Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra gave a “melodic and exciting” performance of Mason’s Auditorium at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms 2021 season. The program also featured Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Leoš Janáček’s Taras Bulba.
Listen now on BBC Sounds.
There came a moment in late May when sitting still just wasn’t going to work. After a few months of lockdown, I started talking with my team at Mercury Soul about a way forward. After cancelling two of our biggest shows – one featuring legendary DJ Juan Atkins, one featuring the duo behind the music to Stranger Things – we devoted those resources to an immersive, beautifully-filmed miniseries featuring meditative classical music and electronica.
The result is Mercury Soul: Cathedral. Over the next month, each week will feature a new 15’ episode exploring mystical music with a fluid, floating viewer perspective. From Johann Sebastian Bach to Johann Johannsson, from Indian classical to Chinese folk music – all seamlessly mixed alongside downtempo DJing – this series is a soothing, lyrical journey at a time when we need it.
The series was created both as a soulful response to the current climate, and as a demonstration of a much more imaginative way to present classical music digitally. In the beginning of lockdown, it was great to see so many bedroom solos or Brady Bunch virtual performances, but soon those endeavors felt like such a shadow of the real thing. My curating projects, from the Kennedy Center to clubs, always use intricate production to animate the concert experience (more info on that here). To present classical music more vividly online, I imagined a kind of gliding camera that would never stop moving from one musician to the next.
So I reached out to Saint Joseph’s Society for the Arts in San Francisco, a magnificent cathedral-turned-art gallery designed by the renown Ken Fulk. As a cathedral with 22,000 square feet of opulent furniture and art, the space has plenty of room to safely space soloists and chamber ensembles. There are vast expanses of Persian rugs, decorative art, and light installations to provide stunning complements to performances of classical music.
I also reassembled the film crew from my animated film Philharmonia Fantastique (stay tuned for exciting news about that project). Having become more fluent in film production over the past few years, I knew we would have to move fast to get the crew and gear necessary to bring this vision to life. Everyone was sitting on their hands during the lockdown, but even in June things were starting to pick up.
Immediately evident in the opening minute is the sense of a journey – indeed, this series is all about the journey. For classical music to grab an online viewer, it has to be presented in a highly dynamic visual way. You almost have to make it work even if the sound is off. So the concept was a continually roving camera, gliding from one part of the cathedral to another. We wanted the viewer’s perspective to perfectly gel with the mystically lyrical music we programmed.
A key element of focus for all Mercury Soul shows is the transitions between sets, which are carefully choreographed with specially composed interludes and lighting shifts. That’s true too in this series: when each performance finishes, the shot begins gliding to the next musician. The journey’s the thing.
The primary challenge was actually light: when we drew up our storyboard, we realized the proximity to the Summer Solstice would require us to shoot between 9pm and end at 4am to achieve the lighting effects we desired. Luckily my key collaborator is Matthew Ebisuzaki, Mercury Soul’s managing director, who has a unique background in both performance and film. He took my shooting script and carefully designed the shoot schedule so that we could glide from one performer to the next – no small feat when we were restricting how many people could be on set at a given time.
One evening this month at the Kennedy Center encapsulates the stylistic sea-voyage that I undertake on a regular basis. On Jan 30, I’ll take a bow after the National Symphony Orchestra’s performance of my symphonic work Resurrexit – and walk offstage straight to another building to introduce DJ Juan Atkins, godfather of techno, on my KC Jukebox series.
This kind of omnivorous music making is what invigorates me, and it’s also what makes the Kennedy Center such a special place.
My relationship with the National Symphony goes back well over a decade to the time of Leonard Slatkin, who conducted to premiere of my Liquid Interface in 2007. That was my first large symphony that included electronic sounds, and the success of that work inspired me to continue pushing the narrative direction of my music. While many of the players who premiered the work are still in the orchestra, a great many are new – and it’s been interesting to watch this orchestra evolve over the years.
Orchestras are one of the best examples of the “Ship of Theseus,” a philosophical riddle: if you changed all the planks of wood on a ship as it sailed from one destination, would it be the same ship when it arrived at another? No matter how many players change in an orchestra, the musical identity of these giant cruise ships often remains identifiable from one decade to the next. The NSO has a particularly stunning brass section, which will be on full display with my Resurrexit.
