If you’re going to see the East Village Opera Company, don’t expect a night at the opera. You’ll shortchange yourself.
The band, a mix of 11 classical and not-so-classical musicians, has been garnering press in New York City since its inception about a year ago. Company members offer an odd blend of traditional opera melodies and rock-inspired mashups. Think Journey meets Beethoven.
But don’t ask them to describe their sound.
“They’ve never heard anything like this before,” vocalist Tyley Ross said. “And any description they hear of it wouldn’t do it justice.”
Ross is one of two vocalists who sing the traditional songs of Italian and French operas, called arias, over a diverse mix of instruments ranging from strings and piano to dueling electric guitars and drums. His voice resonates with the bel canto you would expect to hear from the Lyric Opera, but it’s grounded by the rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities lacing the compositions.
“I really don’t think what we’re doing is that radical when you look at the grand scheme of things,” said Peter Kiesewalter, a former TV and film scorer who, along with Ross, came up with the concept for the East Village Opera Company and who arranges the compositions. “Really, we’re playing pop music from 100 to 200 years ago in the way we best know how.”
He and Ross met while working on a film together in 2001. Ross was playing an aspiring opera singer who just couldn’t cut it. The director asked Kiesewalter, a trained clarinet player, to write the film’s score, which he decided to spice up a little bit. At the end of the process, the pair had enough tracks to release an independent record, “La Donna,” in 2004.
The East Village Opera Company was born.
Today, Kiesewalter and Ross, aided by a rotating cast of operatic and rock musicians, have a major-label debut scheduled for Sept. 27.
The company has played mostly in New York, but has begun getting more gigs. They perform Friday in Chicago for Marshall Field’s music and fashion show, “Glam Rocks.” This year, organizers chose “A Night at the Opera” as the theme, and the East Village Opera Company was an obvious choice to take the stage along with glam rock icons the B-52’s.
“We sort of embraced the glam element of this,” Kiesewalter said, adding that the trendy crowds expected in Chicago could be different from the mixed audiences at the band’s New York shows, where subscribers to the Metropolitan Opera mingle freely with hipsters from the East Village.
“Purists say that you can’t really mess with this music, but we don’t come at this lightly,” he said. “We have a profound respect for this music.”
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When: 7:30 p.m., Friday Where: Glam Rocks Glamorama, The Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State St.
Hear the East Village Opera Company at www.eastvillageoperacompany.com.
Edited by Curt Wagner (cwwagner@tribune.com) and Chris Courtney (cdcourtney@tribune.com)
