A modern spoken opera by NY composer Elliott Sharp and librettist/narrator Jack Womack (Terraplane) with several narrators, reflecting the events surrounding a 1981 killing in New York's East Village, set in a darkly instrumental soundtrack developed by Sharp using guitars, saxophones, clarinets, synthesizers, bass, percussion, drums programming and samples.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2010 Country: USA Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded in concert at The Kitchen, in NYC, in 2009 with additional recording at Studio zOaR, in NYC.
"Theatrically gripping and sonically sophisticated, this modern opera by composer Elliott Sharp and librettist/narrator Jack Womack reflects the events surrounding a 1981 killing in New York's East Village. That flashpoint was the genesis for a musical meditation on Manhattan, where "everyone has a favorite murder."
Through studio wizardry Sharp creates all the instrumental sounds on reeds, guitars, bass, percussion, synthesizer and programmed samples. With the score providing leitmotifs for the story, Sharp's instincts are note-perfect, whether backing the narrator's hard-boiled sardonic drawl with overblown saxophone vibrato a la Harlem Nocturne or using menacing guitar flanges to underline Jedediah Schultz's dialogue as protagonist Jack Henry Abbott boasting how he can gut a victim while knifing him. Later echoing industrial sound accelerates to synthesizer and drum-beat disco-funk, when waitress Susie (sung by Queen Esther) defiantly describes her street smarts, then in funky R/B mode, vocalizes her view of the tragedy."-Henceforth