Composer, performer and director Rinde Eckert will take center stage at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) Friday night. Eckert’s one-night show marks the return of CCRMA Cabaret 2.0, a series put on by CCRMA and Stanford Lively Arts.
In its second year, CCRMA Cabaret places boundary-defying performers hired by Lively Arts on the CCRMA stage for smaller solo sets. For the events in winter and spring quarter, students will work with the artists on the technical side of the production.
“The initial idea was that artists who were performing with larger acts for Lively Arts, who had an interest in electronic or experimental music, would be able to come up to CCRMA for one night for a more intimate gathering with students, and make their music up here,” said CCRMA technical coordinator Sasha Leitman, one of the event organizers.
With a long history of one-man shows, Eckert was a logical first choice of performer, according to Leitman. Eckert, who received The Alpert Award in the Arts in 2009, started off as a composer in the 1980s before branching out into more experimental theater. In his career, he has composed dance scores, staged solo acts and had his work produced by the New York Theatre Workshop, American Repertory Theatre and The Foundry Theatre and Culture Project in New York.
Eckert is involved with two other projects on campus this year: he will perform in composer Steve Mackey’s “SLIDE” with the Grammy Award-winning eighth blackbird (March 5) and direct sound-sculptor Gerhard Trimpin’s “The Gurs Zyklus,” a performance piece based on the Nazi-era internment camp (May 14).
Friday’s show will include elements from previous works, “Highway Ulysses” and “And God Created Great Whales,” based off of the book “Moby Dick.” In addition, the audience can expect pieces from his in-progress solo work, “An Idiot Divine.”
“It’s a one-man show that mixes theater and music,” Leitman said. “Guitars, some piano, small percussion, flutes, accordion – and he’ll play all of them.”
During winter quarter, students may sign up to take MUSIC 250B, where they will participate in the sound and control design of two 40-foot teeter-totters with rolling wheel speakers to be used in the CCRMA Cabaret series.
Eckert performs tonight at 8 p.m. on the CCRMA stage. Admission is free.