June 15, 2024 • 22 mins
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is presenting a reimagined take on Poul Ruders's The Handmaid's Tale, a work-in-progress based on Margaret Atwood’s sobering novel. Composer Dan Scholsberg was commissioned to arrange the work for chamber ensemble using different technologies to evoke Gilead. The hope is for this arrangement to be used by more arts companies across the globe.
Opera at Banff Centre will continue to thrust forward, while acknowledging and building on the foundations of the past.
Guest host for this episode is Stephania Romaniuk, who is being mentored in the Arts Writer portion of Banff Centre's Opera and Chamber Music: Interplay program by Elizabeth Bowman.
All episodes of The Opera Glasses podcast are hosted by the editor of Opera Canada, currently Michael Jones after Elizabeth Bowman hosted seasons 1 and 2. Follow Opera Canada on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Visit OperaCanada.ca for all of your Canadian Opera news and reviews.
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Episode Transcript
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Stephania Romaniuk (00:00):
Hello, my name is Stephania Romaniuk and
I'm thrilled to be guest hostingthe Opera Glasses podcast Today
.
I will be joined by DanSchlossberg, the wonderful
composer who has arranged a newadaptation of Poul Reuter's
opera of the Handmaid's Tale,which will be performed at the
Banff Centre for Arts andCreativity this summer.
(00:20):
Dan, thank you so much forjoining us.
It's an absolute honour to besitting beside you and to be
discussing the Handmaid's Tale.
Let's start with an obviousquestion.
Since the opera premiered in2000,.
It's been performed across theworld.
It was even nominated for acouple of Grammys, and yet this
upcoming performance is billedas a workshop performance.
So could you talk a little bitabout what exactly is being
(00:44):
workshopped?
Dan Schlosberg (00:45):
Absolutely so.
I am in the process, andactually mostly done with
creating a new arrangement ofthe piece.
So originally Paul Ruders, thewonderful composer, wrote it for
a huge orchestra, so that wouldmean like three winds per part,
like three flutes, threeclarinets, etc.
So it's a really huge amount ofbrass massive string section,
(01:08):
just like a full orchestra, andI think it was originally
perhaps Joel Ivany and ChrisLorway who kind of hatched a
plan to create a new version ofit being an iconic piece of
Canadian literature and alsobeing a really wonderful opera.
I mean, you know Poole set thenovel pretty straight on.
The story is obviously socompelling and important.
(01:30):
So I think they were reallyinterested in sharing this piece
under the.
You know we're in 2024, wedon't have always have access to
that type of orchestra anymorefor many reasons, and so I think
they were just reallyinterested in hearing this piece
in a more condensed setting.
And so I, you know, spent thelast few months working on a new
(01:52):
arrangement for 16 players.
So that meant and you know Iwas in touch with Joel
throughout the year figuring outwhat actually the orchestration
would be.
You know I've done this formany different pieces.
I have an opera company in NewYork which I do, called
Heartbeat, and for the past 10years I spent doing like radical
reorchestrations of classicworks for very small amount of
(02:13):
players.
So when approaching this piece,it's a little bigger ensemble
than I often worked with andit's also a more contemporary
piece.
So there's differentconsiderations that I've that
have come into play as I'veworked on it.
But when I've picked, when Ipicked the ensemble, I wanted to
try to honor Poole's color,like he really it's an amazing
piece.
It's like he runs the gamut ofstyles, sounds, really pulling
(02:38):
out as many colors from theorchestras as he can, and so I
wanted to honor that, and so Istarted with PooPoulle chamber
orchestra.
I knew that you know, we'regoing to have to have winds of
some kind and you know I decidedin this piece that we have
we're going to need a flute anda piccolo so the flutist will
switch off because there's aheat.
(02:58):
The high, the high register isreally important in this piece,
so piccolo is really reallyimportant.
Ovo also is an English hornwhich provides a really darker
color, and then instead ofusually you would have clarinet
and then bassoon.
But instead of bassoon I feltlike this piece wasn't really
that color, wasn't as importantin this piece, and so I actually
have two clarinets and so oneof them is just playing a normal
(03:22):
B flat clarinet.
The other one doubles on bass,and so for me the bass clarinet
gives a huge.
It opens a lot of color optionin the low register.
So that's for and for.
Brass horn trumpet trombonefelt it was just kind of the
classic setup because I knewthat we really needed some of
the lower color trombone wouldgive that to us, and then
strings.
(03:42):
So I in this, what I decided inthis case was, like normal
string quartet and bass.
Very important to have the bassthere, obviously, because when a
small ensemble but, becauseagain, he really pulled, really
loves the high violins togetherin really close, close proximity
, and so generally we violin,two violins, feel a cello.
(04:04):
But for me I was like, okay, Ireally need a lot of high sound
at certain moments, and so Iactually asked the violist to
double violin as well, and sothe string quintet either is
three violins cello, bass, ortwo violins viola, cello, bass.
