January 23rd Performance
Arts in the Heart of Augusta
Come join us at 11 am Saturday, September 19th, as we present excerpts from the (now completed!) “Job; a Postmodern Rock Opera of Biblical Proportions”. We’ll be performing new songs that no one has heard before as well as several of your favorites. Please come out and support us. We’ll be on the Family Stage on 8th Street.
Major Milestone
After four and a half years of work, we are very pleased to be able to announce that the music for the entire “Job…” opera is finished. I’m sure there will still be some tweaks and arranging done, but on the whole it is complete.
The question now is… where do we go from here? How do we get there?
We’ve come a long way. We have reached a major milestone and we are now resting at a crossroads to the future. Nobody knows what lies down whichever path we choose to take. But we know we must proceed. If we don’t, the dream we have watched come alive before our very eyes will die an obscure death; lost in the abyss of “could have beens”.
And so, after a brief respite, our journey continues. We must define the paths, decide which to pursue, and design the structures and schedules necessary to reach our NEXT milestone.
Won’t you help us? Let me know. Thanks for your support up to now. And thanks for the support I know you’ll give as we continue.
-dph
After the Westobou and Thomson, too
I guess this is why I never really started blogging. I have one nagging suspicion that says nobody will read it and another one that says if they do they’ll think it’s dumb. But the big problem is I get all these great ideas to write… while I’m driving in my jeep… and can’t write. Then, when I get time to do it, I can’t remember what I wanted to say. I should be writing this every week… or right after an event… not weeks later. Such is life.
Anyway, the Company did a fantastic performance at the Westobou Festival (NOT the Westobou ARTS Festival thank you very much, Brenda) on Friday, September 26th. The turnout was quite good and the sound, thanks to Williams Sound, was excellent. We had 17 pieces in the orchestra and 14 singers. We were very honored to be a part of the first annual Westobou Festival. I hope we can participate again next year.
On Saturday, November 1st, a somewhat smaller contingent traveled to Thomson, Georgia to perform a Dessert Theater for Thomson Presbyterian Church. They were very welcoming and appreciative and I am glad we were able to perform for them (and the dessert was delicious, also!). I was scrambling trying to figure out how we were going to get the sound needs accomplished because our regular sound crew was unable to make it. Thankfully, providentially, a very capable sound engineer in the person of Jim McGaw was there to take over and do whatever needed to be done to make it happen. Thank you, Jim.
As I watched the performance (how many times does that make?), I watched this cast of mostly amateur singers move and sing and emote like never before and I realized they were not just singing their parts… they were IN the story. Greg Hatfield was singing the part of Job as he has since we began and, being the consummate performer that he is, he has improved it a little bit each time. The interplay between Job and Job’s wife, and between Job and Elihu, seemed entirely rehearsed and natural… and yet I know they were making it up as they went because we did not even have time to practice more than just quickly going over some of the songs and yet I saw them move around and do things I had not seen them do before. They were in the story. And that, to me, is what it should be. We are not just trying to sing great songs and play great music. We are telling the most incredible story in the history of mankind. THAT, my friends, is what makes JOB special.
It has been an incredible journey thus far… and we have a long way to go. I thank everyone who has had a part in getting us here… and who has a part in carrying us on to the next step and the next level of performance. Please, help us if you can.
Thomson, Georgia – 11/01/08 – Thomson Presbyterian Church
| Who | Dessert Theater |
| When |
Saturday, November 1, 2008
7:00pm
-
All Ages
|
| Where |
Thomson Presbyterian Church (map)
Thomson, Georgia, USA
|
| Other Info | A Dessert Theater hosted by Thomson Presbyterian Church. This was inadvertently listed as a Dinner Theater. My Apologies. For tickets, call the church office at (706) 595-4652 |
Augusta, Georgia – 09/26/08 – Heritage Academy
| Who | Westobou Performance |
| When |
Friday, September 26, 2008
7:00pm
-
All Ages
|
| Where |
Heritage Academy (map)
333 Greene Street
Augusta, Georgia, USA 30901 |
| Other Info | We are pleased to present "Job: a Postmodern Opera of Biblical Proportions" as part of the historic Westobou Festival. Please come out and join us for this exciting evening of music. Admission is Free. Donations accepted. |
In the News(paper)
The Augusta Chronicle visited us last Monday night during rehearsal and did a great article about The Company of Job. They also produced a really nice interview with yours truly, which is available online at this link.
