Recently we were invited by our friend Paul to join him at a performance given by his nephew, William Brittelle. This young man is what I would call an Avant-garde composer. He has composed a piece of performance art/rock opera which he calls "Mohair Time Warp".
The venue for the performance was called "Joe's Pub" (named for Public Theater founder Joseph Papp) and it is one of the performance spaces at the Public Theater on Lafayette Street in New York City. It is one of their smaller more intimate spaces apparently and one can actually order drinks and from a limited food menu. It does have excellent acoustics. Not that I'm an expert on this but Paul has been a musician his whole life and confirmed that the acoustics were good.
We ordered burgers and cokes and settled down to await the performance. First up was an artist named Corey Dargel. He and his group performed a series of quirky love songs. You may read more about him here: http://www.joespub.com/component/option,com_artists/task,view/Itemid,40/id,2378
Then it was the turn of Paul's nephew Bill with his work. He was backed by a nine piece band of professional musicians. Bill wrote the entire piece himself and scored it for each individual instrument. There was also a professional orchestral conductor leading the musicians. Bill's singing technique is unusual in that he actually lip syncs to his own previously recorded voice. This was necessitated by a vocal cord injury he sustained while singing with another group and which precludes him singing live. However, he has managed to turn this necessity into an art form in its own right.
The lyrics to his songs (there were several which made up the whole of "Mohair Time Warp") were sort of stream of consciousness and apparently chosen somewhat also for the sheer sound of the words. I would personally describe it as a musical in the style of James Joyce.
We had a very enjoyable time and it was great being exposed to an art form that I had not experienced before.
Bill has a CD of this performance out by New Amsterdam Records:
https://www.newamsterdamrecords.com/#Album/Mohair_Time_Warp
The "Mohair Time Warp" site is here: http://www.mohairtimewarp.com/
To watch the videos and/or listed to the audio clips you will need to disable any pop-up blocker on your browser.
And finally, a very positive article on Bill's work in "Time Out New York", which includes a You Tube video: http://66.111.110.102/newyork/articles/opera-classical/29236/read-my-lips
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