And then the other challengewas percussion and keyboards.
(04:25):
Percussion originally was, Ithink, four or five, even
percussion, and so I did nothave the personnel for that in
this, and so I was like, what isthe minimum that I really can
use?
And so I decided two.
I would have two percussionistsand they're really going crazy,
and one of the things thatyou'll see in this is that
(04:45):
they're just jumping around frominstrument to instrument all
the time and I really ask a lotof them um, they're like often
playing two instruments at once,with one hand playing one, one
hand playing the other.
For example, chimes are animportant sound in this piece,
and so I ask, I think,percussion two to both play
chimes and timpani.
So she's like playing timpaniwith one hand and chimes with
(05:08):
the other and then has to likeswitch quickly to play bass drum
.
So it's all kinds of craziness,but percussion is such,
especially in a small ensemblelike this, percussion is like
crucial to round out the soundand make it sound like big and
everything.
And so then the remainingchallenge was the keyboards.
Originally there were three.
(05:30):
There's an organ, there's apiano and then there's a sampler
that plays not only likeelectric piano sounds and um and
vibraphone, but also sampledbowed cymbals and sampled all
kinds of crazy didgeridoo.
There's a didgeridoo sample atthe keyboard place, so I had to
(05:52):
kind of figure.
And then there's a harp.
So there are basically fourkeyboard instruments in Poole's
original orchestration that Ihad to figure out how to deal
with, and so the way that I thatfor me is the easiest is to
just put all of that into twodifferent keyboard parts.
The harp gets put in thekeyboard.
It's all like samples andsynthesizers, um, and I I felt
(06:14):
like that was appropriate, giventhe fact that pool had
originally written a samplerpart into his orchestration.
So I was just like you knowwhat, we're just going to use
his sounds that he already used.
Plus, just like we won't have aharpist, unfortunately, we'll
just put the harp in thekeyboard, but it just makes it a
lot more versatile so that thekeyboard can be doing any number
of things.
Sometimes they play like theyaugment the bass part, like
(06:37):
there's supposed to be four orfive basses playing solo at some
point and we only have one.
So the keyboard goes down andkind of augments that sound.
But that was that's how I endedup on this ensemble.
So in this workshop, to likecircle back to your original
question, which I now spent like10 minutes talking about in
this workshop- you're going tohear basically all of act one of
(06:58):
this new instrumentation, aswell as one scene from act two.
And you know, the otherchallenge that we face in
creating a small version of thispiece is dealing with the cast,
which is huge, on the chorus,which you know is non-existent
in our version.
And so this workshop, you know,in a more, if we had a little
(07:19):
more time we would have dealtwith the chorus for this
workshop, but that will have tobe for the premiere.
Like the chorus, we're kind offiguring out a few different
solutions for whether it'spre-recorded or off stage, or
using the people we have in ourensemble to fill out the sound
which in this workshop you'regoing to hear.
That, like, you'll hear thefull cast who are all soloists,
(07:40):
kind of act as the chorus inthis workshop, which is a really
it's a really important part ofthis piece.
Anyone who knows the storyknows that, like seeing the kind
of mass of handmaids is is amajor like element of this, and
so that's part of creating thiswhole new version.
Stephania Romaniuk (07:58):
So, in addition to those challenges,
obviously you have the challengeof time.
There's been two weeks and Ibelieve that you weren't even
here for the first several daysmoonlighting is my other opera.
I'm the head of an opera companyin fact, to put together even
just a single act and a littlebit of the second act, to squish
(08:20):
that into two weeks, that's ahuge, especially with even if it
is reduced forces.
What were some of the thingsthat have been unexpected in
this rehearsal process or evenin general, in the creative
process that you didn'tanticipate before it actually
started?
Dan Schlosberg (08:37):
It all comes down to how to achieve the music
that Poole wrote.
With the amount of people wehave, and I think, as we started
to look at what actually wouldbe involved with, okay, if we
were gonna, if we're gonna haveto substitute the chorus with a
recording of a chorus, thatmeans that you have to have a
full recording session whereeveryone is there singing, and
(09:00):
when there's a chorus you knowthey can't always they need to
figure out, they need to gettheir pitches somehow and they
also need to be like so there'sa chorus, they need to get their
pitches somehow.
So there's also a challenge ofwell, there's a full chorus, and
so each of them is going toneed an in-ear monitor so that,
if a keyboard is playingsomething, that they can hear
their pitches better, but thatwe don't want to end up in the
(09:23):
actual recording, and so thatwas a major challenge, and so we
ultimately were like, okay,that's not for this year.
That's going to have to happenin advance of the premiere,
whenever that occurs.
So that was one thing.
And then in this workshopyou'll hear, we did make some
recordings.
There are some moments wherethe chorus has like little solos
(09:44):
, when they're at the market andthey're ordering eggs and
whatever, and so you hear that,and we actually recorded our
individual soloists singingthose lines, and then our
amazing keyboard programmer,henry Ng, put that into the
keyboard parts.
