James Joyce's Dirty Letters: subject of my new short Opera for Bloomsday,NOLA 6/14-6/16

“Darling, Please do not be offended (by what I wrote.)”

-is the full title. This will be performed for the Bloomsday celebration in New Orleans. Bloomsday is the annual celebration of James Joyce’s groundbreaking masterpiece, Ulysses. The festival is now being handled by the collaborator in two of my previous operas (‘Bang the Law’, ee me and pollock thee’) , Chris Lane.

I have had the idea for a long time and finally the opportunity came up to stage the piece. Libretto and music by yours truly. All the text however is by Mr. James Joyce. The lyric is totally unexpurgated. Immoral restoration theater type directness for our tightening times…except of course- of and for the common people.

The opera is also to remember the great victory over victorian censorship of the book.

The piece will be at the church at the Hotel Peter and Paul in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. There will be two performance on the 14th and two on the 16th of June.

Great artists have been assembled to work on it.

Zara Zemmels- Mezzo-Soprano
Nelson Gonzalez- Joyce
Tim Robertson- Guitar
Janna Saslaw- Flutes
David Gamble- projections and design
Joan Long- Lighting/ stage design/ performance consultant

Jonathan Freilich- composer/librettist
Chris Lane- producer and set builder.

Extremely important here is our gofundme campaign to raise the money for the production. We hope that if you support arts in New Orleans, or are a theater fan, or a literature fan, or an independent/ experimental/contemporary opera buff, or prefer that your ribald times aren’t impinged upon, or support diversity in music, or the livelihood and development of the arts in general, that you will contribute. Any amount helps greatly.

The link is here…

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'I think you should go home' - for Alex Mcmurray's 50th Birthday

As some may know, my old friend, Alex Mcmurray, is turning 50. He is some impressive songwriter and musician and occasionally some of us in different ways are included in some of his bardic expositions. Recently, for my birthday he published this piece which can be found on his band camp page here…

That features a very touching piece of writing about the odd circumstances through which we met and the mighty days in the 90s, all put in better writing than I could redo here.

However, this time it is his birthday, and I put together this piece of music for him. I don’t have the store systems for selling it to you all, or setting it up for download but I put it here so you can check it out for your pleasure and edification.

It’s recorded and mixed by me, in the old home studio, and I have included the voices of a couple of his old friends, Michael Mehiel and Glenn Hartman.

Alex Mcmurray

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Conversations- Griffin & Freilich discuss Morvern Callar (2002)

Another episode of our podcast on film. This week we are discussing the Scottish film, Morvern Callar. A fascinating film that you may not have come across.

The podcast feed is available on iTunes, but best through Nolascape.org

They host and produce the show. There is a growing collection which you can find links to by scrolling down this page.

Happy March to you.

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Interview appearance on It's New Orleans radio show

The "It's New Orleans" radio show had me on to talk for their Happy Hour Show, which is a weekly live recorded show at The Wayfare restaurant on Freret. It was an entertaining hour. I even sang a song- very rare to put my voice on the air.

The talk was interesting. The other interviewees were artist and storyteller, Marie Lovejoy, musician, Andrew Duhon, and film-maker Russell Blanchard. Interesting conversation ensued.

Check out the show here...

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