Rinde Eckert began making work in 1980...
with The New Performance Group (Seattle), an ensemble of musicians, interested in exploring the border of music and theater. For over twenty-five years he has been writing, composing, performing and directing his own work. The work varies widely in character from opera to chamber music, plays, dance and performance art.
Featured Projects
Breathing at the Boundaries
“‘Breathing at the Boundaries’ responds to the pandemic era — and transcends it.”
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 Rinde Eckert and MJDC dancers.
Breathing at the Boundaries – with the MJDC dancers isolated and in touch, present and remote – is a response to this fragile moment in time. Music is filling the air, words fly up and out along with limbs and hands, movement is everywhere. Together we are sharing the moment, if not the room. All breathing at the boundaries, even if not always together.
Live music by Paul Dresher and Joel Davel, image-construct and visuals by Alexander V. Nichols, words by Rinde Eckert (appearing live) and Michael Palmer, movement by the MJDC dancer/collaborators. All breathing at the boundaries, even if not always together.
Click here for Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s Breathing at the Boundaries webpage.
”Breathing at the Boundaries” is available on-demand from December 30, 2020 through January 6, 2021.
“The piece is about breath and the lack of it, but more importantly, it breathes powerfully as a work of art and as a glimmer of hope for our future.”
AGING MAGICIAN
“…an enigmatic detente….potent, soulful.”
AGING MAGICIAN is an epic new opera-theater work that tells the story of Harold, an aging clockmaker near the end of his unusual life. A string quartet and Brooklyn Youth Chorus help Harold uncover his legacy as the stage is transformed into a living, breathing instrument.
Co-created by composer PAOLA PRESTINI, writer and performer RINDE ECKERT, director and designer JULIAN CROUCH, instrument designer MARK STEWART, co-scenic design by AMY C. RUBIN and video and lighting design by JOSH HIGGASON. Written for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus conducted by DIANNE BERKUN-MENAKER and American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). Residency & development support from Mass MoCA, The Park Avenue Armory, PROTOTYPE, and The Watermill Center’s Artist Residency Program.
Click here for Paola Prestini's Aging Magician Project Webpage.
“The Aging Magician is grandly, even venerably, operatic…[from the composer] who wrote the acclaimed Oceanic Verses.”
“Aging Magician is brilliant.”
Promo video from Five Beasts premiere at Les Subsistances in March 2015.
Film by Mark DeChiazza.
Rinde Eckert and Ned Rothenberg with Adam Matta
Composed by Ned Rothenberg and Rinde Eckert
Music direction by Ned Rothenberg
Directed by Rinde Eckert and Mark DeChiazza
Production design by Mark DeChiazza
Costume design by Christina Bullard
Five Beasts
Rinde Eckert and the composer-performer Ned Rothenberg, both honored veterans of the avant-garde, team up to create a piece that imagines how animals might perceive human beings, an illusion brought to life with an array of unconventional sounds and gestures. Collaborating with beatbox artist Adam Matta, and designer/co-director Mark DeChiazza, the team took the project to Lyon, France in March 2015 to workshop and perform the work, now a full length piece.
Sandhills Reunion
An album released November 1, 2004, Sandhills Reunion includes music by Jerry Granelli and text written and performed by Rinde Eckert. It is a multi-layered interweaving of words and music that Granelli calls an audio movie or play. The video featured at right was shot by Mark DeChiazza and Mark Andrews during a three day excursion to Nebraska. The text by Eckert is a glancingly linked sequence of reflections, imaginings, internal monologues and one historically accurate dialogue (“Twenty Questions for an Outlaw”) using the persona of Billy the Kid as a thematic touchstone and the Sandhills region of northwestern Nebraska as the landscape of memory and desire.
““...Granelli and the band really shine behind Eckert’s words, leaving perfect space for story…[but] Eckert really steals the show…His stories are some of the most vivid and amazing tales put to record recently.”
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