At one point, one of thekeyboardists plays notes that
I've assigned, but instead ofhearing pitches, you hear the
(10:06):
recordings of these soloists,and so that's an element that we
wanted to try in this newversion of the piece that will
then translate to other momentsas well, but you'll hear that
here.
You'll also hear some soundeffects that we've put into the
keyboards, and when you havekeyboards at your disposal,
especially two one is difficultbecause one you are only limited
to two hands.
When you have four hands atwork and you're able to, like
(10:29):
assign different sounds todifferent registers at the same
time, like at any one point, Icould have a vibraphone playing
with the right hand and havesamples of people saying
something with the left hand,and so it really and when you
have four of that, that reallyopens up any you can really do
as many things as you want.
I love using it, because ouroptions just become so, so much
(10:50):
bigger in terms of pre-recordingsounds, vocals, recordings of
choruses and sound effects.
All of that can just happenwithin the confines of the
keyboards, and so that'ssomething that we've started to
explore in this workshop, and Iguess we're probably hoping to
do a bit more.
But again, the confines of time.
It's like we only have so muchtime to record and to rehearse
(11:12):
and our keyboard programmer onlyhas so much time to do all of
this.
So that's one thing, and Ithink the other thing is sound.
So in this particular workshopthat you will see the
particularities of the spacethat we're in, which is really
beautiful theater, we don't haveaccess to the pit this year, so
that means that the orchestrais on stage and because of the
(11:35):
sound setup, there's no room infront of the orchestra to have
the singers, so we have to putthe singers up in back, and so
that presents a whole variety ofsound challenges.
We have an amazing sound teamworking on it.
But what that means is have todeal with amplification in a way
that we did not anticipate,although this piece also has
these really extended flashbackscenes, which was another thing
(11:59):
that we were kind of.
In the next version we wouldpre-record all of those as well
and have that have projectionswork, but for this we just
didn't have time.
So for this version we havemicrophones there for the
singers and for the flashbackscenes we're actually putting a
bit of reverb on to kind ofdenote that they are separate
(12:19):
and that they're in the past.
But because of the size of theI mean the band is 16, but you
know it's full, it's brassinstruments, it's instruments
and they're playing right infront of the singers, and so we
are figuring out how best tobalance that and kind of using
some sleight of hand, soundtricks to achieve that.
Stephania Romaniuk (12:38):
There's so many things.
So many things so many thingsto keep track of.
Dan Schlosberg (12:41):
It's making an opera you know, making an opera
involves every department, soyou always need to like think
about five zillion things atonce.
Stephania Romaniuk (12:51):
And on top of that, this is a work by a
living composer.
So, because you're arrangingsomeone else's work, how much
creative freedom have you had inyour own arrangements?
Dan Schlosberg (13:01):
Great question when I've done arrangements of
classic operas in the past, likeI really take a lot of
liberties and I change the music, sometimes completely, I change
it to be almost unrecognizablein terms of the orchestration.
But in this case, like I reallyam sticking to what Poole has
(13:23):
given us on the page in terms ofcolor, because he's a brilliant
orchestrator, he's a brilliantcomposer and I would think that
my goal here is to kind ofenhance and essentialize what
he's done, rather than kind ofadd.
You know people who look atthis.
You could maybe find my ownpersonal stamp on it if you
(13:45):
tried, and it's something Iconsciously put in.
I have proclivities, like whenI choose what to assign to what
like I think that I would have.
I tend to have certain choices,like even in not taking out a
bassoon, for example, or likehaving the violas, double violin
.
That's more of my own like waythat I like to orchestrate, but
(14:06):
in general, like I think I hopethat we'll hear like a really
beautiful version of what hewrote.
That like is a little more, youknow it's having a chamber
ensemble is different.
It's like it's vivacious andmaybe more, and it has a lot of
clarity in a way that a fullorchestra is just there for a
(14:28):
different reason, and so Ireally enjoy that.
Having solo strings is reallyinteresting in this piece.
It's like a group of soloistsrather than an orchestra, and so
that affects the way that Iwrite it, but I would say that
I'm really trying to bring hismusic to life mostly.
Stephania Romaniuk (14:45):
And I've had a chance to sit in on a few of
the rehearsals, and the textureis, I personally find it, very
evocative of the world of.
The Handmaid's Tale, and so Ithink, for readers who are
familiar with the novel orpeople who have seen the TV show
, they might be familiar withthe fact that this is like a
futuristic, dystopian sort ofsociety.
(15:08):
Democracy has deteriorated intoreally religious
authoritarianism.
I don't really know where I'mfrom down south of the border
there's I mean, that's adifferent podcast, but it's we
kind of see this alternateuniverse and you really do feel
(15:31):
the sense of that unease throughthe music.
What was part of yourpreparation process for
understanding the world of theHandmaid's Tale and how you
wanted to bring it to lifethrough the orchestration?
