Concert Review of Bobby Previte's The Separation (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis)
Heavy-metal requiem casts moody spell
By Dan Emerson, Special to the Pioneer Press
Drummer and composer Bobby Previte, who has performed at the Walker Art Center a number of times over the past 20 years, returned to the Walker stage Friday night in a departure from his usual jazz-concert context.
It was the world premiere of "The Separation," a provocative, Walker-commissioned work created by Previte and theater artist Andrea Kleine. Previte and Kleine have described their collaboration as "a choral mass in nine movements; a dark parable about the death of the individual; a heavy-metal requiem; an essay on the short life of a lonely sheep."
In musical terms, the genre-blending performance-piece is Previte and Kleine's "re-imagination" of 15th-century composer Guillaume Dufay's choral epic "Missa Sancti Jacobi" and composer Olivier Messiaen's organ work "La Nativite du Seigneur."
The theatrical aspect of the piece revolves around the imagined life of the first cloned sheep, known to the scientists who created her as 6LL3 and to the outside world as Dolly. The philosophical, thought-provoking script was convincingly delivered by actress Christine Holt.
It touched on a number of existential concerns, including the soullessness of mass conformity, the Orwellian implications of modern science, the tantalizing mystery of UFOs and entropy, "the tendency of everything in the universe to evolve into a state of inert uniformity." The latter state was symbolized onstage by ice melting in water.
The Gothic soundtrack, scripted to meld seamlessly with the narration, could be described as a convergence of ancient, liturgical music and modern heavy metal. It was performed by Previte's Coalition of the Willing trio, with organist Marco Benevento and guitarist Reed Mathis, and the early-music choral group the Rose Ensemble. The St. Paul-based ensemble tours internationally, combining medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music with ancient stories and legends.
The majestic, soaring harmonies of the nine-member Rose Ensemble were a welcome counterpoint to the harmonically and rhythmically simplistic guitar riffs. And, the minor-key, sometimes ominous organ score played by Benevento was effective in casting a moody spell over the stage, fitting the pessimistic tone of the script - which culminated in the conclusion that "It's easier to live a lukewarm life."
At a few points in the performance, the heavy-metal thunder generated by Mathis' electric-guitar power-chording and Previte's drum-kit partially drowned out the words being delivered by Holt - an occupational hazard of combining heavily amplified music with minimally amplified voices.