What do you get when you cross a classical art song recital with a rock song? Something approaching the upcoming Guns N' Rosenkavalier, the art song/rock song mash-up coming to the Mill City Museum for an outdoor concert on July 21 and 23.
The rock recital features opera singer Andrew Wilkowske — a Wilmar native who returns to Minnesota after last performing with Mill City Summer Opera as Pagliacci in 2012 — and the all-female french horn group Genghis Barbie.
When he was growing up, Wilkowske sang in a choir and took piano lessons, but then he started playing guitar, learning how to play songs from the likes of Van Halen, Guns N' Roses, and Kiss. That's how he became really interested in performing music. Today, when he's singing opera, "I'm channeling my inner rock singer," he said.
When he met composer John Glover while they were both apprentices at Glimmer Glass Opera, the two came up with the idea to find the connections between art songs and rock songs, with the notion that perhaps the two forms aren't as different as you might first believe. With a repertoire ranging from Kate Bush to Strauss, from Brahms to the Boss, the show celebrates words and music coming together, no matter the style.
In performance, Wilkowske performs all of the songs with his opera singing voice, but he's also playing his electric guitar, and he's been amazed at how well the two disparate types of music go together.
For composer John Glover, the inspiration for the project came out of a desire to find the intersection that exists between pop and rock and roll music with what a lot of people pigeon hole into "serious" music. "For us, a great song is a great song," Glover said, and often times great pop or rock songs have integrity in their vocal lines, in their arrangements, and include "the great alchemy when great music and great words come together."
In some cases, Glover's arrangements are about finding musical connections between classical songs and rock songs, like discovering an almost identical chord progression in both Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" and a Schubert composition. "You can pretty much take Schubert's opening chords on the piano and layer Barkley's chords on top of it. It just lines up," Glover said. "It's about finding those remarkable connections and making slight adjustments."
At other times, Glover's arrangements essentially juxtapose and recontextualize familiar songs. For example, with R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming," Glover made the realization that it's actually a chaconne, popular during the Baroque period, which uses the exact same chord progression and repeats it throughout the song with different melodic variations. Unlike most pop songs, which alternate between verse and chorus, "Nightswimming" follows the chaconne structure. So Glover arranged it in a Baroque style, revealing a musical structure others may have taken for granted.
Joining Wilkowske on stage are Genghis Barbie, a french horn group from New York made up of female musicians who are all accomplished classical musicians outside of the group. According to Glover, Genghis Barbie formed as a result of the musicians desiring a creative outlet outside of their freelance work with various orchestras, in addition to wanting to create female role models. In their work, they also use their classically trained chops to offer innovative arrangements to modern popular music.
Previously, Guns N' Rosenkavalier performed for sold-out crowds at Glimmerglass Opera and Milwaukee Opera Theatre. For their Mill City concert, presented by Mill City Summer Opera, they will perform in the Ruin Courtyard on July 21 and 23 at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $25-50 and are available on the Mill City Summer Opera website, by calling 612-341-7582, or in person at the Mill City Museum ticket office.
Sheila Regan is a Minneapolis-based writer. She writes frequently for the Twin Cities Daily Planet and City Pages, among other publications.
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