Ode to Jackeen with Ensemble Sans Maître plus an opening solo set from the beauteous Florent Ghys on bass
Ode to Jackeen was premiered last year by Ensemble Sans Maitre, as an electro-acoustic chamber music work. Ode zeros in on a micro-narrative within proto-beat Kenneth Patchen’s groundbreak non-linear novel “The Journal of Albion Mooonlight” Ode draws us closer to the world of the elusive Jackeen. Jackeen’s journey begins with her transition from male to female, as the young boy Jack becomes ill and is then shot (and perhaps killed) before transforming into the coveted Jackeen, the source of Albion Moonlight’s unassailable sexual desire.
Many Interacting Worlds Theory posits that quantum activity viewed in this Universe is the product of interactions with other parallel Universes, similar to our own. Joe Bobo lives in New York City. Joe Bobo dreams and hallucinates a nebulous form, his escape from his precarious predicament elides with Jackeen’s stormy psychological environment. His daily struggles push and pull against the membrane of their worlds.
Ode inhabits the pyschological dimensions of terror, tension, sublimation and release through an electro-acoustic score, and is now being developed as a staged chamber opera, replete with video and theatrical performers – this new incarnation of Ode will feature original text, a new dimension to the piece, orated and embodied by actors Claire Moodey and Max Cramer. The juxtaposition, and superimposition of live video and theatrical staging brings Ode To Jackeen into a new stage of its development, realized as a multi-media stage drama.
