stage, Southern Rep, Actor’s Express, Virginia Stage, and Williamstown Theater Festival.
Emma Griffin
Director
PRESS
“Kline has graduated from ‘experimental’ to ‘original’—he’s one of America’s most important compositional voices—thanks to his burning urge to communicate, and not things that can be reduced to a charismatic sentence. His pieces become part of your inner life no matter how little you understand them.” — DAVID PATRICK STEARNS, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
"Bleckmann possesses technique so colossal, yet so meticulous, he can seem otherworldly, an android-like embodiment of sci-fi vocalisms, a bodily vessel for that voice." — PHIL DI PIETRO, ALL ABOUT JAZZ
Information
Duration 50' / no intermission
Commission The Session is commissioned and currently in development with The American Opera Project.
Premiere TBD
Roles 4 voices (2 male, 2 female, approximately SATB)
Instrumentation Piano, Saxophone, and String Orchestra
Publisher Staged performances of this work require licensing through the creators.