American Opera Projects Hosts The Music Of Gregory Spears With PAUL'S CASE 5/29

Over the past few years the music of composer Gregory Spears has become more prevalent around the new music and dance circuits. The Romantic and minimalist styles that define the Spears sound has hit critical mass this season with music by the young composer featured at Zankel Hall (American Composers Orchestra), Le Poisson Rouge (MATA Festival), Dance Theatre Workshop, and American Opera Projects (AOP); the latter will present a concert preview of Mr. Spears's upcoming first opera Paul's Case, based on a story by American literary icon Willa Cather.

Paul's Case performs on Friday, May 29 and Saturday, May 30, 8pm at South Oxford Space, 138 South Oxford Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and Sunday, May 31, 7pm in Princeton, NJ. A panel discussion and post-show reception with the composers and the cast will take place after each performance. Singers slated to perform include Marcus DeLoach (New York City Opera) and Chad Johnson (BAM, Glimmerglass Opera) under the musical direction of Jennifer Peterson. Earlier in the month, Mr. Spears's music will also featured at Dance Theatre Workshop in The Golden Legend, choreographed by Christopher Williams, from May 12-16. On May 14-17, Lincoln Center presents Mark Morris Dance Group and the Orchestra of St. Luke's performing Romeo and Juliet on Motifs of Shakespeare featuring new orchestrations by Gregory Spears, in consultation with Simon Morrison.

Paul's Case chronicles the dissolution of a high school dandy living in sooty turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. Equal parts angry teenager, anti-capitalist, decadent aesthete and cold realist, Paul is also an American symbol of passive dissent in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, and Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Spears began development on Paul's Case during his 2007-08 tenure with five other composers in the AOP series Composers & the Voice, where Steve Koenig (acousticlevitation.org) praised Spears's "clever" use of "the device of repeated phrases and variants to second the ironies and conflicts within and between the characters. Most excellent, perhaps the best of the six."

Based on Willa Cather's story of the same name with a libretto by the composer in collaboration with Kathryn Walat, Paul's Case represents the first opera composition from Mr. Spears whose music has been called "dreamy" (The New York Times) and "remarkable" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Tickets to Paul's Case are $15 and may be reserved by calling 718-398-4024 or by visiting www.operaprojects.org.