Grace
Q. As a composer what made you want to get involved with mop?
Kevin
A. I like multimedia: when the senses are stimulated in a coordinated manner to communicate artistic ideas and emotions. For years, I've also composed for theatre, film, museums and galleries as well as the concert hall. But the one art form which has eluded me until now is opera, since it is so expensive to produce one of substantial length. Then Emily's brilliant idea of MOP started to form: a pooling of talents, resources and enthusiasm to create a can-do approach to launching new work with efficiency and to provide experience for singers who can use it for promotion. It's a combination which balances artistic vision with practical needs. That's for me!
Grace
Q. What was your inspiration behind the opera?
Kevin
A. Well, Mysterious 44 came about because I've been haunted by its existentialist story from the pen of Mark Twain ever since I read it at the age of ten. It's an important story for all societies, especially in this age, who favour radical ideology and fundamentalism over tolerance, exploration and curiosity. I've research the three unpublished versions by Twain, compared them to the posthumous novella, and then created my own narrative and libretto. A cathartic experience for me, but I believe it's also one of universal purpose.
Grace
Q. Why did you decide to replace the traditional classical instrumental accompaniment with an electroacoustic backing? And was composing in this medium difficult in comparison?
Kevin
A. Mysterious 44 has a character, "44", who is fantastical. There was no effective way to portray him/her on stage. But there are also other surprising things about 44 which I won't reveal here. As a result, I thought it best to make him invisible and we know of his presence only through disembodied voices. Then I realised that, since I'm using loudspeakers and video projection -- and the story is partly about technology -- band of non-diegetic instrumentalists and a conductor would be a distraction. So, like with a film soundtrack, the audience can wholly focus on the visual action yet get a lot of extra stimulation and narrative ideas from the electronic score.
Grace
Q. Have you written an opera or anything of the like previously in your career?
Kevin
A. I have been working steadily toward this for years! First there were theatre and film scores, then my concert hall music became quite theatrical, and eventually I started to name pieces after theatrical genres: Opus opera is a recent 50 minute string quartet in the style of an opera, which was followed by the cabaret songs A Clockwork Operetta (for MOP's director Emily) using the recently-discovered pop lyrics of Anthony Burgess' own screen play for A Clockwork Orange. So much of my "purely abstract" concert music is clearly lyrical, and it now naturally follows that the voice -- the source of lyricism -- be fully acknowledged and positioned back into the body from whence I've drawn so much inspiration.
Grace
Q. Would you be interested in co-writing with or being shadowed by a less experienced composer, thus helping them develop and gain invaluable experience that is hard for composers to find when just starting out?
Kevin
A. I'm most absolutely interested! It is valuable not only for the music-theatre genres and less-experienced composers, but also for the mentor: they have to be able to articulate why something does or does not work, and that sharpens their ability to communicate. Contemporary composition often has a reputation of "Like it or leave it", but half of the time the problem lies within issues having to do with musical communication within the composition itself. MOP+Mentoring is a brilliant way in which serious imperfections in writing opera can be picked up early on, and yet leave plenty of room for experimentation.
Grace
Q. What tips can you give to any new composers attempting to write an opera?
Kevin
A. Listen to AND attend a LOT of opera. Song cycles by Schumann and Schubert -- yes, the oldies! -- are also vital, because such cycles are about sight-sound pacing and the sense of space, imagery and emotional transformation are all there as well as in staged opera. Some of the good non-pop musical theatre (Weill, Sondheim, Bernstein) is also valuable. Write down in words what you think works and how it works! How is each song or scene different? It is important to analyse the relationship between text, sound and timing, so to start, a composer should write a lot of songs and, for contrast, a lot of recitatives, without having to deal with sustained structures such as complete opera or even scenes. This is something which MOP is considering for future projects: how smaller units of a larger work can be nurtured.
Grace Gladston is currently studying for a BMus in Music at the University of Manchester and is an intern at MOP
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