The piece was premiered last year by Maestro Manfred Honeck, who joins the NSO this month. When he challenged me to write a “spiritual opener,” I’ll admit some hesitancy. Symphonic openers tend to be fast-paced and flashy, adjectives not normally associated with spiritualistic enterprises. Honeck is a devout Catholic who’s created a unique “spirituality in music” focus for some of his concerts, with imaginative stagings of masterworks like the Mozart Requiem. I didn’t know I could contribute.
But I soon found myself wondering if the Resurrection could be set in a vivid and magical way – a kind of antidote to the heavier settings of it by Mahler et al. The work ended up becoming my most propulsive piece, moving from biblical mystery to fire-like magic. Special percussion instruments from the church make cameos, such as the Byzantine Semantron to altar bells. I’ll always be thankful to Manfred for inspiring me to write this work.
So, from a symphonic Resurrection to … Detroit techno? It’s all possible thanks to the Kennedy Center, which houses such an unbelievably rich array of performing arts. Serving as composer-in-residence for five years has shown me just how essential a national arts center is. This place is like the Jupiter of the performing arts, with over a dozen separate venues presenting everything from hip-hop to opera.
My KC Jukebox series has migrated through many of them, transforming spaces large and small into immersive, club-like hangs. I invited Juan Atkins because of his historic role in the creation of techno, which was born in Detroit in the 1980’s. Amidst the continuing adulation of DJs from northern Europe, Juan Atkins remains under-appreciated to this day. Many fans of electronic dance music don’t realize the genre emerged from the ashes of Motown, created by African-Americans who were hacking synths and drum machines in a kind of Futuristic utopia.
Key Atkins releases of that era will be featured on this KC Jukebox. Supporting seminal releases such as “Clear” (from Atkins aka Cybotron) will be a string ensemble performing brand-new arrangements. It’s a fun challenge to create arrangements for music this stripped-down, yet in some ways the electro-acoustic mix can be more successful than with more produced tracks. Having a bit more sonic space allows the strings to spread out more in the mix. Juan Atkins rarely performs in the US, so having him at the Center is a very special event.
What’s next after this lightning-fast stylistic sea-voyage? A few weeks later I head to Sun Valley, Idaho for a Mercury Soul in the snow!
2020 always used to sound so distant and futuristic, but now it’s upon us – and artificial intelligence is still an oxymoron (hey Siri); phones sound worse than in the 1980s; and aliens are still avoiding Earth for a party on some other planet. But on the bright side, computers are now so powerful that my entire music studio can travel in my carry-on; an explosion of new platforms has expanded the possibilities of storytelling; and delivery has become so instantaneous, an ounce of saffron can be droned to your kitchen for an impromptu paella. The best developments, from my perspective, integrate animal warmth and new tech – or, in short, both analog and digital. That intersection continues to fascinate me artistically, and you can hear it this spring in premieres at both SF Symphony and SF Opera, as well as as events I’m curating at the Kennedy Center and Mercury Soul:
KC Jukebox
Serving as composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the past five years has brought so many great moments, meeting everyone from President Obama to Herbie Hancock. The most inspiring part has been KC Jukebox, my new music in new formats series. We’ve transformed spaces all over the Center with shows featuring leading lights in contemporary music, and starting this month we get to inhabit a new one: the REACH extension, three new buildings that opened just this year.
In January we present DJ Juan Atkins, the ‘godfather of techno,’ in a show that complements his raw Detroit energy with a string ensemble. Atkins is of royal blood in the world of electronic music, and his touring often takes him beyond our shores – so don’t miss this rare opportunity! In March we’re visited by fiddler virtuoso Jeremy Kittel, who combines bluegrass and classical string playing in the most virtuosic ways (think Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, David Grisman). Then we have two separate visits from the leaders of the Thievery Corporation, the hit psychedelic band that performed on Jukebox’s second season. Eric Hilton’s Ekodohm project is a deep dive into the world of analog synthesizers, while Rob Garza’s Dissolve is a stunning collision of house beats and a string ensemble. Alongside these cross-genre artists we’ll be presenting classical offerings from old to new, allowing each to shine a light on the other.
