Graduation Muziek: Riles Walsh
It’s not every day composition students graduate with an opera, but that’s exactly what Riles Walsh is intent on doing. His The East Complex is a multimedia chamber opera in English with supertitles, that includes integrated electronics, multiple video projections, live camera, and junk objects in the percussion including a mounted bike wheel. To bring that venture to fruition, he teamed up with drama student Stefan Aleksic. Over the course of a year and a half, they have been working closely with Yannick Verweij and are being joined by an international and diverse group of artists, both students from various conservatoires and art schools, as well as young professionals. Ronan Whittern will be conducting.
Riles, I read somewhere you started with the question what the meaning of immortality could be in a current-day context. How did you come up with that?
Just before I moved to Belgium in September of 2021 I had gotten married. Sadly, the event pretty much coincided with my brother in law passing away of brain cancer. We knew it was coming but I was still surprised. With the ongoing corona crisis it was hard to process. I never really got to figure out my feelings. The project then started as a tribute to him. He was a very optimistic person, you know, the kindest and most genuine guy I ever met. He also was involved in video projects like documentaries. That’s why I involved video.
I’m curious, what does immortality mean today?
Well, the librettist works in the custodian field (or at least has a relation with that type of work) and soon started to add his own spin. A lot of his surroundings are designed to keep people out. So that’s when the initial idea took on a social dimension and evolved into a more critical exploration of socio-economic hierarchy, both on a collective and personal level. Immortality was transformed into a symbol for the perpetuity of systems.
So how does that translate to the stage?
There are two parts to the work. The first is a sort of play. Dark, dismal and austere. What happens is the main character, a cleaner, gets raped. In that position she has a fantasy, this is where the opera comes in. All of a sudden she finds herself being respected, and even tries to steal a body.
So the oppressed becomes the oppressor? Sounds very post-marxist.
A lot is open to interpretation. When adapting I was reading Walter Benjamin. So, yes, there’s something of that in my own interpretation as well. The main character seizes the opportunity to be in control.
Did these questions of control have any bearing on the creative process? How involved was everyone?
The six musicians each have a solo. Initially I asked them to improvise, which served as the base of a score and a recording. From those recordings I again extracted audio and put it back. So in a sense, they are duetting with a digital version of themselves. That way, whenever a character expresses desire of any sort an evil twin is created. They decide whether to oppose or go along with what comes through the speakers.
How would you describe your musical idiom?
That’s hard to do. One influence would be Ligeti: the violin concerto, the horn trio… But in terms of new operatic means I feel attracted to the music of Michel Van der Aa.
What is your relation to opera anyway?
As for traditional operas, I found them hard to get into. Sure, there’s arias and moments which strike. But to sit down and listen to theatrical pieces in a foreign language is hard. More recent references for me would be Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, or the operatic cycles of Robert Ashley.
You already had the opera performed three times. Now you have the Minardschouwburg at your disposal.
We do have a different cast. For the upcoming performances my wife, who is employed in Sweden, will be singing the lead role. A colleague of her will sing the second lead, since that character is supposed to be a native English speaker, as she represents western society. Anyway, I’m excited. We’ll finally have the use of the orchestra pit and a gauze screen for video projection.
Anything else you want to say?
Yes, I could not have imagined a better teacher than Daan Janssens. Shout out to him!
