Green Sneakers
- Shawn Marie Jeffery
- Aug 11, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: May 6
Music and Libretto by: Ricky Ian Gordon
Duration: 60 minutes
Originally Commissioned: by 2008 Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Premiered: at Vilar Performing Arts Center, 2008.
Project Statement:
Green Sneakers, written for baritone, empty chair, string quartet, and piano, is a work in which all parts of the ensemble–as well as the prop that is the chair–are used to narrate the story. Created from a cycle of poems by Gordon in memory of his late partner Jeffrey Michael Grossi, the work is a tribute to the life Gordon and Grossi shared together, as described in the details of happenings that took place leading up to Grossi’s death, including Grossi’s collapse at the opening night of Gordon’s first opera, which had its premier at Houston Grand Opera in 1996. The poems also chronicle Gordon’s journey through grief after Grossi’s passing and his reflections on specific memories of Grossi, as well as Grossi’s possessions–such as the green sneakers sitting in his closet–untouched and unchanged. Through these texts, we see the ways in which Grossi’s spirit is ultimately kept alive through Gordon’s ruminations, realizations, and resulting personal growth.
FORCES
Singers:
1 Baritone
Orchestration:
Pno.
2Vln.
Vla.
Vlc.
Reviews
“Green Sneakers” is a significant contribution to the culture sprung from the AIDS crisis. In its forthright honesty and passion it could be compared to the film “Longtime Companion” (1990), which brought home the emergency with a similar immediacy and eloquence. It heals while it hurts. –Stephen Holden, The New York Times
With the repetition of “Sleep Dear”, the final words of "Green Sneakers", one heard in Vail a distant echo of the “Ewig” that concludes Mahler’s monumental "Abschied". For this is a song of today’s earth, a farewell lamentation that transcends death. -Wes Blomster, Opera Today
MEDIA
Photos by Colin Howe, Nic Minetor, Jim Caldwell
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