Mercury Soul
My classical/club show continues offerings thumping good times around San Francisco, with shows integrating classical musicians into a variety of new venues for us. On January 25, we present DJ Dave Aju in a program featuring the music of JS Bach, John Adams, and Johann Johansson. The amazing Friction Quartet performs, along with popup solos from cellist Johan Kim and violinist Kevin Rogers, and we’ll be improvising some live electronic elements into the Johansson quartets.
Later this season, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs comes to the heart of the tech world with performances at San Francisco Opera in June/July 2020. This is a major event in the life of this opera. It’s been thrilling to see audiences embrace the work from Santa Fe to Seattle to Indiana, but there’s nothing like bringing an opera to the locale of its setting. My initial inspiration for the piece was the Bay Area’s legion of creative technologists, whose work is changing the way we interact, create, and live. Jobs remains a fascination for techies and non-technics alike, someone whose personal challenges and contradictions are the stuff of opera. San Francisco Opera has been a phenomenal partner from the start of the commissioning process, and they’re bringing back the original cast that won the 2019 Grammy for Best Opera, led by baritone Edward Parks and mezzo Sasha Cooke. Also onstage this season are several ballets, from Aszure Barton’s stunning work at the Houston Ballet to a work by Joffrey Ballet’s Nicholas Blanc, who reprises a work he recently created for NYC Ballet.
In February, Mercury Soul heads to the Arguyous Center in Sun Valley, Idaho, transforming this new performing arts space into a club just in time for Ski Week. And back in San Francisco later this spring, we will be presenting one of our most exciting offerings to date: the music of Stranger Things at August Hal featuring composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. They are heirs to the organ symphonies of Messiaen and Saint-Saens, as well of course to the ’80s soundtracks of John Carpenter.
Symphonic: Philharmonia Fantastique & beyond
Years in the making, my animated film about the “making of the orchestra” births in two places this spring: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (March 26-28) and the San Francisco Symphony (April 16-18). This has been a joy to work on with director Gary Rydstrom of Lucasfilm and animation director Jim Capobianco of Aerial Contrivance Workshop. The three of us have created a 21st-century guide to the orchestra that flies inside instruments to explore the age-old connection between creativity and technology. With support from the Sakana Foundation and the John & Marcia Goldman Foundation, the project has been in development for over two years, and next season it goes to the Dallas, National, and Pittsburgh Symphonies. More info can be found here. Other notable symphonic performances this spring include my creation oratorio Children of Adam at the Colorado Symphony under Brett Mitchell and the Memphis Symphony under Robert Moody, and Resurrexit at the National Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck.
Opera: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs
How special is it to share a story in the hometown of the protagonist? We’ll find out this June and July when The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs comes to San Francisco Opera. The story of Steve Jobs is the stuff of opera – love, obsession, betrayal, death – yet I still get comments along the lines of “Steve Jobs in an opera?” That element of surprise has helped the work in the variety of cities where it’s appeared, leaving audiences unprepared for the emotional depths the work explores. SF Opera’s Matthew Shilvock was one of the earliest supporters of this project, and it is a huge honor to have this work brought to the Center of Tech by such a legendary opera house. Expect all manner of San Francisco insanity at some of these performances!
Sometimes an artist changes the medium; sometimes the medium changes the artist. Over the past two decades, the orchestra has undergone its most extensive evolution since the expansion of the percussion section in the early 20th Century. In one of the last bastions of analogue technology, digital technology has started to change the game: first came digital audio, then came video. Both are at work in my new symphony Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, a collaboration with director Gary Rydstrom and animator Jim Capobianco.
This concerto for orchestra and animated film, premiering this spring with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, journeys inside the instruments to see how they work. Moving next season to the Pittsburgh, National, and Dallas Symphonies, Philharmonia Fantastique will subsequently be released on screen and television by Vulcan Productions.
