RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
Rich@DallasVoice.com
Kevin Moriarty is known throughout North Texas for being affiliated with the Dallas Theater Center, first as its artistic director and now its executive director. Lately though, he’s made a return to his original roots, and that isn’t his usual theatrical production.
He’s collaborating with the Verdigris Ensemble for the upcoming concert, A Western. The project marks an intersection of classical choral music, immersive design and theatrical staging — a combination that perfectly leverages Moriarty’s passions for both art forms.
“Verdigris is one of the most innovative, unique arts organizations in all of North Texas,” Moriarty said. “There’s not really other choral groups in the country who are doing what they’re doing — the mixture of design and immersive work with very, very rigorous, contemporary, classical choral music.
“That combination is unbelievably rare.”
Verdigris’ next performance, A Western, pays homage to cowboy culture with inspiration derived from an iconic western film.
From Verdigris:
In Michael Gordon’s A Western, inspired directly by the film High Noon, Verdigris Ensemble presents the West as a kaleidoscopic dream: familiar figures multiplied, reflected and distorted through sound and movement. Gary Cooper’s lone sheriff doesn’t appear once, he appears four times, 16 times, splintered across the stage as the choir becomes shards of a mirror, transforming individuals into crowds and crowds back into a single voice. Raw, loud, and cinematic, A Western confronts the mythology of cowboys, guns, and justice head-on, asking what happens when the stories we rely on start to crack.
A performance in two parts, the show opens with the world premiere of “To The West,” in which Moriarty has crafted a show where he directs the singers by positioning them in a way that allows them to be part of the show in a more physical way beyond their voices.
“This is a chance to start to explore. What if we get the singers moving a bit, too — which, in classical music, choirs don’t usually do,” Moriarty said.
When approached with the idea of directing by Verdigris founder Sam Brukhman, Moriarty initially declined. He felt he had moved on from directing, and his duties now for Dallas Theater Center already give him a full schedule.
But then he reconsidered.
“My immediate second response was that this would be a chance to collaborate with Sam, to get inside of his brain and to get inside of music that is complicated and challenging and deeply rewarding, and, well, it’s hard to pass up an adventure like that,” he explained.
Well before his theater career, Moriarty’s initial career plan revolved around music. In college, he majored in music. At that time, he explained, you were either a music student or a theater student, and those tracks were completely separated. Other than going to plays, his theater training was minimal, nil at best.
“I’d been in high school plays, but theater wasn’t remotely on my career plan,” he said. “When I was teaching high school in a small Minnesota town, the principal informed me that the choir director directs the school play, and that was me. So that’s really where my theater directing began.”
And in theater, he found something a bit profound about it as he grew more into a director.
“It felt like there was more opportunity to be experimental, and, frankly, to be fully myself, which, in those days, meant coming out and living openly as a gay man,” he said.
With Verdigris, Moriarty gets to come full circle —– even if it’s just for a weekend.
“I left classical music for my professional life to become a theater maker,” he said. “But when I first sat with Sam, we instantly went right into conversations about choral music and composers and musical style, and it was this incredible moment where I was able to reconnect with the musical art form that had been so important to me in my training when I was younger.”
For tickets, visit VerdigrisMusic.org