At State of the Arts, our cameras often put us in places where we have rare opportunities to see the creative process up close.
For instance, this Saturday night, October 25, at Patriot’s Theater at the Trenton War Memorial, Oh God…Beautiful Machine premieres. It’s a 90-minute symphonic work based on a libretto by Trenton’s own Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Yusef Komunyakaa. Merging Komunyakaa’s profound poetry with composer Vince di Mura’s transportive score, the work weaves together diverse musical styles and languages in a moving tribute to Earth.
The Capital Philharmonic of New Jersey performs, joined by a choir, a jazz band, and solo singers. Sung in four different languages, it’s an epic piece that invites us to reflect on our relationship with the planet—how we nurture it, and how we fail it.
State of the Arts will be there to document Saturday’s performance. Producer Jessica Dotson has already been busy filming interviews and rehearsals with Yusef and Vince, and that has been a fascinating experience. Their close relationship shines through. Yusef was contemplative and chose his words carefully, as you would expect of a poet. Vince was effusive and full of awe over his friend’s poetry. The two met by chance in 2003 at Princeton University when Vince was the rehearsal pianist for a composition Yusef had created with another composer. Vince was overwhelmed by the power and expression of Yusef’s words—fast forward, and now Oh God…Beautiful Machine is their fourth large collaboration.
Jessica and director of photography Joe Conlon filmed Vince at the piano as Yusef listened with delight. Vince played passages from a movement called Buffalo Grass and another called Cassowary. Vince described influences from composer Gustav Mahler, Chinese music, and the Blues. According to Yusef, the Cassowary bird is a powerful symbol: enormous, earth-bound, and colorful, this beautiful Australian bird is menacing only when threatened. He asks us to consider our relationship to the planet in light of that image.
Oh God…Beautiful Machine was commissioned by Yusef and Vince’s friend, Larry Hinton, a giant force on the Trenton arts scene for decades. Larry imagined an expansive work that addressed climate change and the fragile health of our planet. Yusef told us that he had already been thinking deeply about the subject, even back as a child growing up in Louisiana, and had dealt with the theme in a previous work, Requiem. He was thrilled to take on the challenge. Sadly, Larry Hinton died four months ago, before hearing the fruits of his commission. “It’s Larry’s last grand gift to the city of Trenton,” Vince told us.
Yusef Komunyakaa at the 2004 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival
About the same time that Vince and Yusef first met, back in 2004, State of the Arts filmed Yusef reading one of his poems about Vietnam at the Dodge Poetry Festival. It’s from Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, the volume for which he won the Pulitzer. We’ll certainly use some of this footage in our feature, as well as an interview with Yusef we shot in 2008.
The October 25th premiere of Oh God…Beautiful Machine at Trenton’s War Memorial is not to be missed. We hope to see you there! Stop by and say hi to our camera crews and producers. And be sure to watch out for our feature about this remarkable performance in December.
Eric Schultz, Consulting Producer