The piece is a kinetic exploration of the age-old connection between music and technology, an intersection that’s been happening ever since bamboo was turned into pan flutes, or animal skin and logs were made into drums. Astonishing innovations in musical engineering have continued for centuries, from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier celebration of equal temperament to Wagner’s tubas. Guided by a mercurial Sprite that is born in the film’s opening minutes, we fly inside a flute to see its keys up close; jump on a viola string to activate the harmonic series; and zip through the tubes of tuba as its valves elongate shafts of air.
So why this, why now? A new medium has developed – film with live orchestra – that perfectly suits a new ‘guide to the orchestra.’ Over the past few decades, the orchestra has sprouted some interesting new appendages. On the audio front, I’ve witnessed first-hand how orchestras can evolve, seeing early electro-acoustic works such as Rusty Air in Carolina, Liquid Interface, and Mothership first provoke head-scratching before being widely embraced.(Symphonic-electronic soundworlds have been hitting ears since Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother and film scores, but the symphonic repertoire had stuck with its acoustic roots. We just needed to figure out how to integrate speakers into the orchestra in three rehearsals!
On my mind were masterpieces such as Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, to Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, and Disney’s Fantasia when I approached Gary Rydstrom about making a film together about ‘the making of the orchestra.’ Gary’s a master sound designer (count ‘em, seven Oscars for his work with Spielberg) and well as a gifted director of animated films such as Lucasfilm’s Strange Magic. He loved the idea and brought in gifted animator Jim Capobianco (you can spot his most recent work in the animated sequence in Mary Poppins Returns that travels inside a ceramic bowl). The three of us started meeting up at Skywalker Ranch north of San Francisco, wringing our hands over questions such as How does the Sprite get inside the cello???
A combination of animation and special-effects shots of musical instruments, the film will be performed live in concert by an orchestra enhanced by electronic sounds – an integration of a variety of artistic technologies in a through-composed symphony. We’re still working out the final trajectory of the film, when the four ‘tribes’ (families) of the orchestra must unite to resurrect the Sprite (yeah it’s got stakes!). The different instruments of the orchestra are as different as the races on earth, but they fuse together to become The Orchestra – one of the greatest human creations. Stay tuned for more about the piece and the process in the coming months!
Composing anchors my musical life, but sometimes it’s only the beginning of my creative journeys. The 2019-20 season has plenty of focus on my compositions, but it also has me storyboarding an animated film; creating a multimedia installation for the Kennedy Center’s new campus; and DJing in a variety of clubs and art spaces. Here’s an overview of the season ahead:
Philharmonia Fantastique
One of the biggest musical events of my life happens this spring with the premiere of Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, for animated film and live orchestra, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. This is a dream project, the result of years of creative work and fundraising. The work explores the connection between creativity and technology with the help of a capricious Sprite, who flies through instruments as they’re played.
Director Gary Rydstrom of Skywalker Sound is a legend in sound design, having won seven Oscars for his work with Spielberg, and he has also directed several Lucasfilm animated films such as Strange Magic. A few years ago, I approached him about making an animated film that would journey inside the orchestra without words, using purely images and music to showcase the wonders of musical engineering that make up the orchestra. Gary brought in famed animator Jim Capobianco, whose Aerial Contrivance Workshop has created animation for Disney and Pixar films, and we’ve been working at Skywalker Ranch over the past year.
In the film, you’ll airwaves sliced by flute keys and trumpet values…you’ll fall inside a cello as it’s vibrating…you’ll perch atop a timpani head while its being struck. Additional commissioners include the National, Pittsburgh, and Dallas Symphonies, as well as the Goldman Foundation. It will subsequently be released in theaters and on TV, but you should catch it live first!
Kennedy Center
Of my guiding lights as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been the integration of ambient information into my concerts. In things such as my KC Jukebox series, the audience is immersed in a fluid and social environment amidst projected imagery and information, a 21st century update on the program book. The opening of the Center’s new REACH campus takes this one step further with a week-long installation in the Skylight Pavilion, where I’m creating a series of immersive environments responding to a variety of musical styles, from Renaissance choral music to Detroit techno. The KC Jukebox series itself, which recently featured the composers of the Netflix hit Stranger Things alongside a tribute to composer Johann Johannsson, continues in its fifth year with appearances by DJ Juan Atkins, Get Out composer Michael Abels, and many others. Also at the Kennedy Center, the National Symphony Orchestra will perform several of my works, beginning with Warehouse Medicine from The B-Sides and continuing later with Resurrexit.
