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Streamed Live 1/31/2009 Watch it here for free |
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 A New Jazz Opera by Dan Plonsey & Harvey Pekar |
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Artists Bios
Harvey Pekar
HARVEY PEKAR, a Cleveland, Ohio native, is best known for his autobiographical slice-of-life comic book series
"American Splendor", a first-person account of Pekar's downtrodden life. The series has been published on an
approximately annual basis since 1976. Pekar self-published the series until the early 1990s, when Dark Horse took
over publication. In 1987, Pekar was honored with the American Book Award for the series. Dark Horse celebrated the
25th anniversary of "American Splendor" in 2001 with a special issue.
"American Splendor" is illustrated by high-profile artists such as Robert Crumb, Frank Stack and Joe Sacco. The comic strip's international appeal was also made evident through Pekar's collaboration with comic book illustrator Colin Warneford of Gateshead, England for the aptly-titled issue "American Splendour: Transatlantic Comics."
Pekar began his writing career as a prolific music and book critic. His reviews have been published in The Boston Herald, The Austin Chronicle, Jazz Times, Urban Dialect (a paper native to Cleveland), and Down Beat Magazine, among many other journals. His critiques are available on the Internet at numerous websites and dispersed amongst personal homepages from his devoted fans. Pekar also collaborated with his wife, Joyce Brabner, on a book-length autobio comic "Our Cancer Year" (Four Walls Eight Windows).
Pekar began working on a freelance basis with the critically acclaimed, award-winning radio station WKSU on April 12, 1999. Since his debut at the station, he has been honored with two prestigious awards. In July 2000, he was awarded first place in the PRNDI (Public Radio News Director's Incorporated) "Commentary/Essay" section for his piece, "What's In a Name." In March 2001, RTNDA (Radio-Television News Director's Association) honored Pekar with a 2001 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Writing for his piece "Father's Day." The piece was entered into the national awards competition of the same name.
Pekar has made two cameo appearances in films and appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman" eight times between 1986-1988. It was Pekar's interest in politics, and specifically NBC's affiliation with General Electric, that got him banned from the show. Eventually he was asked to return and Pekar made two more appearances in the early 1990s.
Despite keeping himself extremely busy with all of his contributions to various kinds of media, Pekar maintains a very low profile in Cleveland. In 2001, he retired from his job as a full-time file clerk at the local VA Hospital, where he had worked since 1966. He lives with his wife Joyce in Cleveland.
Dan Plonsey
DAN PLONSEY has written a few hundred pieces for ensembles of various sizes, including three string quartets, a set of
144 one-page piano pieces, four pieces for orchestra, and bushels of others for whoever was around. Most recently, five
very long pieces (each at least one hour long) for large ensemble: The Seasons (Baseball, Football and Hockey so far),
and the Kingdoms Diptych: Moving About, Humming, Still Our Flowers are Blooming, Under the Old Portcullis and Wise King
Taken by the Foolish One; a set of 23 short marches for the Santa Cruz New Music Works; a total of 160 pieces for his
11-person ensemble Daniel Popsicle; 18 short pieces for 8-10-piece ``jazz'' ensemble; a concerto for guitarist Fred Frith
and Toychestra; the operas Sunburst, Amarama and Cactus Co.; an instrumental-opera version of Hamlet; a dozen or so
structured improvisations for large and small groups; and at least 20 pieces for solo and multiple saxophones
(recorded on Ivory Bill and Open Door And Desire.
Recent commissions have come from Bang on a Can People's Commissioning Fund, the Berkeley Symphony ("The Dolphins in the Forest" for a series of concerts for children), New Music Works in Santa Cruz, Theatre Yugen, and the Illuminated Corridor.
In the less recent past, Plonsey was the resident composer and chief librettist for El Cerrito's Disaster Opera Theatre, the co-founder of two defunct composers' collectives (New Haven's Sheep's Clothing and the Bay Area's Composers' Cafeteria, the journal Freeway (and co-editor), and the weekly Beanbender's creative music concert series in Berkeley. Plonsey performs his own music and the music of others infrequently enough in the Bay Area and beyond in a wide variety of contexts, including, most recently, John Shiurba's 5x5, TriAxium West: a cooperative group devoted to the music of Anthony Braxton, John Schott's Diglossia ensemble (the CD Shuffle Play documents this group), Ben Goldberg's Brainchild, and Eugene Chadbourne's Insect & Western.
Plonsey's music is characterized by a dogged determination to be as un-abstract as possible. Each work is populated by characters rather than by ideas; the ideas are obliged to loiter about in nearby alleys. Most of his music is extremely simple but by no means minimal, rather, it results from the presentation of "those melodies and structural ideas that I find most obvious and inescapable." Inspired by Sun Ra and Charles Ives, the majority of Plonsey's compositions embody a drama of conflict: at least two ideas, one sensible and one absurd, set in motion together or against one another. Other compositions, surreal by nature, required the invention of whole imaginary worlds. His most recent works are a celebration of being out of step with nearly everything. "My music clearly fails to meet the standards of either jazz or classical. It draws upon all of my weaknesses at least as much as upon my strengths."
Plonsey was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1958, earned a BA in math and music from Yale University (1980) and an MA in composition from Mills College (1988). He has studied composition with Martin Bresnick, David Lewin, Anthony Braxton, and more briefly, Roscoe Mitchell and Terry Riley.
Daniel Michalak
A native of New York City, Daniel Michalak (Music Director, Vocal Coach, Piano) joined the Oberlin Conservatory staff as vocal coach/accompanist in 1999. He served in the same capacity at the Indiana University School of Music (Bloomington) from 1991 to 1999. At Oberlin he has been music director for The Music Shop, The Rape of Lucretia, L'heure espagnole, and La voix humaine. He holds degrees in music and in piano performance from Harvard University and Indiana University, and is also a prolific composer.Joshua Smith
Joshua Smith is a saxophonist from Lakewood, Ohio, who now resides in San Francisco, California. Joshua performs constantly in the Bay Area with a variety of his own ensembles spanning the spectrum of jazz from free playing to straight-ahead. For several years Joshua performed throughout the U.S. and Europe with his experimental trio "birth" featuring Joe Tomino and Jeremy Bleich. He has played with many well loved improvisers such as Nate Wooley, Cuong Vu, Chris Speed, Joe Maneri, Karla Khilsteadt, Chris Jonas, Scott Amendola, Dan Plonsey, and many others. Some of his music can be heard at www.makesitok.com. Joshua is saxophonist and co-music director for "Leave Me Alone", as well as contributing composer of one of the show's musical pieces.Jonathon Field
Jonathon Field is one of America's more versatile and popular stage directors, having directed more than 100 productions in all four corners of the United States. He served as artistic director of Lyric Opera Cleveland for six seasons, where he presented the operas of Mozart, Rossini, and Donizetti as well as the Ohio premieres of works by John Adams, Mark Adamo, and Philip Glass. Several of Field's productions for the Lyric Opera of Chicago were so successful they were repeated at the Illinois Humanities Festival with Stephen Sondheim as keynote speaker. His productions for San Francisco Opera's Western Opera Theatre and Seattle Opera have played in more than 20 states. Over the past eight years Field has directed 10 productions with the Arizona Opera, being deemed by the press "their most perceptive stage director." In February 2007, Field directed-at Oberlin and at Miller Theatre in New York City-the critically acclaimed U.S. premiere of Lost Highway, a dramatic music theater work by noted Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth based on the David Lynch film. This is Field's 11th season as director of Oberlin Opera Theater.
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