Dan Schlosberg (15:46):
I am very familiar with the book.
I actually read it for thefirst time just a few years ago
and I can't stop thinking aboutit.
I mean, I think in the contextof what's happening today it's
just there.
It's always resonating.
The TV series I'm not asfamiliar with I've seen a few
episodes but I think once Istarted on this project I
(16:10):
consciously like did not watchall of that because I'm sure
it's amazing.
It's slightly different, Ithink.
The book it kind of goes off incertain directions.
Stephania Romaniuk (16:16):
I agree.
Dan Schlosberg (16:17):
I think that, like the sound world that Poole
has created is really strong andit really reflects the action
on stage and it's just like itkind of pulls you in all these
directions and the way that hestacks tonalities tonality is
there and that's what makes mepersonally interested in it,
(16:39):
particularly in the score.
I think if it were completelyatonal and opaque I wouldn't
feel a strong connection to it.
But it's there and I thinkthat's reflecting what you said
in terms of the like we're inthis world, but slightly off,
we're in a somewhat recognizableworld.
But it's also just bizarre andthe sounds that are created from
(17:04):
this band and the keyboards andthe synthesizers are just like
a little strange and a littleoff and a little intense and and
it's like it has this elementof ritual and there are these.
You know it's again, it's thisreligious authoritarian state
and they've co-opted the Biblefor purposes of of, like you
(17:28):
know, ceremonial rape to say, Imean, that's what's happening in
this and like taking childrenaway from women and all this
stuff.
So I think the the scorecaptures that kind of screw,
like mangled version of religionin a really interesting way the
percussion and the way that theLatin there's a lot of Latin in
this and the way that that'sset in this, like the choral,
(17:52):
the quasi-religious choral music, I tried to retain that as much
as I could and, like the gongsand the drum, the bass drum is a
really important element ofthis and the tam-tam, which is
like this big, resonant dong,and so I try to preserve all of
that and keep that in mind as Iorchestrate it.
Stephania Romaniuk (18:12):
I guess this is going to be our last
question and, as workshopperformances typically go, it's
not fully staged.
This particular one, as youmentioned, it's missing most of
Act 2 and some other sections.
What role does the audienceplay in this kind of a
performance, perhaps throughindependent learning or their
engagement as listeners or theuse of the imagination, and how
(18:36):
would you encourage listeners tomake the most of their
experience?
Dan Schlosberg (18:39):
The audience, for me, is so important, so
important.
In any piece of music.
I always say that there's thecomposer, slash, arranger, in
this case the performers whomake any audience who listens to
it, and that those threeelements without one of those,
impossible.
So for me, the audience.
I'm very curious, very, verycurious, what an audience will
(19:02):
think of this.
It's not fully staged.
It's not like we have AmandaTessini doing a gorgeous job of
shading, like the actors are all.
The singers are all standing up.
You know in the back there'sgoing to be, you know people
turn one way or the other.
They kind of simulate certainscenes and there's some
projections and there'sobviously super titles as well.
But I think the piece is verypowerful even without that and I
(19:26):
think even in this kind of bareform, just listening to the
music of it and watching andseeing the plot unfold, I think
people will be affected by it.
I'm just very curious as to how, and I'm curious how it comes
across in this setting.
I would encourage people totake it in, just let it wash
(19:47):
over.
I'm not sure how many people inthe audience will have heard
this piece before.
It hasn't been performed toomuch, I think.
Now it's getting moreperformances, and I think this
is a really wonderful time totry out a new version of it
Again, the story is just beneaththe surface for everyone.
At the moment I'm speaking formyself, listening to the music,
taking the story and seeing howthe we have a beautiful
(20:10):
opportunity to see the fullorchestra on stage and I think
it's virtuosic.
And all of theseinstrumentalists are playing
parts that were meant for eithermultiple versions of themselves
or like a whole section.
And so seeing soloists playthis music really demanding
music and seeing the singersthey've prepared it so
(20:30):
incredibly well.
They sound really amazing and Ithink seeing people do this
piece without the kind of likeyou know you're just distracted
by not distracted, but you'relike enamored with a certain
staging or like whatever justseeing the piece as is, I think,
will be very interesting.
I think it will be effective.
Stephania Romaniuk (20:50):
And so good news, bad news the performance
is sold out at the bounce center, so if you don't have your
tickets, unfortunately you willhave missed it this year.
Dan Schlosberg (21:00):
I heard that the hockey game watching a certain
team win or lose that day mayhave there might be some more
tickets, so possible that's whatI heard yesterday, but if it
unfortunately still sells on thewebsite, there will be more
opportunities to catch thispiece in the future for sure.
Stephania Romaniuk (21:19):
Do you have any hints on when that might
come up?
Dan Schlosberg (21:23):
BAM is hoping, as far as I know, is hoping to
produce it either next season orthe following, and I know
there's a lot of interest inthis from outside people that
might partner with Banff, but nodate has been set.
