Tucson choir adds choral ballet to recent 'Frankenstein' reimaginings

Around this time last year, Tucson was experiencing variations of Mary Shelley’s sci-fi, gothic novel “Frankenstein.”

Arizona Opera mounted Gregg Kallor’s opera version “Frankenstein” to critical acclaim; the Phoenix-based, bi-city company had commissioned the work.

Arizona Arts Live brought in Chicago-based Manual Cinema to present its multimedia “Frankenstein,” which featured puppetry.

Arts Express, Tucson’s longtime musical theater youth training program, also got in on the action mounting the musical adaptation of Mel Brooks’ film “Young Frankenstein.”

Now True Concord Voices & Orchestra is putting its spin on the creature with the Southwest premiere of the “Frankenstein”-themed choral ballet “Unfashioned Creature, a Choral Ballet.”

The piece was composed by True Concord co-composer-in-residence Timothy C. Takach; he shares the residency with his wife, composer Jocelyn Hagen.

“Unfashioned Creature,” with choreography by Penny Freeh, takes an approach similar to Kallor, who looked at the themes of loneliness and isolation.

“Tim’s objective was to use this classic story to speak of themes of today and that everyone is worthy of respect regardless of their otherness and of dignity and being seen for all that is good in them,” explained True Concord Music Director Eric Holtan. “It really is a timeless story and really relevant for today.”

True Concord will perform the piece as the cornerstone of its “Frankenstein, Brahms & the Search for Love” concert this weekend.

Takach composed the ballet for James Sewell Ballet Company out of Minneapolis, which is touring the work with Freeh. This is the 35-year-old dance troupe’s final season. The company announced on Nov. 12 that it would cease operating in March 2025.

Holtan said Takach and Freeh collaborated on the ballet’s libretto, setting select excerpts from Shelley’s original novel. The 40-minute performance will involve six Sewell Ballet dancers and the choir, which Holtan said will be part of the “action, of the drama.”

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This is not the first time True Concord has collaborated with dancers. In 2013, the choir brought dancers from Artifact Dance Project for Benjamin Britten’s “Cantata Misericordium.” University of Arizona Dance joined the ensemble in 2018 for Bernstein’s Mass, featuring baritone Jubilant Sykes as part of the Tucson Desert Song Festival.

“We love engaging and collaborating with different art forms,” Holtan said.

This weekend’s concert also includes Brahms’s “Neue Liebeslieder Walzer,” composed for choir and piano two hands.

It is the composer’s second set of love songs exploring the complexities of love and relationships. Holtan said the audience will hear those nuances in the counterpoint and chromatic harmonization from the two pianists — Kathryn Lieppman and Miroslava Panayotova — playing one piano.

True Concord closes “Frankenstein, Brahms & the Search for Love” with the world premiere of a Tucson-centered work composed by the 2024 winner of its Stephen Paulus Emerging Composers Competition.

Carlos Cordero’s “Footprints” for unaccompanied voices is based on text from Tucson Youth Poetry Slam alumnus Enrique Garcia Naranjo.

The Venezuelan-born Cordero, who lives in Austin, Texas, is the founder of the New Choral Music Society, a nonprofit that advocates for new choral music composers and poets.

Cordero is the seventh emerging composer to win the competition since True Concord launched it in the 2017-18 season. The competition is named in honor of the late composer Stephen Paulus, who won a posthumous Grammy for his choral work “Prayers and Remembrances,” commissioned by the Tucson ensemble.

True Concord will perform the concert at 4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22, at Sahuarita Unified School District Auditorium, 350 W. Sahuarita Road; and at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 24, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 7650 N. Paseo del Norte.

Tickets are $23.50-$63.50 through trueconcord.org.