While the article overall was pretty good, I did have to take them to task for one statement. According the the article, “The opera features classic hymns such as Our Redeemer Lives, played in rock-opera style with electric guitar, drums, oboe, trumpets and flutes.” Ummm… Sorry, but we don’t do any classic hymns. All of the songs are original, and almost all of them were written by me (Don Harris) and my wife, Suzanne.
I do think the article can be credited with bringing a few people to the show who otherwise would not have known about it. We really did not want to sell many more tickets because we did not know if we’d have enough food, but I got a few phone calls on Saturday from people who wanted to come and I know we had some people buy tickets at the door. So we thank the Augusta Chronicle for that.
Elation of the Big Shoe
On Saturday night, August 16th, The Company of Job hosted a dinner theater at Trinity on the Hill United Methodist Church in Augusta, Georgia. We presented an hour-long preview of our all original opera “Job: a Postmodern Opera of Biblical Proportions”. By all reports I have received, it went incredibly well.
Simply incredible.
I try to pride myself on having the right words to say when I need to say something. The only word that comes to mind after Saturday night’s performance is “incredible”.
In*cred”i*ble\, a. [L. incredibilis: cf. OF. incredible. See In- not, and Credible.] Not credible; surpassing belief; too extraordinary and improbable to admit of belief; unlikely; marvelous; fabulous.
And that is exactly what it was… marvelous… fabulous… incredible. There are so many things that have to come together to make a performance work well. Add to that the difficulty of feeding 300 people and you have a task that is way beyond the scope of normalcy, at leaset in my world. In the midst of introductions and applause, I neglected to thank our wonderful kitchen volunteers who labored for well over a week… and especially so on Saturday night… to prepare and serve everyone who came. So, Mary and Bill Barnard and all who helped, here is my feeble thanks, for what it’s worth.
I also neglected to thank our sound crew, Bob Williams and company. Bob Williams and Mark Jones manned the board and managed to juggle the sound coming from the 16-piece orchestra with the vocals from 14 singers to produce a room full of… can I say it again?… incredible music. The vocals were clear and distinct and the orchestra was heard without being too loud. Bravo and Kudos.
I’ll post more later. I just wanted to be sure I thanked these all important people.
Live Recording of “My Man’s Got the Blues”
My Man’s Got the Blues is the cry of Job’s wife after they lost all their children as well as their livelihood.
One Act Theater
One Act Theater is a song that I wrote the lyrics to over 20 years ago (circa 1986). I was listening a lot to U2’s Joshua Tree release and, as I often do, wrote my own lyrics to several of their tunes… or actually, just used the rhythm and flow of the song to direct my words.
I tried several times unsuccessfully to get music written for the song and figured it would be like most of the other songs I’ve written that mildew in my files with nothing else ever being done with it (I have a long list of song lyrics that are there now).
Then, when putting songs together for the “Job” project, I read over the words to One Act Theater again and realized it could serve very well as a theme song. I showed Suzanne (la composer extraordinaire) how I thought the song should go and she picked up on it and wrote an amazing tune that is actually quite close to what I thought it should be.
If it works out as currently planned, One Act Theater will appear twice in the opera. The first time it will be played as a ballad with acoustic guitar accompaniment, sung by the narrator during the seven days and seven nights that Job sits in silence with his friends. The second time will be at the end as a finale, with full stage band, drums, and electric guitars, sung by the whole cast. I’m very much looking forward to hearing the full treatment!
This song did not come from the text of Job, but rather from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
“Man’s life is just a shadow, passing through
this one act theater on the stage of earth.
You live your lines – no rehearsal -
a one night stand that tests the substance of your heart”
— from One Act Theater; copyright 1986 Donald Paul Harris
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