If last school year was a time of virtual performances to groups of people each one in their own separate space, this semester has bought about a transition period of performing by Zoom to groups of people in the same space, often masked.
And it has also been the occasion to resume some limited but exciting traveling for live performances. In fact the week before these two virtual Odyssey performances for Buffalo and Emory, I performed The Blues of Achilles four times in five days in person: once at University of Chicago and three times in North Carolina for UNC-Chapel Hill, Wake Forest, and Duke.
Having these in person shows of my new work right before virtual performances of my older work was really instructive for me.
The Blues of Achilles, for all I've gotten to perform it on Zoom and for as hard as I rehearsed it before recording it in May, is still very much in the discovery phase. I'm finding things as a performer, figuring out what the strengths and weaknesses of it are, and really just barely scratching the surface of what it will eventually become, whether as a solo piece for me or a larger piece with more around the emotional heartbeat of the songs. I have to stay very attentive and aware about the mechanics and basic performance aspects like remembering the words.
The Odyssey, after now 332 performances spread out over almost 20 years, is like breathing. Both the musical performances and the framing/discussions. I've done so much singing, thinking, and talking about the Odyssey that it feels like I've always known it.
So after the stress and emotional intensity of a week full of in person Blues of Achilles shows, I welcomed the chance to do the Odyssey two times from the comfort of my home.
The audiences were great, the discussions interesting.
I found myself implicitly comparing my two pieces, both the stories/texts and how I go about telling them. I tried to imagine writing the Blues of Achilles as a younger person and I couldn't. I tried to imagine writing the Odyssey as an older person and I was surprised to find I couldn't imagine that any easier. I think part of what makes my Odyssey interesting and engaging is that I wrote it when I was Telemachus' age with a sense of youthful wonder, idealism, and maybe a ample dash of outright stupidity. I think that kept me from leaning in to some of the aspects of the character an older person, someone Odysseus' age for instance, might identify with and feel the need to express. I didn't exactly ignore those aspects because even now I can find them in my words and music if I listen hard enough... I just gave privilege to other facets.
It's an amazing thing to still be performing something I wrote almost 20 years ago, let alone still discovering things about it and myself.
On to performance 333...