But I think everyone's keen todo the full Now that the
orchestra pit in the theateractually is functional.
(21:44):
I think everyone's very keen todo the full Now that the
orchestra pit in the theatreactually is functional.
I think everyone's very keen todo it quickly.
So I'm excited about that.
Stephania Romaniuk (21:49):
Well, I absolutely cannot wait to see
this performance and just wishyou all the very best and a huge
toi, toi, toi on Saturday.
Thank you so much you.
Hello, my name is Stephania Romaniuk and
I'm thrilled to be guest hostingthe Opera Glasses podcast Today
.
I will be joined by DanSchlossberg, the wonderful
composer who has arranged a newadaptation of Poul Reuter's
opera of the Handmaid's Tale,which will be performed at the
Banff Centre for Arts andCreativity this summer.
(00:20):
Dan, thank you so much forjoining us.
It's an absolute honour to besitting beside you and to be
discussing the Handmaid's Tale.
Let's start with an obviousquestion.
Since the opera premiered in2000,.
It's been performed across theworld.
It was even nominated for acouple of Grammys, and yet this
upcoming performance is billedas a workshop performance.
So could you talk a little bitabout what exactly is being
(00:44):
workshopped?
Dan Schlosberg (00:45):
Absolutely so.
I am in the process, andactually mostly done with
creating a new arrangement ofthe piece.
So originally Paul Ruders, thewonderful composer, wrote it for
a huge orchestra, so that wouldmean like three winds per part,
like three flutes, threeclarinets, etc.
So it's a really huge amount ofbrass massive string section,
(01:08):
just like a full orchestra, andI think it was originally
perhaps Joel Ivany and ChrisLorway who kind of hatched a
plan to create a new version ofit being an iconic piece of
Canadian literature and alsobeing a really wonderful opera.
I mean, you know Poole set thenovel pretty straight on.
The story is obviously socompelling and important.
(01:30):
So I think they were reallyinterested in sharing this piece
under the.
You know we're in 2024, wedon't have always have access to
that type of orchestra anymorefor many reasons, and so I think
they were just reallyinterested in hearing this piece
in a more condensed setting.
And so I, you know, spent thelast few months working on a new
(01:52):
arrangement for 16 players.
So that meant and you know Iwas in touch with Joel
throughout the year figuring outwhat actually the orchestration
would be.
You know I've done this formany different pieces.
I have an opera company in NewYork which I do, called
Heartbeat, and for the past 10years I spent doing like radical
reorchestrations of classicworks for very small amount of
(02:13):
players.
So when approaching this piece,it's a little bigger ensemble
than I often worked with andit's also a more contemporary
piece.
So there's differentconsiderations that I've that
have come into play as I'veworked on it.
But when I've picked, when Ipicked the ensemble, I wanted to
try to honor Poole's color,like he really it's an amazing
piece.
It's like he runs the gamut ofstyles, sounds, really pulling
(02:38):
out as many colors from theorchestras as he can, and so I
wanted to honor that, and so Istarted with PooPoulle chamber
orchestra.
I knew that you know, we'regoing to have to have winds of
some kind and you know I decidedin this piece that we have
we're going to need a flute anda piccolo so the flutist will
switch off because there's aheat.
(02:58):
The high, the high register isreally important in this piece,
so piccolo is really reallyimportant.
Ovo also is an English hornwhich provides a really darker
color, and then instead ofusually you would have clarinet
and then bassoon.
But instead of bassoon I feltlike this piece wasn't really
that color, wasn't as importantin this piece, and so I actually
have two clarinets and so oneof them is just playing a normal
(03:22):
B flat clarinet.
The other one doubles on bass,and so for me the bass clarinet
gives a huge.
It opens a lot of color optionin the low register.
So that's for and for.
Brass horn trumpet trombonefelt it was just kind of the
classic setup because I knewthat we really needed some of
the lower color trombone wouldgive that to us, and then
strings.
(03:42):
So I in this, what I decided inthis case was, like normal
string quartet and bass.
Very important to have the bassthere, obviously, because when a
small ensemble but, becauseagain, he really pulled, really
loves the high violins togetherin really close, close proximity
, and so generally we violin,two violins, feel a cello.
(04:04):
But for me I was like, okay, Ireally need a lot of high sound
at certain moments, and so Iactually asked the violist to
double violin as well, and sothe string quintet either is
three violins cello, bass, ortwo violins viola, cello, bass.
And then the other challengewas percussion and keyboards.
(04:25):
Percussion originally was, Ithink, four or five, even
percussion, and so I did nothave the personnel for that in
this, and so I was like, what isthe minimum that I really can
use?
And so I decided two.
I would have two percussionistsand they're really going crazy,
and one of the things thatyou'll see in this is that
(04:45):
they're just jumping around frominstrument to instrument all
the time and I really ask a lotof them um, they're like often
playing two instruments at once,with one hand playing one, one
hand playing the other.
