My Lai Album Debuts at #5 on Billboard's Traditional Classical Music Chart Week of June 4, 2022
Review of My Lai: Not Even Past: A cantata where a painting sings, and an opera featuring an instrument for bad girls
Van Magazine
By Olivia Giovetti
May 25, 2022
Vân-Ánh Võ (Illustration by Olivia Giovetti)
“Written by composer Jonathan Berger and librettist Harriet Scott Chessman for the Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, and Vân-Ánh Võ, and premiered in the same year that Shriver saw wearing a sombrero as protest, ‘Mỹ Lai’ is an example of a work written by two white Americans who are able to challenge the status quo from within. There is no ‘Miss Saigon’ orientalism lurking underneath the guise of a love story; no Wagnerian glory-cum-terror (even as an ironic commentary on the military industrial complex) of ‘Apocalypse Now.’”
Review: San Diego Opera stages West Coast premiere of 'Aging Magician'
KPBS
By Beth Accomando / Arts & Culture Reporter
Contributors: Roland Lizarondo
May 11, 2022
Jill Steinberg
“San Diego Opera had Aging Magician on its schedule in March of 2020, but had to cancel the production because of COVID-19. Now it presents the West Coast premiere of this hybrid opera-theatre piece that combines singing, choral work, puppetry, and performance art.
“Aging Magician tells the story of a clockmaker named Harold (Rinde Eckert) who’s approaching the end of his life and decides to distracts himself by writing a story.
“‘He's not quite sure what it is, but he's writing a story about a magician passing on his secrets to the next generation,’ explained director Julian Crouch.”
Broadway World Review: San Diego Opera's Production of ‘AGING MAGICIAN’ at The Balboa Theatre Shows Off Magical Mystery
Broadway World
By Ron Bierman
May. 20, 2022
“‘What the hell was that?’ an opera fan asked her friend as we shuffled into a parking-garage elevator. Not an easily answered question after a viewing of Aging Magician. Ambiguity abounds and reality is mixed with fantasy. The reality side is clear, mostly.
“Harold is a middle-aged watch repairman who lives alone. Although repairs pay the rent, they've been neglected because he can't stop thinking about the plot of a book he's been writing in which an aging magician worries his marvelous tricks won't outlive him. As he seeks a capable heir for his book of secrets, he collapses and is rushed to a hospital.
“Should he live or die? Harold can't decide.”
Review: Steven Mackey & Rinde Eckert Complete ‘Moon Tea’ for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
GRAMMY-winning composer Steven Mackey and Obie Award-winning librettist Rinde Eckert have completed a new opera for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
The work was written in less than two months and will be entitled “Moon Tea.”
The work tells the story of the historic moment when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, invited the Apollo 11 astronauts to Buckingham Palace for tea, fresh from their triumphant moon landing in 1969.
Reviews: ‘Breathing at the Boundaries,’ a glimmer of hope for our future
Review: ‘Breathing at the Boundaries’ responds to the pandemic era — and transcends it
San Francisco Chronicle
By Rachel Howard
December 30, 2020
During the pandemic, we have seen no shortage of socially distanced dance on screen, some of it intimate and slapdash, some of it panoramic and refined — and all of it, for its sheer collective persistence, heartening. But the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s “Breathing at the Boundaries” is the first dance work this year I’ve encountered that both responds to this moment and transcends it.
Review: Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s “Breathing at the Boundaries” is Brilliant!
LA Dance Chronicle
By Jeff Slayton
December 31, 2020
On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company (MJDC) premiered an extraordinary dance, music, spoken word and visual art film titled Breathing at the Boundaries, choreographed by Artistic Director Margaret Jenkins in collaboration with the MJDC dancers. It is a brilliant example of several incredibly talented artists from four countries uniting to overcome extreme challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic to produce a work that exceeds one’s expectations. This is the best pandemic era dance or art film that I have seen thus far, addressing our current situation while going far beyond its limitations.