Opera & ballet
Later this season, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs comes to the heart of the tech world with performances at San Francisco Opera in June/July 2020. This is a major event in the life of this opera. It’s been thrilling to see audiences embrace the work from Santa Fe to Seattle to Indiana, but there’s nothing like bringing an opera to the locale of its setting. My initial inspiration for the piece was the Bay Area’s legion of creative technologists, whose work is changing the way we interact, create, and live. Jobs remains a fascination for techies and non-technics alike, someone whose personal challenges and contradictions are the stuff of opera. San Francisco Opera has been a phenomenal partner from the start of the commissioning process, and they’re bringing back the original cast that won the 2019 Grammy for Best Opera, led by baritone Edward Parks and mezzo Sasha Cooke. Also onstage this season are several ballets, from Aszure Barton’s stunning work at the Houston Ballet to a work by Joffrey Ballet’s Nicholas Blanc, who reprises a work he recently created for NYC Ballet.
Resurrexit and popular works
Performances of new and popular symphonic works continue throughout the season, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra touring my new biblical opener Resurrexit. Inspired by Maestro Manfred Honneck’s focus on spirituality in music, the piece animates the classic narrative of the Resurrection with propulsion and theatricality. Pittsburgh is a world-class orchestra that has played more of my music than any other, so it’s thrilling to have them tour the work from Hamburg to Vienna.
Another new works gets featured this season when the Colorado Symphony records my recent oratorio Children of Adam, which was just released by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra under Steven Smith. Colorado’s music director Brett Mitchell is a leading light in American music, a master of repertoire old and new, and it’s been a joy to get to know him over several seasons. Other popular works such as Alternative Energy and Mothership continue all over the place – just check out my calendar to see where.
I reverse hibernate. Summertime is when I hole up in my studio to complete composing projects, with far fewer appearances during the busy symphonic season. It’s a pleasant respite from travel and performing, offering time for reflection as I put the finishing touches on pieces that have been in process for a year or more, but by summer’s end I’m eager to reengage with the world – either to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where I continue my stint as composer-in-residence, or at orchestras and opera houses around the country.
From this hibernation emerges a pair of new cubs this season – two symphonic premieres exploring big subjects – along with continuing performances of recent and popular works, including my opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. Here’s a overview of highlights for the coming season:
Premieres: Art of War and Resurrexit
Two premieres debut this season: Art of War, a large-scale exploration of human conflict; and Resurrexit, a theatrical and fast-paced conjuring of the classic biblical narrative. The symphonic medium continues to inspire me to examine big topics in dramatic ways, enhanced with the addition of electronic sounds or new symphonic effects.
The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra kicks off its new season with the September premiere of Resurrexit, in celebration of the 60th birthday of Manfred Honneck. He challenged me to write a “spiritual opener,” which seems almost an oxymoron: how can the lightning-quick character of an opener coexist with something more meditative? While these days I focus on larger works than openers, I was intrigued by the audaciousness of the challenge and the supernatural elements of the story. I had long wanted to explore the ‘dusty’ mystery of Middle Eastern scales and exotic sonorities, so I dreamed up piece that animates the classic Resurrection narrative with propulsion and drama, rising from a biblical darkness into an exhilarating finale.
My largest musical event of the season is the December premiere by the National Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda of Art of War, a symphony exploring the drama of human conflict from the perspectives of soldiers, weaponry, and human loss. Animating a three-movement symphonic structure are original field recordings of weapons tests and the printing presses of the US Treasury. For my first large commission for the Kennedy Center, I wanted to deliver something of a political nature and a darker soundworld than I’ve ever explored.
