RINDE ECKERT is a writer, composer, librettist, musician, performer and director.
His Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America and to major theater festivals in Europe and Asia. With a virtuosic command of gesture, language and song, this total theatre artist moves beyond the boundaries of what a 'play,' a 'dance piece,' an 'opera' or 'musical' might be, in the service of grappling with complex issues. Eckert describes many of his characters as "little men with big ideas whose consequences of their hubris are often disastrous." Sometimes tragic and austere, sometimes broadly comedic, entirely grounded by presence, his work is alchemical: moving from rumination and distillation to hard-won illumination, or its lack.
Rinde Eckert began his career as a writer and performer
in the 1980’s, writing librettos for Paul Dresher (Pioneer, Power Failure, Slow Fire, Ravenshead). He composed dance scores for choreographers Sarah Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins, including the evening-length Woman, Window, Square for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.
Rinde began composing and performing his own music/theater works in 1992 with The Gardening of Thomas D, an homage to Dante which subsequently toured the United States and France. Staged works for solo performer include Becoming…Unusual: The Education of an Eclectic; three one-act plays: An Idiot Divine, Romeo Sierra Tango and Quit This House; and works for radio including Shoot the Moving Things and Four Songs Lost in a Wall. In February 2017 Rinde opened the inaugural season of Renée Fleming’s Voices Series at the Kennedy Center where he premiered his recital Rin: Tales from the Life of a Troubadour.
“...he finds vivifying parallels between the theological quest of one man and the theatrical quest to capture and illuminate life.”
Award Highlights
- Was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist in 2012
- Won a Grammy for Best Small Ensemble Performance as a collaborator on the album Lonely Motel on Cedille Records in 2011
- Was finalist for Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007
Writing credits for the theater include
Highway Ulysses, Horizon, Orpheus X, And God Created Great Whales, which has been produced three times with the original cast and director, for a total of 227 performances. And God Created Great Whales, Horizon and Orpheus X have run off-Broadway, garnering Drama Desk Nominations and the Lucille Lortel Award.
Rinde has received numerous honors and awards
for his body of work. In 2012 he was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist, was honored to receive the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award. In 2007 Rinde Eckert was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Eckert’s work has been produced
in New York by the Foundry Theatre, Culture Project, Theater for a New Audience and the New York Theatre Workshop. American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Center Stage in Baltimore, Cleveland’s Dobama Theatre Company, REDCAT in Los Angeles at the Roy& Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, and Berkeley Repertory Theater have also produced his work. Directors have included Tony Taccone, Robert Woodruff, David Schweizer, Richard ET White and Ellen McLaughlin. Rinde Eckert has directed for The Asia Society, Juggernaut Theater, Opera Piccola and the Paul Dresher Ensemble. In 2013 he directed a remounting of Eye Piece for Barnard College students, and directed the two operas Theotokia and The War Reporter by Jonathan Berger and Dan O’Brien for Stanford Live.
Writing and directing new music projects have included
I Have Stopped the Clocks for Roomful of Teeth; the critically acclaimed CD Sandhills Reunion (music by Jerry Granelli, text by Eckert); The Schick Machine a solo-theater work for percussionist Steven Schick composed/produced by Paul Dresher; Imaginary City with So Percussion; Sound Stage for the ensemble Zeitgeist; Gurs Zyklus, a new music/performance/multi-media installation and collaboration with sound sculptor Trimpin; and Steven Mackey’s oratorio Dream House. Conducted by Gil Rose with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the recording received three 2010 Grammy Nominations: Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered Album, Classical. In 2014 Rinde performed Dream House with the New York Philharmonic.
Eckert wrote the text and performed in the multi-media production Slide with composer/guitarist Mackey and the new music ensemble 8th blackbird, which toured to major university campuses and the Ojai Festival. Renamed Lonely Motel by Cedille Records, the project won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance. Eckert and Mackey are members of BIG FARM, a ‘prog-rock’ super group with drummer Jason Treuting (So Percussion) and bassist Mark Haanstra. Rinde Eckert’s own uniquely eclectic music is released on Germany’s Intuition label and through Songline/Tonefield Productions. Writer/performer Eckert and composer/performer Ned Rothenberg expanded Five Beasts into a full-evening work during a 2-week residency at Les Subsistances, the Laboratoire international de création artistique in Lyon, France in March 2015. Imagining how animals might perceive human beings, Eckert brings the conceit to life with an array of unconventional sounds and gestures. Rinde Eckert curated an 8-concert series at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust during 2016 and presented Five Beasts, Sandhills Reunion and other works. Five Beasts will tour 2017-2018. The Kronos Quartet’s production of composer Jonathan Berger’s monodrama My Lai, written for singer-actor Eckert, Vietnamese musician Vanh An Vo and the Kronos Quartet includes performances in the 2017-2018 season at the Singapore Festival, Brooklyn, major college campuses and Holland. The work debuted at Stanford University and the Harris Theater in Chicago in 2015-2016.
In February 2017 Rinde Eckert made his Kennedy Center recital debut as part of Renee Fleming’s inaugural VOICES Series.
A Beth Morrison Production, the new music-theatre work Aging Magician uses a composite of sonic and visual elements to guide a man entering his final stages of life to the fantastical world of Coney Island. Composed by Paola Prestini with libretto by Rinde Eckert, design and direction by Julian Crouch, instrument design by Mark Stewart, and projection design by S. Katy Tucker, Aging Magician combines music, theatre, puppetry, instrument making, and scenic design to create an enduring work for the stage. Performances have been at Mass MOCA, the Walker Arts Center and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois. The productions went to Arizona State University in February 2017 and ran for two weeks at New York City’s New Victory Theater in March. It will also be performed at UCLA this season.
Rinde has taught
graduate students from the English Department and School of Music at Princeton University since 2007. His extensive writing and directing residencies began at the University of Nebraska where he created Horizon; the University of California at Davis Department of Theater and Dance to write and direct Fate and Spinoza; in partnership with Hancher and the University of Iowa to create, write, direct and perform in Eye Piece, a play exploring the loss of vision which Rinde again directed for Barnard College students in March 2013; and at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts to create, write and direct theater students in The Last Days of the Old Wild Boy.
He led a 2-week teaching residency with the Departments of Theater and Dance at Towson University during spring 2015 and is currently co-teaching a course on creativity with Paul Dresher at the University of South Maine.
Rinde Eckert lives in New York with his wife Ellen McLaughlin, the playwright and actor.
Updated May 2017
Teaching Experience:
- Princeton University - Visiting Lecturer, Spring Semester 2009-2014
- Princeton University Music Dept. – Graduate Seminar
- Princeton University Atelier – with Steven Mackey
- University of California, Davis Dept. of Theater and Dance – Grenada Artist in Residence
- University of Iowa Drama School – Partnership in the Arts – Artist in Residence
- Plus, numerous workshops at Major Universities across the United States
