Performance Information Date:  Friday, December 12, 2008, 8:00 pm, Saturday, December 13, 2008, 8:00 pm Place:  McGuire Theater Price:  $25 ($21 Walker members) View all associated media View this performance in the Walker Calendar
		Image: Still from Crush Collision , 2006 a film by Chris Larson Photo: Chris Larson

“Scheib may be the most acclaimed experimental American director whose work you have never seen.” —Time Out New York

Gertrude Stein’s groundbreaking “cubist” novel, The Making of Americans, is the launching pad for this innovative, media-rich chamber opera. Celebrated Boston-based experimental theater director Jay Scheib, Brooklyn-based composer Anthony Gatto, local new-music stalwarts Zeitgeist, and upstart New York string quartet JACK conspire to reimagine Stein’s groundbreaking history of all humanity. This ambitious collaboration unfolds in front of sets and machines designed by Minneapolis artist Chris Larson.

In the work’s three-dimensional staging, storms fill the sky, shingles are ripped from the roof, and a tree is torn from the ground, its roots pointing upward. In addition to percussion, strings, keyboards, live chorus, and six principal singer/actors (including local favorites Bradley Greenwald and David Echelard as well as the Builder’s Association’s Tanya Selvaratnam), the unusual high-energy instrumentation invokes sounds of accordions, autoharps, hurdy-gurdies, and church bells.




Commissioned by the Walker Art Center and the Zeitgeist Commissioning Collective through the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund and Meet the Composer's Commissioning Music/USA program. Additional support generously contributed by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Shass Research Fund, Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, MIT Dance Theater Ensemble, and the City University of New York.

The Walker Art Center’s Music Season is sponsored by Macy’s Foundation.

Media partners

Introducing Music Bloggers, Mark and Justin http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2008/12/10/introducing-music-bloggers-mark-and-justin/ Walker blogs, Performing Arts: General

Jay Scheib's official website http://www.jayscheib.com

Anthony Gatto's official website http://www.gattoanthony.com