Within moments of stepping into a rehearsal for Garrett Fisher’s opera The Passion of Saint Thomas More, I’ve got goose bumps. Soprano Linda Strandberg starts singing in a frosty, pining voice, “What is your benediction?” as choreographer Christy Fisher gauges the subtle details of the singer’s carriage and movement along the stage. Strandberg sings the line dozens of times over the next half hour and I never tire of it.
Seattle composer Garrett Fisher composed The Passion as an abstract meditation on the last days of Thomas More (1478–1535). A pious man, More refused to sign King Henry VIII’s Pope-bashing Act of Succession and was executed. Tellingly, The Passion has no elaborate sets or grand costumes.
Fisher instead focuses on the anguish shared by More and his daughter Margaret shortly before the execution. Although careful listening reveals the influence of medieval plainchant and classical Indian music, Fisher’s unusual instrumentation of two sopranos, baritone voice, English horn, guitar, dumbek, and harmonium sounds fresh, like jumping into the aural equivalent of a cold, pure mountain spring. The respiring drones that undergird the opera instill an icy loneliness; when voices overlap, there’s often a majestic, heartfelt desolation.
Such spare instrumentation also shows that Fisher understands the world of opera. New operas generally remain unwelcome in big-time opera houses; for any composer who wants to revive a work after its initial run—Passion first ran in 1995—a stripped-down, do-it-yourself spirit is essential.
Usually Fisher’s operas enjoy an extended run; however, this revival of The Passion is one night only. Next month, Fisher and Co. depart for a mini-tour with dates in New York and, fittingly, St. Thomas More Parish in Kansas City.
Catch The Passion of Saint Thomas More Sat May 12 (Queen Anne Christian Church, 1316 Third Ave W, 877-479-1554), 8 pm, $10/$14.
FRIDAY MAY 11
LA BOHÈME
Puccini’s opera of starving artists and doomed love—later remade into the musical Rent—remains the one opera everyone should see. Through Sun May 20; see www.seattleopera.org for details. Sung in Italian. McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St, 389-7676, 7:30 pm, $51—$141.
SUNSHIP
Stuart Dempster and guitarist Brian Heaney front a quintet named after the classic Coltrane LP. Expect hard-blowing and feverishly fierce solos bolstered by jazz-rock grooves. The Tom Baker Quartet rounds out the bill. Fourth-floor Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 7:30 pm, $5—$15 sliding-scale donation.
SATURDAY MAY 12
THE ESOTERICS
Eric Banks leads this a cappella group in meditative choral works inspired by the Bhagavad Gita (Roger Nelson’s “Attaining immortality”), the poems of Li Po (“Meditations” by Stephen Paulus), and other sacred texts. John Mueh-leisen’s “Watching the moon go down,” draws from the writings of Myoe Shonin, a 12th-century Buddhist monk. Also Sun May 13 at Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle at 3 pm. St Joseph’s Church, 732 18th Ave E, 935-7779, 8 pm, $15—$20.
PAUL HOSKIN
The secret godfather of freely improvised music in Seattle, Hoskin founded the first Seattle Improvised Music Festival in 1985 by organizing a now-legendary concert at a Belltown loft. I missed that one, but a decade or so later I heard him deliver an amazing solo contrabass clarinet performance in a Pioneer Square loft. Hoskin explored the entire compass of his instrument, a seldom-seen curiosity that resembles a scaly snake petrified in silver. Criminally underrated and underrecorded, Hoskin’s solo gigs remain an all-too-rare event. Fourth-floor Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 8 pm, $5—$15 sliding-scale donation.
MONDAY MAY 14
SEAN OSBORN
A superb clarinetist, Osborn’s creamy tone and agile articulation mark him as a virtuoso. Here, he takes on Debussy’s lush clarinet-test piece, the Premiere Rhapsodie, and Brahms’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano, op. 120 no. 1, as well as two newer pieces, his own short suite “Character Pieces” and Somei Satoh’s Birds in Warped Time II. It is apt that Osborn, a former member of NY Metropolitan Opera orchestra, includes an obscure chestnut by Luigi Bassi, the “Fantasia on Motives from Verdi’s Opera Rigoletto.” Meany Theater, UW campus, 543-4880, 7:30 pm, $10/$15.
TUESDAY MAY 15
TIERNEY SUTTON
Free of the histrionic, swoop-to-any-note vocals so prevalent in jazz today, Sutton sings terrifically, sassing and swinging as needed through well-chosen standards. Her reluctant, almost funereal rendition of “Get Happy” and the two versions (one somber, one uptempo) of “Happy Days Are Here Again” from her fine new disc, On the Other Side (Telarc), get my vote. Also Wed May 16. Jazz Alley, 2033 Sixth Ave, 441-9729, 7:30 pm, $22.50.
KNIFELADDER
I don’t know much about KnifeLadder, the harsh-industrial headliner. Instead, I’m interested in the opening acts: the lo-fi, blittering loop fragments of Yximalloo and Turmio Sect’s appealing ambient work. Rendezvous, 2322 Second Ave, 441-5823, 10 pm, $5.
