Santa Fe Opera to make stop in Hub City for Spring Tour
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If the Lego sculpture exhibit wasn’t enough, Texas Tech has provided another reason for students to make it to the Lubbock Arts Alliance Festival this weekend with this semester’s final installment of the Presidential Lecture and Performance Series.
Two singers and a pianist from the Santa Fe Opera Spring Tour will perform at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center.
“The mission of the series is to broaden the cultural and intellectual landscape of the area,” said Jo Moore, the administrator of the series.
Lubbock has been a stop on the Spring Tour for six years, Moore said, and Santa Fe Opera has developed a fan base here. Moore said she expects a mix of Lubbock residents and Tech students and faculty.
Pianist and music director Kirt Pavitt said he was excited to return to Lubbock, which he called a very supportive, friendly city. he knew there were plenty of opera fans in the town to make for a good crowd.
“It’s for anyone who likes good singing and music,” Moore said.
Singing and music sum up both the event as an opera and the and the show’s plot.
Acushla Bastible, stage director and co-writer of the show, aptly named “Words and Music,” said the plot is based on the relationship between the two in an opera.
“It’s a love story between words and music embodied in two characters,” Bastible said.
Soprano Jamie-Rose Guarrine and baritone Sean Anderson play the main parts, Melody and Webster.
“They’re lovely,” Bastible said, “I’ve been lucky to work with them. Once they identified with the characters they were coming up with good suggestions.”
Bastible said she thinks the performers are especially good at adapting to the audiences for which they have performed, from elementary students to adult-only crowds. the tour began in El Paso, Bastible said, and travels across new Mexico and North Texas.
“Once the singers are in front of an audience, there are instinctive changes,” Bastible said. “Each performance is different.”
Bastible said audiences have been very enthusiastic. If that seems strange since many are younger than 15, it might have something to do with the addition of excerpts from a Taylor Swift song and other well-known tunes.
“We have contemporary cultural references,” Bastible said. “We created the show with a young audience in mind.”
Pavitt compiled all of the music for the show.
“I would say we need a song that says this, and he’d come up with one,” Bastible said. “He’s an encyclopedia of music.”
The music is comprised of excerpts from famous operas and what Pavitt called “standard Broadway stuff.”
“The show is new,” Pavitt said, “but the music isn’t.”
He said he thought college students might view the play differently than other age groups, but would enjoy it just as much.
“Our goal (in creating this show) was to introduce people to well known arias and music that are beautiful,” Bastible said. “We wanted to put them out there for people to enjoy and experience.”
The performance will be hosted in the Civic Center Auditorium and is free and open to the public.
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Santa Fe Opera to make stop in Hub City for Spring Tour
Tags: Spring Tour Santa Fe Opera, words and music, Melody, stage director and co-writer, fan base