Gordon Creates Masterpiece With "Green Sneakers"
Ian Lincoln | Dayton,Ohio | 01/06/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Gordon creates masterpiece in "Green Sneakers"
Wes Blomster, for Opera Today
Eugenia Zukerman asked for a 10-minute chamber work - a piano quintet, perhaps - and she got "Green Sneakers for Baritone, String Quartet and Empty Chair," which lasts exactly an hour.
And she was delighted - as were all those who heard the world premiere of "Sneakers" at Colorado's Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival on July 15.
"I met Ricky two years ago," says Zukerman, who as its artistic director had invited Gordon to be 2008 composer-in-residence at the Festival. "I had heard his `Orpheus & Euridice,' and he wrote me a flute obbligato for several of his songs.
"I was eager to have him in Vail and to commission a new work by him."
In September, however, Gordon called Zukerman; he said he was working on a big piece and could not stop.
"He read me the poems that were the libretto for the work," Zukerman says. "They were gripping.
"I told him we would do it!"
Zukerman first contacted Gordon about Vail a year ago, when he was in Salt Lake City for the second production of his opera "The Grapes Of Wrath." At the time she suggested a collaboration with the Miami String Quartet, an ensemble with a long Vail association.
Gordon remembered a set of poems that he had written following the AIDS death of his long-time companion Jeffrey Grossi in 1996. He saw a new score taking shape on stage around an empty chair.
"I had a sense of the atmosphere that the work would have," says the composer, who goes on to explain the title.
"There was a day after Jeffrey's death when I was staring into our closet from the vast desolation of our bed," he says. "And these sad little green sneakers suggested a text about the day we bought them together.
"It poured out of me and ended up a cycle of poems that tells the story of that day and the period after it - all the way up to Jeffrey's death."
And Gordon knew that the vocalist for "Sneakers" had to be Jesse Blumberg, the baritone who had created the role of Connie Rivers, wayward husband of Steinbeck's pregnant Rosasharn, for the premiere of "Grapes" a year earlier at Minnesota Opera.
"In watching rehearsals of `Grapes' I noted Jesse's artistry - his charisma, his honesty and his simplicity as a performer," Gordon says. "Because of the honesty and intimacy of these poems I knew that a performer who was false in any way would kill `Sneakers.'
"It had to be a singer who was essentially an open vessel. And Jesse is like that with his unusual combination of strapping casual masculinity and comfort in his own body.
"He`s unsaddled by any kind of ego that gets between him, the music he is singing and the words he is conveying."
Gordon sent Blumberg the texts and asked whether he would be willing to perform "Sneakers.".
"He wrote back almost immediately that he would be honored," the composer says. "And I am honored to have him."
Gordon compares Blumberg with veteran mezzo Frederica Von Stade.
"Like her, Jesse has a quality that many great singers have." he says. "It is the inability to sing a single note without imbuing it with his entire personality, his opinion about life.
"Each note screams with life and dances."
"Green Sneakers" originally ended with "Provincetown," a poem that documents Gordon's search for others who had survived the loss of a lover. But once at work on the new score he added as an epilogue "Sleep," a poem - a lullaby - that he had once written for Grossi as a birthday gift.
"I wanted to end the piece with a lullaby," Gordon says, "and with a celebration of what we had together."
Grossi's death is an experience that the composer had treated in his 2005 song cycle "Orpheus & Euridice."
In "Sneakers," however, the objectifying veil of myth is absent; here Gordon faces Death head-on. The immediacy of the first person makes the narrative overwhelmingly direct.
"I have questioned whether this was the right thing to do - to tell a story this baldly and to expose myself and my life with Jeffrey this way," the composer says. "And my explanation is that after Jeffrey died I sought solace in reading everything I could find about grief.
"I was grateful to those who were generous enough to reveal in great detail the ways in which they endured loss and bore their own tragedies.
"So maybe there is a sense of mission here. Perhaps others have gone through what I went through and this might bring them some peace, identification, or understanding."
And it is amazing that in this his first work for string quartet Gordon has perfected an idiom that goes to the edge of tonality to create a microcosm of pain and despair that has all the markings of a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk.
Indeed, at the premier, members of the Miami String Quartet were no longer mere strings, but humanized voices that formed a seamless dramatic unity with Blumberg.
Yet, despite its obvious personal intensity, "Sneakers" is in no way confessional.
Like "Orpheus," - but in its own way - the new work elevates its contents to the level of universality. There is nothing of "letting it all hang out" in the score.
Gordon locates models in Handel's cantata "Lucretia" and in Britten's "Phedre," pieces where one singer tells and lives the story simultaneously.
"Because of its intimacy I approached the story in a `classical' way with a prologue, an epilogue and interludes throughout," he says. "That not only gives the listener time to think and reflect, but also gives the performer space to gear up for the next event.
"Even the use of a string quartet felt like a slightly distancing formal device."
Praised for his Monteverdi and Bach, Blumberg at the premiere made this story his own, singing with a richly nuanced voice and - at 29 - the stage presence of a veteran actor.
In the most wrenching moment of "Sneakers" he went to the piano and played a phrase before turning to the epilogue of Gordon's libretto.
"This introduces the epilogue," Gordon says. "And in the score, there are two versions. One is very easy, essentially for two fingers, which any singer could play. The strings come in softly under the piano and takes over when the singer leaves the keyboard.
"And there's the harder version, which is the one Jesse bravely opted for. He played the introduction to the epilogue, which, if the singer had no piano skills, would be hard, but luckily, with Jesse, you get everything.
