Opera might have a stuffy, aristocratic image, but a group of talented musicians is about to change all that. With a recent review in the Washington Post, the Portland, Ore.-based Vagabond Opera is heading to the Hudson Riverfront Performing Arts Center (HRPAC) in Weehawken on Jan. 14 to proselytize virgin ears.
With six classically trained musicians, the group is more like the punk-rock younger brother of opera than anything else. Merging Eastern European meters and traditions with the Western World, the group’s music is succinct and interesting, while maintaining musical integrity. Call it neo-classical, gypsy, folk, cabaret.
The group’s founder and lyricist, Eric Stern, has much to do with the group’s disregard for established practice. Stern’s parents owned an anarchist record store in Philadelphia called Wooden Shoe Books and Records, which is still open for business.
“I grew up wandering the aisles,” Stern said. “Having a radical sensibility and gravitating toward a fine art doesn’t seem strange to me. Opera is for everyone.”
With their third CD, Zeit Geist Beckons, the group is playing in the New York area before heading overseas.
“This album is a very cohesive story,” Stern said. “The project has sort of evolved into an overarching experience.”
The new CD tells the story of a cabarestra traveling to her native Eastern Europe and then back to the Americas.
Although the music is not in classic opera form, Vagabond’s entertaining lyrics tell vivid stories, seemingly, straight out of a New Orleans riverboat in the early 1900s.
“As much as opera has young audience programs, the voice still wasn’t getting out there,” Stern said. “So, I got some top-notch musicians, and began the adventure.”
Down at the pawn shop
After apprenticing as an opera tenor at the Delaware Valley Opera Company, Stern traded classical opera for an accordion he found in the window of a pawn shop, having “the realization of how hip and accordion can actually be.” After having his heart-broken, Stern found solace in his new instrument and never looked back.
“Opera training gave me a sense of integrity,” Stern said, and after surviving as a street musician for some time, Stern moved to Portland with his accordion in hand, and formed the Vagabond Opera.
“From leaving the opera world,” Stern said, “I wanted to distill opera. I was trained in improv theater, and you can do a Shakespeare play with a chair and a sword. I wanted to trim the fat.”
The eclectic Stern speaks four languages fluently, thanks to his formal opera training, and his “Francophile mother,” but the group can sing in anything from Yiddish to Bulgarian.
Coming home
Now, Stern is happy to be returning home to the East Coast.
“It feels really nice to be going back east with this material. The musicians that surround me are great and really wonderful; the project works because of their skill.”
Having parents of different origins, Stern said that in a post-modern America that is searching for “identity that is multi-leveled and complex, we reflect that.”
For more information on the Vagabond Opera, please visit: www.vagabondopera.com.
The Vagabond Opera will perform for free as part of the Hudson Riverfront Performing Arts Center’s UBS Atrium series on Jan. 14 at 12:30 at 1000 Harbor Blvd. in Weehawken. The center provides a free summer concert series and is raising funds to build a new performing arts center on the Weehawken waterfront. For more information on the performance, please visit: www.hrpac.org.