Composer Revels in Blurring Boundaries

"The Nitrate Hymnal" may have been Massey's first foray into opera, but he has long experimented with merged musical forms, something the Post review of the Alexandria performances noted: "Despite Massey's pedigree as a post-punk guitarist, much of 'Hymnal' hearkens back to 17th-century opera, with lithe, chantlike vocal lines written as nearly continuous recitative, and a chamber orchestra (acoustic strings, electric guitars, keyboards and drums) playing a gently supportive role. . . . That's not to say Massey . . . doesn't raid a few genres -- post-punk rubs shoulders with post-Sondheim; progressive jazz melds with fusion; and brief visits are paid by Shostakovich, Piazzolla and Glenn Branca -- but the musical stew is very much his own."

All four performances in Alexandria sold out, but the show, which featured a battery of projectors and complex audiovisual technology, was too big and expensive to mount on the road, the market for experimental opera not being a huge one to begin with. (Even now, Meet the Composer's Creative Connections is funding the Warehouse concert.) Fortunately, there would be after-life permanence on CD, absent the visuals. And recording "The Nitrate Hymnal" allowed for reconsiderations in a work that may always be in progress.

"The original music was a 70-minute through-composed score with no breaks," Massey says. "We decided it made more sense to reformulate the music in song structure because we were aiming at an underground rock community more than a new music or classical music community. So we decided: Let's cut the best moments up and make songs out of them, and I think that's worked out pretty well so far. They're not quite songs, and it's not quite an opera."

Anti-Social Music re-orchestrated the songs and went into the studio with the Gena Rowlands Band, whose other key members are viola/violinist Jean Cook and keyboardist David Durst. With ASM, "it's like having a small orchestra," Massey says. Keeping the Post connection alive, singer-songwriter Andy Zipf, himself a Post copy aide until recently, performed vocals on two of the album's 10 tracks.

The record, funded by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording Program, reflects changes necessitated in moving from one medium to another. "It's more like an improvement on the themes, fleshed out better, made more concise, given more dynamic life," Massey says. "The songs are more upbeat. We sort of reworked the tempos and, I think, made it stronger because we had time to think about it instead of throwing it on stage and running with it."

"The Nitrate Hymnal" has produced other ventures as well: ASM started a commissioning program called ASM Sleeps Around, pairing the group with non-classical artists from various genres; one commission is with experimental composer/producer Warn Defever (His Name Is Alive), who mixed "The Nitrate Hymnal" album.

As for Massey, now recording a Gena Rowlands Band album, he had a 2003 residency at Florida's Atlantic Center for the Arts with New York City Opera composer-in-residence Mark Adamo (a former Post classical critic) and was a 2004 fellow at the Bang on a Can summer institute in Massachusetts. And last year, Massey composed the music for "A Memory Lasts Forever," a video operetta performed in Berkeley, Calif., with visual artist Althea Thauberger, in which a drowned dog in a backyard pool becomes a catalyst for bikini-clad teenage girls to come to terms with their mortality.

Massey laughs at the suggestion that all of this makes him a "serious composer."

"The lines between what used to be called 'serious' music and what used to be called 'popular' music are increasingly blurred in this age of iPods and a million cable channels. Those days are more or less gone."

On Sunday, there will be a "Composers Brunch" at a private home in Adams Morgan. Massey and orchestrators David Durst, Andrea La Rose and Pat Muchmore will talk about arranging the original opera into stand-alone songs for "The Nitrate Hymnal" album, followed by an informal discussion and performances of pieces by La Rose, Muchmore and Massey. For more information, e-mailjean@nitratehymnal.net.

Anti-Social Music and the Gena Rowlands Band play pieces from "The Nitrate Hymnal" Appearing Saturday at the Warehouse Theater. Sounds like a post-punk opera should.