KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

After the grand opening celebrations and concerts, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts continues to stage local projects in full speed. The Friends of Chamber Music is getting ready to present a formidable production that has been in the works for over a year, The Darwin Project. The Helzberg Hall at KCPA will host this ambitious presentation of multimedia on Friday, October 14.

The Darwin Project is a collaborative work that required the involvement of about forty specialists during its development. The result is a large production that fuses presentational theater and chamber music together, highlighted by advanced technologies of sound and lighting.

The project is conceived by playwright and marketing/public relations director of The Friends, Jeremy Lillig, after the success of The Galileo Project by Tafelmusik which The Friends of Chamber Music presented during their 2009–10 season. Inspired by the idea of creating a collaborative work that brings science and arts together, Lillig took on the mission of applying the principal idea into another giant in history, Charles Darwin, and producing a work that is much larger in scale.

Lillig partnered with Nancy Cervetti who specializes in 19^th-century British Literature in writing the script for the play. The writers enlisted two biologists, Bill Ashworth, Associate Professor at the UMKC and consultant for the History of Science at the Linda Hall Library, and Robert Powell who teaches at Avila University, as script advisors.

Collaborators went thorough an extensive research process in order to create a historically accurate story that brings the art and music scene of the period into perspective for the viewer. With the support of the distinguished Linda Hall Library that holds first editions of Charles Darwin's works, and participation of artists and scientists, The Darwin Project came to life.

The project is not another telling of Darwin's life story per se, but rather the story behind his seminal work, The Origin of Species: how the work came into being, what happened historically leading up to it, how he didn’t publish the book for twenty years after he returned from his famous voyage, what he was doing during that time, and some personal incidents that happened to him.

While doing so,The Friends takes a novel approach in presentation and subtly connects the biographical story with music history and literature. The show looks deeply into what music tied into Darwin's life—what influenced Darwin in arts and music, and how it shaped his life.

To give a few examples of obscure facts about Darwin is that his wife studied with Chopin, so he was exposed to piano, composer Vaughn Williams was his great-nephew, and he frequently visited the chapel at King's College during his daily nature walks where he could listen to the choir.

All the musical selections are from the time period, although the closing piece by Vaughan Williams, “Wedding Chorus” from In Windsor Forest that is originally for chorus and orchestra, was rearranged for chorus and string quartet for this production by local composer, Lee Hartman.(Full disclosure: Hartman is also editor-in-chief of KCMetropolis.org)

The team looked through biographies and picked references and mentions of music and musical events. Lillig remarks, "The program is a simple chronology of Romanticism that covers a thousand years of music. The musical selection will bring a new approach to how the music is heard by placing it in a historically relevant context."

The program features the celebrated Daedalus Quartet and pianist Alon Goldstein accompanied by a 16-person choir and incorporates equal parts of music, fully-costumed theater, and literature, which creates, as Lillig describes, "a trisect of stimuli." The production is supported by additional sound design, elaborate lighting, visual projection of historical images and original nature photography by John Hess who brought over ten thousand photos to the table in the beginning of the project.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts is co-presenting The Darwin Project with The Friends of Chamber Music. It will be a showcase of all the technical capabilities of the Helzberg Hall. Lillig commented, "It is remarkable how the little dog [The Friends] was able to create something of this scale." Evolution seems to be a common theme for all aspects of this project.

The Darwin Project is not only a tribute to the mastermind of evolution theory but also a documentation of musical evolution through history while the capabilities of the Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts will demonstrate the evolution of technology in multimedia presentation. 

PREVIEW:
The Friends of Chamber Music and Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
The Darwin Project
Friday, October 14, 2011
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Helzberg Hall
1601 Broadway, Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-561-9999 or online at http://www.chambermusic.org 

By Nihan Yesil

Classical, New Classical, Jazz, Theatre Contributor
Nihan Yesil is a composer/performance artist and currently a candidate of M.M.Composition at the UMKC Conservatory. She composes both acoustic and electroacoustic music and has a strong interest in experimenting with the perception of sound and language.

Nihan started studying classical music with her father, M. Emin Yesil, at an early age and earned a bachelor's degree in Jazz Composition in Istanbul, Turkey, studying with Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris, Ali Perret, and Aydin Esen. She participated in festivals and artist residencies inclduing the Henry Mancini Institute, Czech-American Summer Music Institute, Brevard Music Festival, Electronic Music Midwest Festival, Women in New Music, Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, Escape to Create Artist-in-Residence Program and I-Park Artists' Enclave Residency where she also served as a selection committee member for the composition program. Her compositions have been performed at number of venues both in Turkey and the U.S.

Her favorite activity is experiencing or witnessing any form of artistic creativity. Nihan is a big fan of the Internet and keeps several blogs where she presents her unsolicited opinion on different subject matters.