For example, chimes are animportant sound in this piece,
and so I ask, I think,percussion two to both play
chimes and timpani.
So she's like playing timpaniwith one hand and chimes with
(05:08):
the other and then has to likeswitch quickly to play bass drum
.
So it's all kinds of craziness,but percussion is such,
especially in a small ensemblelike this, percussion is like
crucial to round out the soundand make it sound like big and
everything.
And so then the remainingchallenge was the keyboards.
Originally there were three.
(05:30):
There's an organ, there's apiano and then there's a sampler
that plays not only likeelectric piano sounds and um and
vibraphone, but also sampledbowed cymbals and sampled all
kinds of crazy didgeridoo.
There's a didgeridoo sample atthe keyboard place, so I had to
(05:52):
kind of figure.
And then there's a harp.
So there are basically fourkeyboard instruments in Poole's
original orchestration that Ihad to figure out how to deal
with, and so the way that I thatfor me is the easiest is to
just put all of that into twodifferent keyboard parts.
The harp gets put in thekeyboard.
It's all like samples andsynthesizers, um, and I I felt
(06:14):
like that was appropriate, giventhe fact that pool had
originally written a samplerpart into his orchestration.
So I was just like you knowwhat, we're just going to use
his sounds that he already used.
Plus, just like we won't have aharpist, unfortunately, we'll
just put the harp in thekeyboard, but it just makes it a
lot more versatile so that thekeyboard can be doing any number
of things.
Sometimes they play like theyaugment the bass part, like
(06:37):
there's supposed to be four orfive basses playing solo at some
point and we only have one.
So the keyboard goes down andkind of augments that sound.
But that was that's how I endedup on this ensemble.
So in this workshop, to likecircle back to your original
question, which I now spent like10 minutes talking about in
this workshop- you're going tohear basically all of act one of
(06:58):
this new instrumentation, aswell as one scene from act two.
And you know, the otherchallenge that we face in
creating a small version of thispiece is dealing with the cast,
which is huge, on the chorus,which you know is non-existent
in our version.
And so this workshop, you know,in a more, if we had a little
(07:19):
more time we would have dealtwith the chorus for this
workshop, but that will have tobe for the premiere.
Like the chorus, we're kind offiguring out a few different
solutions for whether it'spre-recorded or off stage, or
using the people we have in ourensemble to fill out the sound
which in this workshop you'regoing to hear.
That, like, you'll hear thefull cast who are all soloists,
(07:40):
kind of act as the chorus inthis workshop, which is a really
it's a really important part ofthis piece.
Anyone who knows the storyknows that, like seeing the kind
of mass of handmaids is is amajor like element of this, and
so that's part of creating thiswhole new version.
Stephania Romaniuk (07:58):
So, in addition to those challenges,
obviously you have the challengeof time.
There's been two weeks and Ibelieve that you weren't even
here for the first several daysmoonlighting is my other opera.
I'm the head of an opera companyin fact, to put together even
just a single act and a littlebit of the second act, to squish
(08:20):
that into two weeks, that's ahuge, especially with even if it
is reduced forces.
What were some of the thingsthat have been unexpected in
this rehearsal process or evenin general, in the creative
process that you didn'tanticipate before it actually
started?
Dan Schlosberg (08:37):
It all comes down to how to achieve the music
that Poole wrote.
With the amount of people wehave, and I think, as we started
to look at what actually wouldbe involved with, okay, if we
were gonna, if we're gonna haveto substitute the chorus with a
recording of a chorus, thatmeans that you have to have a
full recording session whereeveryone is there singing, and
(09:00):
when there's a chorus you knowthey can't always they need to
figure out, they need to gettheir pitches somehow and they
also need to be like so there'sa chorus, they need to get their
pitches somehow.
So there's also a challenge ofwell, there's a full chorus, and
so each of them is going toneed an in-ear monitor so that,
if a keyboard is playingsomething, that they can hear
their pitches better, but thatwe don't want to end up in the
(09:23):
actual recording, and so thatwas a major challenge, and so we
ultimately were like, okay,that's not for this year.
That's going to have to happenin advance of the premiere,
whenever that occurs.
So that was one thing.
And then in this workshopyou'll hear, we did make some
recordings.
There are some moments wherethe chorus has like little solos
(09:44):
, when they're at the market andthey're ordering eggs and
whatever, and so you hear that,and we actually recorded our
individual soloists singingthose lines, and then our
amazing keyboard programmer,henry Ng, put that into the
keyboard parts.
At one point, one of thekeyboardists plays notes that
I've assigned, but instead ofhearing pitches, you hear the
(10:06):
recordings of these soloists,and so that's an element that we
wanted to try in this newversion of the piece that will
then translate to other momentsas well, but you'll hear that
here.
You'll also hear some soundeffects that we've put into the
keyboards, and when you havekeyboards at your disposal,
especially two one is difficultbecause one you are only limited
to two hands.
