Place, with music by Ted Hearne and texts mostly by Saul Williams, has been called an oratorio, and indeed there is a small choral role for the Chicago Children's Chorus. One might also call it a song cycle; solo voices, drawn from rock and jazz styles as well as from classical music, predominate, and the work depends on single voices and ensembles who inhabit specific ideas. As with much of Hearne's other work, the texts are political, focusing on gentrification (there is a spoken antiphonal movement beginning ...
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Place, with music by Ted Hearne and texts mostly by Saul Williams, has been called an oratorio, and indeed there is a small choral role for the Chicago Children's Chorus. One might also call it a song cycle; solo voices, drawn from rock and jazz styles as well as from classical music, predominate, and the work depends on single voices and ensembles who inhabit specific ideas. As with much of Hearne's other work, the texts are political, focusing on gentrification (there is a spoken antiphonal movement beginning "Gentrification is a generational conversation that has gone by many names"), the dispossession of Native Americans, and other themes. Listeners will evaluate these ideas for themselves, but the music is worth hearing for those of any persuasion. Hearne weaves together greatly disparate sounds in a coherent whole. Voices are of many types and may be modified by electronic processing, and the 15-player Place Orchestra, acoustic except for guitar, bass, keyboards, and mixer processing,...
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