Rocking the world of opera: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2003/09/21 > Rocking the world of opera

Rocking the world of opera
Sunday, September 21, 2003
By Nadine O'Regan
At first glance, Jurgen Simpson is an unlikely saviour of opera.Clad in black leather trouser and a pinstripe blazer, and hirsute in a style once favoured by Jim Morrison, Simpson stomps into the demure surroundings of Dublin's Fitzwilliam Hotel.

He looks about as congruous with his environs as Liam Gallagher in an old folks' home. Opera composer? Not a chance.

He must be an avant-garde rock star or maybe a composer of edgy film scores. But wait - what about that neat-but-funky blazer? Perhaps he's a hip music lecturer, teaching kids how to become the new Dizzee Rascal or Tricky?

Simpson is all of those things. The 28-year-old Dubliner plays keyboards with achingly cool subterranean band The Jimmy Cake, lectures part-time in composition and music technology at Trinity College and has written the score for several Irish films.

Oh, and in his spare time, he has composed an award-winning opera called Thwaite, which will this week have its Irish premiere in Dublin.

Thwaite would probably never have been brought to fruition without the Genesis Opera Project, a competition aimed at fostering new talent.

Few new operas are created each year, and even fewer become successful. "We wanted to find good composers and writers with fresh ideas for new operas and give them the chance to bring their ideas to the stage,"says Genesis panelist Jonathan Reekie.

When the competition was announced in 2001, applications poured in from around the world. The judging panel whittled 210 proposals down to nine, and then - after another competitive round in which the first act of each planned work was performed on stage - to three.

These operas were announced as joint winners, all being commissioned for full production, but Simpson and librettist Simon Doyle emerged with the top prize of €14,375. It was a decision that delighted Simpson and, he remarks, astounded him.

In face of such stiff competition, the originality of the duo's vision may have been what finally swayed the judges. Reekie reflected wryly that the US submissions "were dominated by composers trying to imitate Puccini or Sondheim".

Simpson and Doyle's proposal couldn't have been more different. Thwaite tells the story of a group of refugees fleeing a catastrophe and searching in vain for a prophet to guide them.

The staged scenes have been described as audacious,the overall vision as darkly original. Pushing out boundaries has always been important to Simpson. In fact, if he had his way,the work might not be publicised as an opera at all.

"By calling it an opera,you're already throwing away so much of the audience," he says. "Call it music theatre and more people would come. Say it's a theatre piece and don't tell anyone that there'll be music there, and more people would come.

"People are put off by the length, by the amount of attention an opera needs.

"What myself and Simon tried to do was to create something that was as exciting as going to the IFC and seeing some new French film which takes your breath away. It's that kind of edginess. That kind of world."

The approach seems to have worked. When the opera was performed in London it was given a four-star review by the Guardian, a fact that Simpson reveals with quiet happiness.

The composer reads all the press about his musical enterprises, but even the good reviews don't help him to enjoy joining the audience at one of his shows. Simpson finds the whole experience so terrifying that he prefers to work backstage on the live electronics. "Otherwise I'd be a nervous wreck."

Simpson's passion for his music is strikingly evident in his conversation. Many musicians are inarticulate on the subject of their work, but Simpson is able to give great insight into the finer points of his enterprise.Words spill forth, his haste occasionally seeming to stem from nervousness, but also clearly from a desire to communicate thoughts and ideas.

At one point, he reveals, his whole opera project nearly went up in smoke. "I had done a lot of work on the opera and written about 25 minutes' worth of music by January, when my studio was broken into and my laptop stolen," he says.

"All my work was gone. I actually had to start again from the beginning of February and write the whole opera in three months."

Fortunately, he was up to the challenge. The composer had already written an opera for one voice as part of his work for his Masters in Music and Media Technologies (the same course he now teaches).

That this experience would prove so beneficial was something he would never have guessed. The way he tells it, his first brush with opera was more a result of a whim than any kind of planned career trajectory.

"Another member of The Jimmy Cake and I decided to write two operas for our masters," he says, "so that we could use opera as the medium through which we would apply our ideas in electronic music.We decided to bring the operas out and perform them at the Fringe Festival. So it was kind of a practical thing - `let's get our masters and get a show out of it'. It was a fantastic learning experience."

Simpson spent much of his early life steeped in great learning experiences. His father, Archie, worked as a piano-tuner for famous artists including U2, the Waterboys and Chris de Burgh.

Simpson recalls Enya recording her first album at his childhood home in Dublin and Roger Doyle making him presents of his latest music. Asked what his father thinks about his new opera, Simpson responds without hesitation.

"His reaction was: `I feel like a grandfather, because my son has given birth to an opera'."

Simpson's favourite composers include Stockhausen and Doyle, but he listens to "absolutely everything". He says he doesn't make qualitative distinctions about music based on individual styles or genres. Instead, he searches out any form of music that inspires him.

Thwaite runs as part of the ESB Dublin Fringe Festival in the Project, Temple Bar, on September 23/24, at 8pm. Tickets cost €10-e20. For booking, call 1850± 374643