Nathan Davis Opera Premiere

[brownie]

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04160/328391.stm

Opera Preview: Jazz opera based on Baldwin book to premiere 20 years after it

was written

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

By Nate Guidry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For two decades it lay dormant, tucked away with other forgotten stuff.

But tomorrow night, Nathan Davis will clear the dust from his jazz opera, presenting it for the first time 20 years after it was written.

Based on James Baldwin's 1979 novel "Just Above My Head," the opera was produced by the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh and directed by Jonathan Eaton. In

addition to Davis on saxophone along with his quintet, the piece will feature a combination of symphony orchestra, gospel choir, dance team and a dozen vocal soloists, including baritone identical twins Eugene and Herbert Perry.

Set in the civil rights era of the 1950s, "Just Above My Head" follows the story of two families linked through love and loss, brought together through jazz, gospel music and the church, and divided by the crises of incest, the Korean War, drug addiction, race riots and murder.

Performances of the opera run in conjunction with the National Peforming Arts Convention at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

Davis, who directs the jazz studies program at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote the opera in 1984 as a tribute to Claudia Pinza, opera and voice instructor at Duquesne University and Pitt and daughter of the late basso Ezio Pinza.

"She was always respectful of what I did and she really loves jazz," Davis said

between rehearsals recently at Tamburitzan Hall. "When I decided to write an opera, I thought it would be a nice tribute to her."

When Davis arrived in Pittsburgh from Paris in 1969 to head the jazz studies

program, he heard Mildred Posvar performing Carmen at Carnegie Music Hall. He was so impressed that when he decided to write an opera, he asked Posvar for help and she graciously agreed.

He still had to develop a theme. So he asked his wife, Ursula Broschke Davis, for a few ideas.

"Ursula is German but she has read more about black literature than anyone I know," Davis said. "I told her that I was thinking about doing something using black literature as a theme and she said, 'Why don't you do something from some of the writers that we know?' She said to me, 'You know James Baldwin and he has

written all these great books.' "

Davis had met and become friends with Baldwin while both lived in Paris.

"There was no division -- not just among the musicians, but among the writers, dancers, painters, sculptors. Everybody hung out together," Davis said, recalling his time in Paris. "And they all hung around the jazz clubs. Everybody hung out together. There was a guy by the name of Art Simmons, [a pianist] who worked at the Living Room, and his was the after-hours joint. So Harry Belafonte, Sidney

Poitier [came in]. Remember [former Cleveland mayor] Carl Stokes? He was the first black mayor of a major city in America. When he won, he came and hung out with us. Aretha Franklin and her father, the Rev. Franklin. Sarah Vaughan. Carmen McRae. Philly Joe Jones. Miles Davis. Everybody."

Ursula gave Davis five Baldwin books to read. He completed two novels but when he got to "Just Above My Head," he knew that was the one.

The book was more than 500 pages long so he asked Ursula to write a shorter version.

At that point, Davis phoned Posvar and asked for her assistance.

"I went over to her house and she helped me a great deal," Davis said. "She used to say, 'You're going to kill the singer. ... You have to have a rest here and a pause there. ... It's too high here. ... Nathan, the singer is going to fall over, it's too high' and things like that. She was wonderful and extremely professional."

The bulk of the opera was written on a bus while Davis was touring Europe with the Paris Reunion band. The band, which featured Johnny Griffin, Woody Shaw, Donald Byrd and Davis as saxophonist and musical director, toured for five summers, producing five CDs and three videos.

Baldwin approved of the opera and expressed his appreciation in a letter addressed to Davis just before his death in December 1987.

"I've always been interested in operas, particularly after I met Eric Dolphy and Kenny Clarke," said Davis, who first worked with the pair in the 1960s at Paris' Club St. Germain and the Blue Note.

"Clarke was my musical father and Dolphy was my musical mentor. Whenever we would travel, whether it was Paris or Poland, Eric would go to the ballet and I would ask him, 'Why do you go to the ballet?' and he would say that the ballet dancers had to rehearse every day. ... He would say, 'If the jazz musicians would practice as they perform they would be better musicians.' That made sense to

me. He would also go to the opera and he knew major operas and orchestras, and I started doing that, too. Dolphy was a complete musician. He could play bebop, play circus music. ... He could do it all."

Davis took his cues from Dolphy and went to work on the opera, completing it in late 1984.

For the next 20 years, he put it aside.

But in a bold and progressive move last year, the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh decided to premiere the work this season.

"I've always been interested in doing new works," said Eaton, the theater's artistic director. "I've been interested in doing works that have the potential to reach out to new and younger audiences. I feel, particularly with opera, there's a tendency throughout the country to do 18th- and 19th-century European works. We see the audiences graying; young people are not being brought in quite so much."

Then he met Davis.

"Nathan Davis had been writing a work about James Baldwin. I thought, we should do it to break boundaries," Eaton continued.

"One of the real surprises is turning any novel into an opera. Transforming this huge canvas of a novel to something that's more of a miniature is tough."

Eaton also faced the challenge or harnessing jazz's improvisational feel.

"Jazz tends to be an improvised, evolutionary medium. Drama doesn't work like that. Drama is best when it is cumulative and focused. So one of the things we had to concern ourselves with was, do we just give the musicians complete freedom to improvise or do we say to them, all right, there's an emotional intention behind this

section and what you improvise needs to connect to not just some abstract evolution but the story line and the feeling."

The mixing of all these elements and story lines will be on display tomorrow night.

"I'm very happy with it," Davis said. "There's some stuff in there that sounds avant-garde and mainstream. There's also some funk and church in there. All these elements are woven wonderfully while remaining true to their own genre."

[king ubu]

Thanks for sharing this, brownie!

I recorded a George Gruntz jazz opera from the air last year, but still haven't listened to that one.

ubu