When you have four hands atwork and you're able to, like
(10:29):
assign different sounds todifferent registers at the same
time, like at any one point, Icould have a vibraphone playing
with the right hand and havesamples of people saying
something with the left hand,and so it really and when you
have four of that, that reallyopens up any you can really do
as many things as you want.
I love using it, because ouroptions just become so, so much
(10:50):
bigger in terms of pre-recordingsounds, vocals, recordings of
choruses and sound effects.
All of that can just happenwithin the confines of the
keyboards, and so that'ssomething that we've started to
explore in this workshop, and Iguess we're probably hoping to
do a bit more.
But again, the confines of time.
It's like we only have so muchtime to record and to rehearse
(11:12):
and our keyboard programmer onlyhas so much time to do all of
this.
So that's one thing, and Ithink the other thing is sound.
So in this particular workshopthat you will see the
particularities of the spacethat we're in, which is really
beautiful theater, we don't haveaccess to the pit this year, so
that means that the orchestrais on stage and because of the
(11:35):
sound setup, there's no room infront of the orchestra to have
the singers, so we have to putthe singers up in back, and so
that presents a whole variety ofsound challenges.
We have an amazing sound teamworking on it.
But what that means is have todeal with amplification in a way
that we did not anticipate,although this piece also has
these really extended flashbackscenes, which was another thing
(11:59):
that we were kind of.
In the next version we wouldpre-record all of those as well
and have that have projectionswork, but for this we just
didn't have time.
So for this version we havemicrophones there for the
singers and for the flashbackscenes we're actually putting a
bit of reverb on to kind ofdenote that they are separate
(12:19):
and that they're in the past.
But because of the size of theI mean the band is 16, but you
know it's full, it's brassinstruments, it's instruments
and they're playing right infront of the singers, and so we
are figuring out how best tobalance that and kind of using
some sleight of hand, soundtricks to achieve that.
Stephania Romaniuk (12:38):
There's so many things.
So many things so many thingsto keep track of.
Dan Schlosberg (12:41):
It's making an opera you know, making an opera
involves every department, soyou always need to like think
about five zillion things atonce.
Stephania Romaniuk (12:51):
And on top of that, this is a work by a
living composer.
So, because you're arrangingsomeone else's work, how much
creative freedom have you had inyour own arrangements?
Dan Schlosberg (13:01):
Great question when I've done arrangements of
classic operas in the past, likeI really take a lot of
liberties and I change the music, sometimes completely, I change
it to be almost unrecognizablein terms of the orchestration.
But in this case, like I reallyam sticking to what Poole has
(13:23):
given us on the page in terms ofcolor, because he's a brilliant
orchestrator, he's a brilliantcomposer and I would think that
my goal here is to kind ofenhance and essentialize what
he's done, rather than kind ofadd.
You know people who look atthis.
You could maybe find my ownpersonal stamp on it if you
(13:45):
tried, and it's something Iconsciously put in.
I have proclivities, like whenI choose what to assign to what
like I think that I would have.
I tend to have certain choices,like even in not taking out a
bassoon, for example, or likehaving the violas, double violin
.
That's more of my own like waythat I like to orchestrate, but
(14:06):
in general, like I think I hopethat we'll hear like a really
beautiful version of what hewrote.
That like is a little more, youknow it's having a chamber
ensemble is different.
It's like it's vivacious andmaybe more, and it has a lot of
clarity in a way that a fullorchestra is just there for a
(14:28):
different reason, and so Ireally enjoy that.
Having solo strings is reallyinteresting in this piece.
It's like a group of soloistsrather than an orchestra, and so
that affects the way that Iwrite it, but I would say that
I'm really trying to bring hismusic to life mostly.
Stephania Romaniuk (14:45):
And I've had a chance to sit in on a few of
the rehearsals, and the textureis, I personally find it, very
evocative of the world of.
The Handmaid's Tale, and so Ithink, for readers who are
familiar with the novel orpeople who have seen the TV show
, they might be familiar withthe fact that this is like a
futuristic, dystopian sort ofsociety.
(15:08):
Democracy has deteriorated intoreally religious
authoritarianism.
I don't really know where I'mfrom down south of the border
there's I mean, that's adifferent podcast, but it's we
kind of see this alternateuniverse and you really do feel
(15:31):
the sense of that unease throughthe music.
What was part of yourpreparation process for
understanding the world of theHandmaid's Tale and how you
wanted to bring it to lifethrough the orchestration?
Dan Schlosberg (15:46):
I am very familiar with the book.
I actually read it for thefirst time just a few years ago
and I can't stop thinking aboutit.
I mean, I think in the contextof what's happening today it's
just there.
It's always resonating.
The TV series I'm not asfamiliar with I've seen a few
episodes but I think once Istarted on this project I
(16:10):
consciously like did not watchall of that because I'm sure
it's amazing.
It's slightly different, Ithink.
The book it kind of goes off incertain directions.