The drama is heightened with the inclusion of astonishing sounds, such as field recordings of munitions tests (artillery and mortars) I made with the US Marines. I always felt the canon fire in the 1812 Overture could be further explored. So after a lengthy application process and, yes, the donning of a helmet and flak jacket, I was driven as close to the impact zone of a 50 caliber canon as you ever want to be. There’s also the sound of a different kind of weapon in the opening “Money As a Weapons System.” Based on an actual US military handbook describing the use of money to achieve military goals, the movement integrates actual recordings of the US Mint’s printing presses into quicksilver, caffeinated musical textures that glitter like coins from a slot machine – only to spin wildly out of control over the course of the movement. The soulful heart of the piece, “Two Worlds,” explores the perspective of an American soldier and an Iraqi soldier through a synthesis American blues and Persian flute music — a musical evocation of the larger message of “stronger together.”
T
he (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, Carnegie Hall, and beyond
Following its sold-out premiere at Santa Fe Opera and this summer’s release on CD, my first opera continues appearing around the country, with productions this season at Seattle Opera and Indiana University. It’s thrilling to see new casts and audiences discover the work, with the stunning premiere production going to very different opera houses. As Steve Jobs’ legacy continues to resonate in our lives – with Apple now valued at a trillion dollars – the work offers a window into his complex inner life.
On the symphonic stage, performances of recent and popular works continue around the US and the world. Under visionary maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra brings Anthology of Fantastic Zoology to Carnegie Hall after performances in Philadelphia. Previously recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, the work explores the dark, surrealist fantasy of Jorge Luis-Borges.
My concertos continue to be performed by their amazing soloists. Joshua Roman performs the Cello Concerto in a variety of places, from Chicago to Malaysia to Denver (where the Colorado Symphony also performs my baroque thriller Auditorium). Anne Akiko Meyers brings my Violin Concerto to the Helsinki Philharmonic for a live-streamed event in December. And the stunning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, who performs the role of Laurene Jobs at Seattle Opera, continues to perform Passage, which weaves fragments of JFK’s moonshot speech into a celebration of American exploration.
Curating: The Kennedy Center, KC Jukebox, Mercury Soul…
In my third season as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center, I’m continually astonished at the vast possibilities of making art in such a magnificent place. While I work with a variety of institutions within the Center, from the National Symphony to the Jazz Center, the primary focus of my curating is the KC Jukebox series, which presents new music in new formats – featuring immersive production and ambient information to educate the audience, as well as post-parties with DJs to allow people to debrief in a casual setting.
This season, the series presents the renown analogue synth duo Kyle Dixon and Michael Klein, of the band Survive, known for their distinctive score to the hit Netflix show Stranger Things. The duo headlines a show that also pays tribute to Icelandic composer Johann Johannson, who also brought the sounds of analogue synths to a wide audience. Also appearing on KC Jukebox is Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw on a show featuring the Scottish balladier King Creosote; and as part of the Kennedy Center’s Direct Current festival, the series brings the beloved chorus Chanticleer back for a concert of new vocal music.
My classical-club hybrid Mercury Soul continues to build a strong following in San Francisco, having recently completed a year that climaxed with Thievery Corporation’s Rob Garza headlining our show at The Great Northern. The project has become something of a showcase for musicians of the entire Bay Area, from Philarhmonia Baroque to the DJ collective Housepitality. As I’ve focused my DJ performances on large shows integrating live musicians within sets of electronica, I’ve found Mercury Soul to offer a unique experience that continues to challenge me as a DJ and composer. Stay tuned here for an announcement of our upcoming season.
Remember old cartoon images of a stork dropping off a baby? That actually happens for composers. A package left on my doorstep yesterday contained a dozen CDs of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, just now available from Pentatone Records. When I held up one of the elegant black boxes containing the CDs and libretto booklets, stylishly contained in a minimalist design worthy of Apple, my son asked, “Is that a new phone?”
Good guess. While the intention was always to focus on the human side of the Steve Jobs story, his products are intricately woven into his life – and ours. The opera is, in fact, a kind of giant smart phone, exploring the music of communication. The piece examines a fundamental tension in our lives today: how do we simplify human communication on such beautifully minimalist devices – when humans are so complicated?
