West Edge Opera presents Hydrogen Jukebox by Philip Glass & Allen Ginsberg
2014-08-02
Ed Roberts Campus
3075 Adeline St, Berkeley, CA 94703
8:00 PM, Saturday, August 2, 2014

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[7:59 PM; lights down, waiting]

1. [8:03 PM] Song 1 from Iron Horse: “Lightning’s blue glare fills the Oklahoma plains”
2. [8:06 PM] Song 2 from Iron Horse: “Who’s the enemy, year after year?”
3. [8:13 PM] Song 3 from Jahweh and Allah Battle: “Jahweh with Atom Bomb”
4. [8:17 PM] Song 4 from Consulting I Ching smoking pot listening to the Fugs sing Blake: “That which pushes upward”
5. [8:21 PM] Song 5 from Marijuana Notation: “How sick I am!”
6. [8:28 PM] Song 6a from Patna-Benares Express: “Whatever it may be whoever it may be”
7. [8:28 PM] Song 6b from Last night in Calcutta: “Still night the old clock ticks”
8. [8:30 PM] Song 7 from To P.O.: “The whitewashed room,”
9. [8:35 PM] Song 8 from Last Night in Calcutta: “…And the vast starry space-”
10. [8:39 PM] Song 9a from Crossing Nation: “Under silver wing”
11. [8:39 PM] Song 9b from Over Denver Again: “Grey clouds blot sunglare, mountains float west, plane”
12. [8:41 PM] Song 9c from Going to Chicago: “22,000 feet over hazed square vegetable plant”
13. [8:47 PM] Song 10 from Wichita Vortex Sutra from _Pt II: “I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas but not afraid”
    [8:56 PM; set ends]

[9:19 PM; lights down, waiting]

1. [9:20 PM] Song 11 from Howl from _Moloch (Section II): “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?”
2. [9:28 PM] Song 12 from Manhattan Thirties Flash: “Long stone streets inanimate…”
3. [9:30 PM] Song 13 from Cabin in the Rockies: “Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea”
4. [9:36 PM] Song 14 from Nagasaki Days VI from _Numbers in Red Notebook: “2,000,000 killed in Vietnam”
5. [9:43 PM] Song 15 from To Aunt Rose: “Aunt Rose-now-might I see you”
6. [9:49 PM] Song 16 from The Green Automobile: “If I had a green Automobile”
7. [9:56 PM] Song 17a from Violence: “Mexicity drugstore table, giant,”
8. [9:56 PM] Song 17b from CIA Dope Calypso: “Richard Secord and Oliver North”
9. [10:01 PM] Song 18 from Nagasaki Days IV: “I walked outside and the bomb’d”
10. [10:06 PM] Song 19 from Ayers Rock/Uluru Song: “When the red pond fills fish appear”
11. [10:06 PM] Song 20 from Throw out the Yellow Journalists of Bad Grammar: “Out! Out! into the Buddhafields”
12. [10:06 PM] Song 21 from Father Death Blues: “Hey, Father Death, I’m flying home”
    [10:11 PM; show ends, no encore]

• Jonathan Blalock: tenor vox;
• Sara Duchovnay: soprano vox;
• Kenneth Kellogg: bass vox;
• Molly Mahoney: soprano vox;
• Efraín Solís: baritone vox;
• Howard Swain: narrator;
• Nicole Takesono: mezzo-soprano vox.

• Doug Chin: percussion;
• Audrey Jackson: flute, soprano saxophone;
• Ben Malkevitch: keyboard II;
• David Möschler: keyboard I, conductor;
• Lily Sevier: percussion;
• Cory Wright: soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet.

• Frederic Boulay: technical director;
• Christine Crook: costume designer;
• Philip Glass: composer;
• Allen Ginsberg: libretto;
• Jeremy Knight: projection designer;
• Kevin Landesman: lighting designer;
• Gretchen Mueller: stage manager;
• Elkhanah Pulitzer: stage director.

Arrived early to grab seats and enjoy the pre-show talk with Mark Streshinsky, the General Director of West Edge Opera, and David Möschler, conductor and music director for tonight's performance. The talk was nice to listen to, though I was more than a bit distracted by petty circumstances of our arrival (lost my wallet, oh shit!) and the need to hustle and change from comfy clothes into more proper opera attire. One of salient facts I picked up on is that tonight's production contains 20 tunes – not the 15 contained in the abbreviated version released on CD. Yet another case where Wikipedia fails to be as authoritative a resource as might be expected, though to be fair, Philip Glass' own website provides no better information!

Apparently the work was retired for awhile after it's first production (in the early 90's), but has recently (since 2011) been revived in a slightly revised form. Allen Ginsberg, writing about the first production, says, “Ann chose to stage the work by using the six vocal parts to represent six archetypal American characters — a waitress, a policewoman, a businessman, a priest, a mechanic and a cheerleader.” Reviewers of the time found this to be rather trite, and somehow too evocative of the Village People. For the current production, the characters have been entirely anonymized, picking up only fragments of identity from the poetry they recite or the actions they portray onstage (soldier, lover, driver, passenger, etc). Jaime Robles writes about this in his review: “those archetypes were effaced in this production, replaced most consistently perhaps by new sexual configurations divided into three couples: a man and a woman, two men, two women.” After watching, I would say that it's a mistake to make any big deal about that summary – it's true that the actors often divide into pairs, but I don't think Ginsberg (or more likely, Pulitzer, the stage director) is trying to make any particular statement about gender and sexual pairing beyond an ecstatic celebration of the existence of humanity and our capacity to experience sexuality.

Joshua Kosman also reviewed the current production, as posted on SFGate.

Super helpful in following things was the listener guide to a 2013 production by Skylight Music Theatre, which included a full libretto – thanks folks! – though with the lights down, it wasn't really possible to follow along with the work as it unfolded, hence my timing, particularly in part two, is a little whack – not sure where I got off track, but it seems like I must have missed a couple of supertitle cues, doh!

There's one more performance scheduled for this run – Friday, August 8 – and I heartily recommend attending for anyone who is a fan of either Glass or Ginsberg or both. $50 might seem a little pricey (but not for opera!), but my guess is you'll be more than satisfied with this show.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2014 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2014 event list! ☸ On to the next event!