"That`s why I hope it is he who does many productions of this piece, because along with being a wonderful singer and artist, he is brave!"
On the printed page "Sneakers" is a traditional song cycle: 14 free-verse poems plus two instrumental sections.
The total absence of stage directions calls for a director, whom Gordon found for the premiere in Jonathan Solari, whose previous experience has been largely in spoken theater.
"It was my job to support what Ricky had written," says Solari, who went to work on the piece with Blumberg in Gordon's New York apartment weeks before coming to Vail.
"We pushed the furniture aside and sat down with the music to develop a staging that peers into the soul of the narrator," he says.
Solari focused on having Blumberg interact with the string quartet and he wanted the audience to have an image of Jeffrey in the vacant chair on stage.
And where does "Sneakers" leave Gordon, a dozen years after Grossi's death? Is this closure?
"No, it's not closure," the composer says, "but a kind of unbelievable fulfillment, as if I have made something out of an experience that was excruciatingly painful as well as exultingly joyous.
"For what kept me alive - and probably Jeffrey for longer than anyone expected him to live - was a tremendous love, for which I will always be grateful and treasure as my good fortune."
And with the repetition of "Sleep Dear," the final words of "Green Sneakers," one heard in Vail a distant echo of the "Ewig" that concludes Mahler's monumental "Abschied."
For this is a song of today's earth, a farewell lamentation that transcends death
- Wes Blomster"
Beautiful... tragic... moving... heartbreaking...
Jason Leland | Sacramento, CA | 01/12/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"These are just a few comments Blue Griffin is getting from the listeners:
"For all who have known love, only to have it go away for whatever reason, GREEN SNEAKERS should be required listening during a quiet and personal time"
"I'm moved beyond words... it is so intensely personal and honest and deeply mirrors experiences and feeling in my own life. I'm still shaking a bit while writing this. What a beautiful and moving work. Thank you."
"This ripped me apart. Beautiful. Tragic."
"... we were touched, moved and disturbed. Suffering, so clearly expressed, is certainly beautiful, but also truly heartbreaking.""
Two New Great Reviews
S. Wolff | seattle, WA | 02/20/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"
Ricky Ian Gordon
Green Sneakers
Jesse Blumberg, baritone; Miami String Quartet
(Blue Griffin ****)
This song cycle for baritone and string quartet - a lineup somewhat similar to Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock's Edge - poses none of the harmonic challenges often heard in modern music, but the poetic content, also written by the composer, is emotionally daunting to say the least. The piece is an unflinching account of Gordon watching his partner die as his long-planned operatic adaptation of theTibetan Book of the Dead was being born, in Houston and at Philadelphia's then-extant American Music Theater Festival. His descriptions of illness speak for their heartbreaking selves; even more searing is the author's guilt after the death.
So unfiltered is the piece that anyone who has trod parallel paths to Gordon's will likely encounterGreen Sneakers not as art but as therapy, similar to John Adams' 9/11 memorial On the Transmigration of Souls. Gordon's music has an emotional restraint that leaves ample room for the listener's own comparative experiences. Baritone Blumberg has just the right touch with the music's highly singable vocal writing, articulating the pathos without overcooking it. - D.P.S.One morning a month or two ago I was in the car and "The Writer's Almanac"
with Garrison Keillor came on the radio. After the list of birthdays and such, the short segment ended, "And
here's a poem by Ricky Ian Gordon..."
I wanted to shout out, "Wait! He's a composer! He's ours!"
But the plain spoken sentiment, as well as the unique name, meant it had to be the same guy. ("The
Tulips," the poem that Keillor read, is available on the Writer's Almanac site.)
More evidence of Gordon's activity as a poet comes with the new disc of "Green Snakers" (Blue Griffin
Recordings), a narrative song cycle of nearly an hour in length performed by baritone Jesse Blumberg and
the Miami String Quartet. The text is more than a dozen poems written by the composer -- I mean the poet
-- about his late partner, Jeffrey Grossi, who died of AIDS in 1996.
In the CD booklet, Gordon explains the title: "There was a day when I was staring into our closet from the
vast desolation of our bed, and his sad little green sneakers suggested to me a text about the day we bought
them together... (It) seemed to pour out of me... a cycle of poems that tells the story of that day and the
period after, leading all the way up to his death."
Some of the poems sets a scene or narrate, while at other points the words are addressed directly to Jeffrey.
As well as a symbol of loss, the Green Sneakers become a kind of metaphor for travel as the couple
vacations or attends performances of Gordon's operas. And Jeffrey's decline is described in detail. There's
the difficult transformation of normal day-to-day activities into grueling tasks and the inexorable loss of
weight. And then the death and its aftermath, both emotional, and mundane -- including donating the green
sneakers and the rest of Jeffrey's fashionable wardrobe to a thrift shop. It's effecting stuff, even just to list
it as I do here.
Gordon's musical setting is heartfelt but remarkably driven and never truly maudlin. It just perseveres
onward, not unlike the work of a caretaker or survivor.
The string quartet is smart choice for an accompaniment and backdrop. It provides enough varied textures,
and a balance of intimacy and depth. A single piano might have been too close range, especially for live
performance, and yet an orchestra would be too grand of a horizon for such deeply personal stuff.
The performance is beautiful and like the composition itself just distant enough, not morose or ponderous.
Blumberg has a handsome sturdy voice and the Miami String Quartet is energetic and clear.
There's no politics nor hardly any anger in this work that is nonetheless distinctly about AIDS. It's part
diary, part memory book and requires immersion and preparation for its emotional wallop.
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Track Listings (19) - Disc #1