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EASTSIDE
SINFONIETTA: Music (1998-2003).
Featuring: Joe Berardi, Weba Garretson, Ralph Gorodtsky, Jason Payne
& Tracy Wannomae.
Eastside Sinfonietta was a special project that all
started when David Catanzarite, director of the West
Coast Centennial Celebration for playwright Bertolt Brecht, asked
me to sing some songs for his production of "Brecht on Brecht"
at the Downtown Public Library on Feb 10, 1998 (Brecht's 100th Birthday).
I was already writing and recording with bassist Ralph Gorodetsky
and we invited Jason Payne to play drums
but quickly realized that we needed a keyboard player. We decided
to call Joe Berardi, another drummer and amazing
musician, who ended up playing keyboards, and becoming the Sinfonietta's
musical director and producer.
From that first gig, the Sinfonietta went on to perform at UCLA's
Department of Germanic Languages, the Goethe-Institute (Los Angeles,
CA) the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the Museum of
Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles)
the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles) the Downtown Public Library
(Los Angeles) & Pomona College (Claremont, CA).
The Sinfonietta's work culminated in a production of "Happy End"
at MOCA for the Kurt Weill Centennial. "Happy End" was Brecht/Weill's
follow up to their smash hit "Three Penny Opera" and contains
some their greatest songs including Surabaya Johnny. This production
was supposed to feature the orchestrations developed by the Sinfonietta
over the past 2 years, but the Kurt Weill Foundation would not give
us permission to alter the arrangements within the context of a musical,
so we hired extra musicians and played it by the book.
Listen:
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