“You must watch this. It is mesmerizing, beautiful, emotional, mysterious and so powerful. Margaret Jenkins and her brilliant collaborators - dancers, composers and video artist - have created a masterpiece for our time. And it will stand the test of time.”
“If you’re looking for a way to BREATHE into the new year....this is a gorgeous gift from Paul Dresher Ensemble, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Rinde Eckert, and the mind-blowing vision, images, projections, and cinematography of Alex V. Nichols. Watching this felt to me as close to a THEATRICAL experience as I’ve had in these crazy covid-adapting times. It felt like they discovered a new art form altogether.”
“This mesmerizing work is a powerful testament to what artists do - no matter the challenges. Once again, I am gratefully reminded that we are human, we are connected, we falter, we catch one another, we breathe through and beyond.”
“Breathing is absolutely a mature work—that is, full of wonderfully-crafted moments and meticulous attention to form, rather than flashy effects. I jumped up off the couch and shouted at the ending, and I actually had tears in my eyes. That’s not something that happens every day. Or even every year. ”
Emerson College: MEET THE NEW FACULTY: SCHOOL OF THE ARTS
September 5, 2018
The School of the Arts welcomes eight new faculty members, and has promoted three to assistant professor. And at the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, an affiliated faculty member becomes a scholar-in-residence.
Rinde Eckert, visiting faculty, Waldman Professor in Theatre Arts
Will teach: devised theatre
Eckert is an award-winning interdisciplinary performer, writer, and director. In 2012, he was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist, and won a Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance as a collaborator on the album Lonely Motel (Cedille Records). In 2009, he received the Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre, and was a Finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007.
In Fall 2018, Eckert will teach a course at Emerson in devised theatre, in which students will collaboratively devise an original ensemble performance that will be produced during Emerson Stage’s Spring 2019 season. He has previously taught at Princeton University, the University of California, Davis; and the University of Iowa.
ECT: What do you most look forward to teaching students?
RE: I enjoy the variety of talents and sensibilities students bring into the room. I was able to teach a class last spring in order to get to know what Emerson students are like. I found them warm, intelligent, and engaged. So I’m excited to begin this journey with them…
RootsWorld's Music of the Month for September 2018
My September 2018 pick for Music of the Month is The Natural World by American composer, singer and musician Rinde Eckert. While for years he has been known for his ensemble work with some of the best musicians in the country, this album finds him in his own company, playing all the instruments, including guitars, ukulele, piano, accordion, South American wood flute, and percussion. But at the root of it all is his voice, and instrument of infinite variety and range. As he said in his interview in RootsWorld, “It does put us in a different kind of space... a wonderfully genderless space that frees us from all the attitudes that one can bring to the situation. I tend to use it when I want to jump us out of our expectations and into a liminal world.”
Exploring the Natural World A conversation with Grammy-winning composer and playwright Rinde Eckert
Rock and Roll Globe
September 7, 2018
Rinde Eckert has been a vital part of New York City’s performance art community since the mid-‘80s. He’s a Grammy-winning composer, musician, songwriter, performer, writer and director. He has written operas, plays, librettos for composer Paul Dresher, dance scores for Margaret Jenkins and performed several one-man shows. He’s been recording his original music, with the help of various collaborators since the late ‘80s, but he’s never made a solo album until earlier this year, when he cut The Natural World with producer Lee Townsend. Eckert spoke about his musical path from his New York City apartment.
Do you remember the first music that inspired you and made you want to become a performer?
My parents were both opera singers, so I was listening to music really early. I was going to operas when I was five and performed in my first opera when I was seven. I had a good voice, so I was a ringer, when they needed a kid to stand up and sing something. I learned music to understand the world my parents were in. I did study music, but I’ve been playing and singing since I was five, in one-way or another. I did have a rough patch, when I wasn’t singing very well, but after three months went by, my voice came back. I’ve continued on ever since.