KILL THE WHALE Concert Will Be Performed at Chelsea Table + Stage This Month

Kill The Whale: A Musical Odyssey, a rock opera based loosely on Moby-Dick by 2X Jonathan Larson finalist composer Daniel H Emond, will be presented in a concert of selections from the score on Monday October 16th at 9:30 at Chelsea Table + Stage starring much of the project’s developmental cast. The concert will be the first public performance of the nearly project, a decade in the making, in nearly two years, and is the first of a series of live concerts leading up to a release of the show's concept album in 2024.

Called dynamic and intriguing by national book award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick, Kill The Whale radically adapts the American classic with intense gender blurring, highlighting queer romance, and centering voices of color. When Ishmael, a young rocker with an unknown past falls in love with the hiphop harpooner Q, they join Peek-Wow, the Whaleship/Orchestra led by steel-eyed frontwoman Ahab, who sets her crew upon a course to kill the gigantic sperm whale that maimed her, a plan opposed by Ahab's first mate (and secret admirer), the devout and soulful Starbuck. Contending with face-melting squalls and mad mates, the hymnic wonder of whales nursing in the heart of the Ocean, and the poignant Gospel of the castaway cabin kid Pip, Peek-Wow embarks on a rock and roll quest for vengeance. Kill The Whale is memory manifested as a 1970's folk/hiphop/rock opera.

Kill The Whale: Selections will feature the following talent:

Grace McLean (Bad Cinderella) as Captain Ahab.

Jessie Shelton (Hadestown) as Stubb.

Ronald Peet (Jeremy O. Harris’s “Daddy”) as the hiphop harpooner Q

Courtney Bassett (Titanique) as first mate Starbuck

Jana Djenne Jackson (Almost Famous) as Pip

Camellia Hartman (Skullcrusher) as Flask

Rick Martinez (Warp Trio) on drums

Yair Evnine (Waitress) on cello 

David Kawamura (Tituss Burgess) on guitar

Daniel Emond on piano

Jamie Mohamdein (The Wildness) on bass

Andrew Griffin (Lempicka) on viola