Arnaldo Carmouze
"Letters from Iraq" |
The invasion of Iraq was launched on March 18, 2003, to find and destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. No weapons were found, Hussein is dead, and casualties of U.S. service personnel and Iraqi civilians continue to mount. With no end to the occupation in sight, Chung Park, cofounder of the musical ensemble Project Copernicus, says he was struck by how little attention is being paid to the approaching fifth anniversary.
"Nobody’s really talking about it," the conductor says. "The Iraq War has become just an election issue. It’s not about people anymore."
Park and composer Stephen Danyew will remind local audiences of the milestone next weekend when Project Copernicus teams up with the actors’ group Ground Up & Rising for an envelope-pushing evening of music and theater. The performances, Saturday night at St. John’s on the Lake Church in Miami Beach with a repeat Sunday afternoon in West Palm Beach, will present Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat or The Soldier’s Tale along with the world premiere of Danyew’s Letters from Iraq.
Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale, in a newly realized version by Chung and Ground Up producing artistic director Arturo Fernandez, will take up most of the evening.
Yet Danyew’s new work should provide equal interest. Danyew, Project Copernicus co-founder, says he wanted to bridge the gap between the Stravinsky,which dates from 1917, and the present, providing resonance between the works and bringing the evening full circle.
"The Stravinsky is everlasting, but it was written about World War I," Danyew says. "I wanted to write a piece that was current and specifically about the Iraq conflict.’’ He decided to draw on letters service personnel stationed in Iraq had written to their families for a work he hopes will convey the soldiers’ isolation and profound emotions.
Danyew drew his material from the book Last Letters Home, a companion to an HBO documentary that was inspired by a New York Times story. Scored for the same septet forces as Soldier’s Tale, Letters from Iraq runs 25 minutes in four movements.
"It’s very much about the people, and it shows the range of the human condition," Danyew says. The first section is ’’upbeat and excited,’’ reflecting a female soldier’s letter to her mother in which she relates how thrilled she was to learn to drive a tank. It also serves as a tribute to Stravinsky, one of Danyew’s favorite composers.
The remaining movements grow progressively somber. The second section, inspired by the tale of a soldier who would give his weekly candy allotment to a crying Iraqi girl, is crafted in music that, Danyew says, is ’’child-like and noble.’’ The third section tells of a funeral ceremony for the letter writer’s departed comrade whose name is repeated three times; the music reflects the dignity of the occasion while questioning the rationale of the U.S. presence in Iraq.
The work’s most emotional movement is its finale, inspired by a father’s letter to his wife and children. ’He writes ..Please don’t open this letter unless I don’t come home," Danyew says. "He writes to each child, telling them different things." Danyew says he hopes that his music honors the soldier’s words, "almost static yet hopeful" and, ultimately, transcendent.
Chung and Danyew’s original plan was to present Soldier’s Tale,the hard-edged musico-theatrical piece Stravinsky wrote after he fled Russia in the wake of the revolution. Inspired by a folk tale, it is the story of an army deserter who trades his violin to the devil for a book that predicts the future.
Soldier’s Tale is a theatrical work as much as a musical composition, calling for three actors to perform as the soldier, the devil and a narrator who often takes on several supporting roles. Musically the small forces ideally fit Copernicus’ flexible chamber lineup, with a septet of violin, double-bass, clarinet, bassoon, cornet or trumpet, trombone and percussion.
"The Soldier’s Tale is such a masterpiece," Danyew says. "We felt we could do it justice, and we could put an innovative spin on it."
Stravinsky’s edgy and acerbic music, with its restless time signatures, pointed rhythmic edge and bone-rattling fiddle solos, fits the story’s bleak irony perfectly.
The work has seen many permutations since its 1918 debut in Switzerland. Kurt Vonnegut retooled the libretto, changing the protagonist to Eddie Slovik, the only World War II G.I. executed for desertion. Wynton Marsalis composed A Fiddler’s Tale, with a Stanley Crouch text updating the libretto to that of a young musician who sells her soul to her record producer. The piece has also been mined for ballets, and even an animated version aired on PBS.
"It’s a great story, but some of the stuff is completely unintelligible to modern audiences,’’ Park says. ’So we changed some of it. Like having the devil say, ..Get into my carriage.’ We thought, ’Well, wouldn’t the devil be driving a Bentley?’ They’re subtle changes but enough that people can relate better to it.’’
Arturo Fernandez and Ground Up & Rising have been working on the theatrical side of Soldier’s Tale separately, and there should be a dynamic clash when the actors and musicians start putting the performance together this week in rehearsals. ’’We’re really blending the two mediums here,’’ Fernandez says. ....We’re making it quirky and adding a big surprise."
Park emphasizes that the anniversary concerts are not intended as political protests or anti-war events.
"Neither Steve nor I are highly partisan people," he says. "But we’re stuck in this war after five years, and we really don’t see any way out.
"We don’t want people to forget that there are young men and women, and brothers and sisters who are sacrificing their lives for our country. We just don’t want people to lose focus of the fact that human beings are involved.’’ |
