Joseph Keckler

The first time we saw Joseph Keckler perform, in 2008, he sang "I Put A Spell On You." We haven't been the same since.

Is Keckler merely some iteration of the "downtown It boy," as has been pointed out by various trendy publications? He's certainly cool enough—and adorable, too, a dark-haired, sloe-eyed 20something who typically performs clad in skintight pants and pointy, size-12 shoes. But Keckler is also unusual among his milieu of downtown performance artists and new musicians—he's a performer who can actually sing, in a thrillingly deep, bass baritone multi-octave voice that occasionally veers into a soulful falsetto. In the past year, he's been awarded grants by MacDowell, Yaddo, and Franklin Furnace, and won the 2012 NYFA fellowship for his interdisciplinary work in vocal performance, writing, acting, and art.

Most recently, Keckler has been awarded a month-long residency at Dixon Place on New York City's Lower East Side, where on April 5, he will premiere his new show, I am an Opera, which he wrote as both satire and self-portrait. The show dramatizes some of Keckler's own dramatic high points—a bad shroom trip; the time he had sex in a pile of people (in John Cameron Mitchell's movie, Short Bus); the time he was discovered by his office manager at his day job drunk and snoozing on a piece of cardboard in a stairwell. Throughout, he employs his three-octave voice to perform personae of various genders and species.

We met with Joseph Keckler the other day, in the midst of an unexpected snowstorm. Over a cup of cappuccino, we discussed I am an Opera and Keckler's haunting brand-new music video, "The Ride." The video finds Keckler traversing Bushwick, the Lower East Side, and the Financial District in a livery cab chauffered by a modern-day Charon, and we're thrilled to premiere it here.

GERRY VISCO: What's your new song about?

JOSEPH KECKLER: Longing, departure...

VISCO: And the video?

KECKLER: The video was created in collaboration with filmmaker Laura Terruso. While both she and I often use humor in our work, this piece involves less funny business. There's a passenger and a driver and they're rolling through the streets of Brooklyn, then Lower Manhattan, then perhaps passing into another world.

VISCO: Which world?

KECKLER: I envisioned the driver as an almost Charon-like figure. We called Edgar Oliver and asked him if he might want to play the part. He replied in his extraordinary bass-baritone voice, which is simultaneously soothing and foreboding, "Oh yes, I love the idea... but I only have a learner's permit. Can I take you across the river Styx on a... learner's permit?" [laughs] I was trying to think about purgatory, in between states. For some reason, this song came out of that. I was making work in between forms and I was trying to make work that was about being in between worlds.

VISCO: How does purgatory figure in your new show, I am an Opera? You were taking some shrooms and you had a bad experience?

KECKLER: Well, that might have been a little more toward hell.

VISCO: What is your show about?

KECKLER: The show is a trip.

VISCO: A trip to where?

KECKLER: A bad shroom trip. The kind of performance I've done has always been a sort of memory theater. I tend to reconstruct my own experiences in a very detailed manner. My experience of this trip, when I had it, is an explosion of memories.

VISCO: After having that experience, what made you want to write a show about it?

KECKLER: It was an experiment. Instead of writing text, I had begun to write these little faux arias, but I wanted the form to reflect the content. I chose to treat the shroom aria in an operatic fashion because during that episode, I considered cutting out my voice box with a knife.

VISCO: Did you do it?

KECKLER: No, I realized there were more important matters at hand and instead flossed my teeth. I've never been a big drug person, but sometimes I have visions, which show up in my art. If I have a fever, I'm prone to hallucinations. I once heard a frog croak and a holographic frog jumped out of my pillow when I was six, and sometimes I would see tiny people dancing on my comforter. These supernatural episodes can become part of my work.

VISCO: Where did you write the song?

KECKLER: I wrote it over the course of a couple weeks in the La Mama ETC Theater rehearsal studio on Great Jones Street. I didn't know how to sing it; I was approaching it with a big lounge-singer baritone. Eventually I tried it in my falsetto voice, which I'm using more and more of for "pop" songs.

VISCO: And this song is part of your new show, I am an Opera

KECKLER: Yes, the song is performed in my show. Well, the song is a "ride" and the show is a "trip." I experienced a delirious episode in which I became possessed by demons and went spi - Interview Magazine

The first time we saw Joseph Keckler perform, in 2008, he sang "I Put A Spell On You." We haven't been the same since.

Is Keckler merely some iteration of the "downtown It boy," as has been pointed out by various trendy publications? He's certainly cool enough—and adorable, too, a dark-haired, sloe-eyed 20something who typically performs clad in skintight pants and pointy, size-12 shoes. But Keckler is also unusual among his milieu of downtown performance artists and new musicians—he's a performer who can actually sing, in a thrillingly deep, bass baritone multi-octave voice that occasionally veers into a soulful falsetto. In the past year, he's been awarded grants by MacDowell, Yaddo, and Franklin Furnace, and won the 2012 NYFA fellowship for his interdisciplinary work in vocal performance, writing, acting, and art.

