Assembly Opera Prep

I met this morning with Stephen Taylor, the local musician from Trike, who recently relocated from B.C. and is writing an 8-piece rock opera in his free time.

We had breakfast at a diner near Lionel-Groulx, which is an area I really need to visit more frequently. I lost my wallet last week during a blissful jaunt to the Laurentiens, so suddenly $2.50 breakfast specials are all the more appealing.

Back at his place, Stephen played me the piece from his rock opera that we gave to Assembly screenwriters, who used the song as the inspiration for their short film scripts. Each script uses a few elements from the opera and it’s neat to see the different ways people have chosen to adapt the story to create something new with it.

It was also great to hear how Stephen originally intended his piece to be performed. The song is a sort of campy, oompa-pa, casio-beat, lounge rock style saga of a character named George Trike.

We recently confirmed with local opera group, Liederwolfe, who’ll be performing the song live with Stephen at the Assembly Screening. Having seen Liederwolfe play a few weeks ago at Le Depanneur on Bernard, I’m incredibly excited to see how this all comes together. Liederwolfe sings classical opera and opera versions of untraditional songs in informal bar settings. It’s pretty powerful to watch. Seeing singers with such control and confidence gives the whole experience a sort of theatrical feel that moves it beyond just another pub band show.

Stephen and I are breakfasting again this week to score his song and get it ready to give to Liederwolfe. We’ll be meeting with Liederwolfe hopefully early next week to practice the parts and figure out some stage directions to make it jazzy.

So many parts of this sprawling project are coming together in interesting ways to make for a crazy fun show on the 10th. Sorta like the crazy connections between participants and Montreal artists in general that come together at weirdly wonderful moments to make me feel like it’s lovely to live here, in Montreal, where people introduce themselves to you and ask, “Do you have a job?” rather than “What do you do?” like in the rest of the world.