Stephania Romaniuk (16:16):
I agree.
Dan Schlosberg (16:17):
I think that, like the sound world that Poole
has created is really strong andit really reflects the action
on stage and it's just like itkind of pulls you in all these
directions and the way that hestacks tonalities tonality is
there and that's what makes mepersonally interested in it,
(16:39):
particularly in the score.
I think if it were completelyatonal and opaque I wouldn't
feel a strong connection to it.
But it's there and I thinkthat's reflecting what you said
in terms of the like we're inthis world, but slightly off,
we're in a somewhat recognizableworld.
But it's also just bizarre andthe sounds that are created from
(17:04):
this band and the keyboards andthe synthesizers are just like
a little strange and a littleoff and a little intense and and
it's like it has this elementof ritual and there are these.
You know it's again, it's thisreligious authoritarian state
and they've co-opted the Biblefor purposes of of, like you
(17:28):
know, ceremonial rape to say, Imean, that's what's happening in
this and like taking childrenaway from women and all this
stuff.
So I think the the scorecaptures that kind of screw,
like mangled version of religionin a really interesting way the
percussion and the way that theLatin there's a lot of Latin in
this and the way that that'sset in this, like the choral,
(17:52):
the quasi-religious choral music, I tried to retain that as much
as I could and, like the gongsand the drum, the bass drum is a
really important element ofthis and the tam-tam, which is
like this big, resonant dong,and so I try to preserve all of
that and keep that in mind as Iorchestrate it.
Stephania Romaniuk (18:12):
I guess this is going to be our last
question and, as workshopperformances typically go, it's
not fully staged.
This particular one, as youmentioned, it's missing most of
Act 2 and some other sections.
What role does the audienceplay in this kind of a
performance, perhaps throughindependent learning or their
engagement as listeners or theuse of the imagination, and how
(18:36):
would you encourage listeners tomake the most of their
experience?
Dan Schlosberg (18:39):
The audience, for me, is so important, so
important.
In any piece of music.
I always say that there's thecomposer, slash, arranger, in
this case the performers whomake any audience who listens to
it, and that those threeelements without one of those,
impossible.
So for me, the audience.
I'm very curious, very, verycurious, what an audience will
(19:02):
think of this.
It's not fully staged.
It's not like we have AmandaTessini doing a gorgeous job of
shading, like the actors are all.
The singers are all standing up.
You know in the back there'sgoing to be, you know people
turn one way or the other.
They kind of simulate certainscenes and there's some
projections and there'sobviously super titles as well.
But I think the piece is verypowerful even without that and I
(19:26):
think even in this kind of bareform, just listening to the
music of it and watching andseeing the plot unfold, I think
people will be affected by it.
I'm just very curious as to how, and I'm curious how it comes
across in this setting.
I would encourage people totake it in, just let it wash
(19:47):
over.
I'm not sure how many people inthe audience will have heard
this piece before.
It hasn't been performed toomuch, I think.
Now it's getting moreperformances, and I think this
is a really wonderful time totry out a new version of it
Again, the story is just beneaththe surface for everyone.
At the moment I'm speaking formyself, listening to the music,
taking the story and seeing howthe we have a beautiful
(20:10):
opportunity to see the fullorchestra on stage and I think
it's virtuosic.
And all of theseinstrumentalists are playing
parts that were meant for eithermultiple versions of themselves
or like a whole section.
And so seeing soloists playthis music really demanding
music and seeing the singersthey've prepared it so
(20:30):
incredibly well.
They sound really amazing and Ithink seeing people do this
piece without the kind of likeyou know you're just distracted
by not distracted, but you'relike enamored with a certain
staging or like whatever justseeing the piece as is, I think,
will be very interesting.
I think it will be effective.
Stephania Romaniuk (20:50):
And so good news, bad news the performance
is sold out at the bounce center, so if you don't have your
tickets, unfortunately you willhave missed it this year.
Dan Schlosberg (21:00):
I heard that the hockey game watching a certain
team win or lose that day mayhave there might be some more
tickets, so possible that's whatI heard yesterday, but if it
unfortunately still sells on thewebsite, there will be more
opportunities to catch thispiece in the future for sure.
Stephania Romaniuk (21:19):
Do you have any hints on when that might
come up?
Dan Schlosberg (21:23):
BAM is hoping, as far as I know, is hoping to
produce it either next season orthe following, and I know
there's a lot of interest inthis from outside people that
might partner with Banff, but nodate has been set.
But I think everyone's keen todo the full Now that the
orchestra pit in the theateractually is functional.
(21:44):
I think everyone's very keen todo the full Now that the
orchestra pit in the theatreactually is functional.
I think everyone's very keen todo it quickly.
So I'm excited about that.
Stephania Romaniuk (21:49):
Well, I absolutely cannot wait to see
this performance and just wishyou all the very best and a huge
toi, toi, toi on Saturday.
Thank you so much you.
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