This may be be an off year for national elections, but some of the issues that drive politics in the USA will be very much in play when Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center presents an evening of politically aware music and performance at 8:00 p.m. next Tuesday, June 11. Headlining will be Jeffrey Young and Paul Pinto (pictured), members of the experimental music group thingNY. They'll be in St. Louis as part of their 17-city "Election Tour for a Stranger America," featuring the absurdly titled work, Jeff Young and Paul Pinto, Patriots, Run for Public Office on a Platform of Swift and Righteous Immigration Reform, Lots of Jobs, and a Healthy Environment: An Opera by Paul Pinto and Jeffrey Young Created in 2011.
Described as "a parody of contemporary politics," the half-hour piece focuses on issues of immigration and national identity. Young and Pinto collaboratively created the text, music, and staging, scoring the piece for their own voices, violin, percussion, turntable, and cardboard boxes. It incorporates sung and spoken words and instrumental music, both notated and improvised, tonal and not.
Continuing the political theme will be LNAC director Mark Sarich's “In Whose Interest,” the latest in a series of "spoken narrative operas" begun in 1997. The piece includes "avant-garde electronics, free improvisation, text as music, and political narrative, pointing at inconsistencies and deficiencies in our socio-political system." The title references a quote from the roman historian Cicero, who said that those seeking the source of a social inequity should ask “Cui Bono?” ("Who benefits?").
Saxophonist Dave Stone's trio will round out the bill. Tickets are $5 at the door.
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