This sleek CD package, too, contains a complex web under its surface. Turning over the package in my hands, little details belie massive collaborative efforts that brought this piece to life.
First thing you notice, of course, is the name of my key collaborator, librettist Mark Campbell. Our work on Jobs began years ago when I approached him about writing an opera about a creative technologist possessing both positive and negative charges, grounded by the strong figure of his wife. Initially ambivalent, Mark soon fell in love with the complex, duel protagonist-and-antagonist role of Jobs; the soulful figure of Laurene Jobs; and the mystical character of Kobun, the Buddhist spiritual advisor to Jobs.
Before any words were written, we agreed that this story needed a non-linear, ‘pixelated’ structure – which, on the list of CD tracks, you’ll notice is splayed across two dozen scenes in one giant act. Any one of these short scenes seen own its own, like a single pixel, is but a flicker of light. But arranged together, these pixels animate an image, a life. The juxtapositions that occur in this kind of storytelling help us understand a man who transformed from a hippy in an apple orchard to a mogul at the helm of the world’s most valuable company.
Next thing you notice, opening the package and looking at the images on the CD cases and libretto booklet, is the stunning set design and production. This was the work of director Kevin Newbury, a master at assembling a strong design team. The subject matter of this opera required a dazzling, high-tech production that would take as through time and space in a unique way. He brought in production designer Vita Tzykun, who created a mesmerizing series of lighted panels that glide around the stage, along with lighting designer Japhy Weideman and projectionist Ben Pearcy. I learned a great deal watching these four at each tech rehearsal, which in Santa Fe occur in the wee hours of the night. Lighting storms would play out in the desert behind the stage while, onstage, the magic of stagecraft would unfold.
You’re finally pulling the first CD out of its sleeve and put it in your CD player (which has almost been killed off by Jobs’ creations). The first sounds you hear are electronic, little chirps and tweets awakening from all directions like birds in a future forest. Those are all derived from actual Mac gear: whizzing hard drives, tapping key clicks, chipper beeps. Some of those I actually recorded from my array of old Mac gear, some of them I found via the incredible Gary Rydstrom who worked at Apple a few decades before moving to Lucasfilm. I wanted an arresting opening that sounded nothing like opera, and I was intrigued by the challenge of building the soundworld out of the creations of Jobs himself.
In my orchestral music, the integration of electronic and symphonic textures always runs deeper than surface sound, for the simple reason that electronic sounds carry so much content: the sound of a particle accelerator, the crackle of a NASA astronaut, the rumble of glaciers calving. That has brought elements of theater into the concert hall, and I definitely wanted to bring this element of sonic storytelling into the opera house. So we hear Jobs’ own machines whizzing around him in his workshop garage, or processed prayer bowls and Japanese wind chimes when Kobun is onstage. These elements of sound design play a crucial role in the opera and were a intriguing challenge in both the live performances and in the recording.
As you continue to listen to the CD, you’ll notice the most important elements – the voices and the orchestra. We were so fortunate to have a stellar cast, led by the mesmerizing Edward Parks in the title role and Sasha Cooke as Jobs’ wife Laurene Powell Jobs. Wei Wu, Garrett Sorenson, Kelly Markgraf, and Jessica Jones not only created the roles of the key supporting figures in Jobs’ life; they became an extended family for me at Santa Fe Opera, which nurtured us all so carefully in every stage of this work’s creation. The orchestra included some surprise instruments, such as acoustic guitar (a kind of partner instrument for Jobs) and saxophones. Conductor Michael Christie was a dream collaborator, perfectly managing the orchestra, singers, and electronics.
And what’s a CD without a producer and a label? Elizabeth Ostrow guided the recording from the first rehearsals in Santa Fe, assisted by engineer Mark Donahue (one of the finest in the business). It’s so rare to have a new opera recorded immediately, and for that we can all thank both Pentatone Records and, of course, Santa Fe Opera – which nurtured this piece so confidently from its earliest beginnings. While these days you can enjoy music in any form, from MP3 to streaming, consider springing for the real-deal package for this one. Pentatone and Santa Fe Opera did a phenomenal job bringing this stage work into a format available to all.