Interview with Kevin Malone - MOP Composer Mysterious 44

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 I've research the three unpublished versions by Twain, compared them to the posthumous novella, and then created my own narrative and libretto.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

Interview with Emily Howard, MOP Artistic Director

Charlotte & Grace
Q. Where did the idea for the MOP opera project come from?
 
Emily
A. It came from noticing a need.  I am a singer and have had quite a few close associations with current composers.  Except for a very lucky few, most composers are forced to work in a lonely vacuum because there aren’t enough opportunities to hear their pieces performed.  With opera and vocal work, this becomes a particular problem, because the composer really needs to hear and see these kinds of works at least partially on their feet in order to make final decisions.  Anything to do with voice or drama is going to alter pretty radically from page to performance.  I wanted to create some sort of organisation where composers could actually hear chunks of an opera performed as they are being developed.  And I also wanted to produce whole versions of shorter vocal works, so that we get some full productions that hopefully are portable enough to take to festivals.  This is partially the goal with Mysterious 44.
 
Charlotte & Grace
Q. What exactly is mop opera project?
 
Emily
A. MOP is an organisation currently in its baby stages, but the larger vision is to create something as described above.  There is a wonderful organisation in Brooklyn, NY called American Opera Projects that does something similar to what I am envisioning.  They have a roster of composers who are working on very interesting operas and they help them develop them over a number of years.  They also present scenes from the operas at regular intervals to an enthusiastic committed audience base.  I’m taking inspiration from what they do and taking it even a bit further by committing to commissioning and producing some shorter works. This year, MOP is launching itself with a full production of Mysterious 44, which is a short, chamber opera for 4 singers with an electronic backing.  Next year, I want to begin with the presentation of scenes of larger, developing works while also commissioning and presenting another shorter work. And we’ll take it from there! We are currently building a roster of interested composers and singers.  And of course, we are hoping to build a massive audience base.
 
Charlotte & Grace
Q. Have you been involved in a similar production before?
 
Emily
A. I have.  First of all, I have sung hundreds of new pieces and have worked closely with certain composers for years so I have a good idea of how to work with and help composers. Secondly, I was the director of Ensemble Youkali in New York, which was an organisation dedicated to presenting opera and vocal works in unconventional formats and staging.  We did a version of the Rake’s Progress that was set in a series of five installations created for the production by NY and Boston based artists.  We had a bead garden, a pop up house, a cemetery made of cards, a stained glass bordello installation and a wonderful installation of this gorgeous cracked door with projected light that represented the asylum.   These were the various scenes in the opera and the players travelled around to them while the audience sat cabaret style in the middle. It turned out to be very effective.  We also did a cabaret piece for four singers, that was a series of orchestrated arts song, that we arranged purely by key.  This is in turn formed its own narrative, so we made a set and took it from there and added Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes in between sets of songs as sort of a commentary.  I would love to try some similar ideas with MOP in our full productions of short works.  For example, Mysterious 44 will feature an installation by Onome Ekeh, a New York based video artist.  I think it is important and also serious fun to incorporate as much new artistic media as is possible with every new presentation.  I love playing matchmaker with artists in different media.   Kevin Malone and Onome Ekeh and I already worked on a presentation of Kevin’s piece A Clockwork Operetta, which we presented at the PEN International Voices Festival in New York in 2012.

Charlotte & Grace
Q. What kind of legacy would you like MOP to leave?
 
Emily
A. I really want MOP to turn into a creative opera lab where new musical ideas, technological ideas and dramatic themes can be patiently developed.  And I very much want MOP to turn into an organisational resource for the UK composer community. And Manchester is the place to do it! Manchester is already such a fantastic city for composition; there is a very rich new music community here.  I want to put a little focus specifically on the development of new opera within this existing community.   I also want to create a space where composers and audience can interact freely.  I want an intelligent, excited audience to be a crucial part of the development of the new pieces.  Lastly, I hope that it can be a resource for larger UK and international opera companies to come and see some the larger developing operas as they are being presented, so that they can find operas that they might be interested in producing themselves.
 
Charlotte & Grace
Q. We are singers, is there any way we could get involved, in the future, in mop opera project?
 
Emily
A. Absolutely!  Just contact us through the website.  We are looking to build a roster of interested singers so we want to hear everybody.  Even if we don’t have an opera that is suitable for your voice or type at the moment, we certainly might in the future.




Charlotte Dyce & Grace Gladston and students at Manchester University and are working as interns at MOP