Most recently, Keckler has been awarded a month-long residency at Dixon Place on New York City's Lower East Side, where on April 5, he will premiere his new show, I am an Opera, which he wrote as both satire and self-portrait. The show dramatizes some of Keckler's own dramatic high points—a bad shroom trip; the time he had sex in a pile of people (in John Cameron Mitchell's movie, Short Bus); the time he was discovered by his office manager at his day job drunk and snoozing on a piece of cardboard in a stairwell. Throughout, he employs his three-octave voice to perform personae of various genders and species.

We met with Joseph Keckler the other day, in the midst of an unexpected snowstorm. Over a cup of cappuccino, we discussed I am an Opera and Keckler's haunting brand-new music video, "The Ride." The video finds Keckler traversing Bushwick, the Lower East Side, and the Financial District in a livery cab chauffered by a modern-day Charon, and we're thrilled to premiere it here.

GERRY VISCO: What's your new song about?

JOSEPH KECKLER: Longing, departure...

VISCO: And the video?

KECKLER: The video was created in collaboration with filmmaker Laura Terruso. While both she and I often use humor in our work, this piece involves less funny business. There's a passenger and a driver and they're rolling through the streets of Brooklyn, then Lower Manhattan, then perhaps passing into another world.

VISCO: Which world?

KECKLER: I envisioned the driver as an almost Charon-like figure. We called Edgar Oliver and asked him if he might want to play the part. He replied in his extraordinary bass-baritone voice, which is simultaneously soothing and foreboding, "Oh yes, I love the idea... but I only have a learner's permit. Can I take you across the river Styx on a... learner's permit?" [laughs] I was trying to think about purgatory, in between states. For some reason, this song came out of that. I was making work in between forms and I was trying to make work that was about being in between worlds.

VISCO: How does purgatory figure in your new show, I am an Opera? You were taking some shrooms and you had a bad experience?

KECKLER: Well, that might have been a little more toward hell.

VISCO: What is your show about?

KECKLER: The show is a trip.

VISCO: A trip to where?

KECKLER: A bad shroom trip. The kind of performance I've done has always been a sort of memory theater. I tend to reconstruct my own experiences in a very detailed manner. My experience of this trip, when I had it, is an explosion of memories.

VISCO: After having that experience, what made you want to write a show about it?

KECKLER: It was an experiment. Instead of writing text, I had begun to write these little faux arias, but I wanted the form to reflect the content. I chose to treat the shroom aria in an operatic fashion because during that episode, I considered cutting out my voice box with a knife.

VISCO: Did you do it?

KECKLER: No, I realized there were more important matters at hand and instead flossed my teeth. I've never been a big drug person, but sometimes I have visions, which show up in my art. If I have a fever, I'm prone to hallucinations. I once heard a frog croak and a holographic frog jumped out of my pillow when I was six, and sometimes I would see tiny people dancing on my comforter. These supernatural episodes can become part of my work.

VISCO: Where did you write the song?

KECKLER: I wrote it over the course of a couple weeks in the La Mama ETC Theater rehearsal studio on Great Jones Street. I didn't know how to sing it; I was approaching it with a big lounge-singer baritone. Eventually I tried it in my falsetto voice, which I'm using more and more of for "pop" songs.

VISCO: And this song is part of your new show, I am an Opera

KECKLER: Yes, the song is performed in my show. Well, the song is a "ride" and the show is a "trip." I experienced a delirious episode in which I became possessed by demons and went spi - Interview Magazine

Transmodern Festival 2010
By Bret McCabe | Posted 4/14/2010
Francine is down. The zaftig woman who just a few moments ago was decrying the way her future looked--a long dark highway full of endless tollbooths and no exits--just chug-a-lugged her last tipple and passed out in a heap onstage at New York's Joe's Pub, the cabaret-like space attached to the Public Theater. Almost immediately a groovy gal in early '60s doo and mini-dress takes a place behind a microphone. The three-piece band onstage begins a stately introductory dirge. And then, Joseph Keckler, the New York performance artist presiding over his "Midnight Mass" the Saturday before Easter, opens his mouth and sings, in a robust baritone, the tale of "Poor Francine."
Dapper in a light suit with his long-ish hair tucked behind his ears, Keckler at first sounds like Leonard Cohen singing an operetta, before switching mid-verse to a less deep range to delivery sassily, "Don't worry Francine, I hear every word this skag says and I'll testify in a court" before switching back just as seamlessly to sing, "You'll find another man, Francine." The song is a mash note to her, the "drinkingnest gal that I've ever seen," a musical reminder to not let the fuckers get you down.
It's an arresting display of vocal control and disarming wit, but Keckler is just warming up. He starts by recalling watching John Waters' Cry-Baby before moving through a pyrotechnic dissection on the dilution of Hairspray as it moved from the 1988 original movie through its 2002 Broadway musical and the eventual 2007 movie based on the musical, parsing its subtle changes and alterations before arriving at the observation that the weight-related self-loathing of John Travolta's Edna Turnblad is downright poisonous.
It's a tour de force of deconstruction, and a singular moment that brings all three of Keckler's strengths together into a Windsor knot of heady entertainment. A gifted musician/vocalist, writer, and actor, Keckler can work individually in each setting, but as a performance artist he can pull each of those talents into his multifaceted stage events.
"I see that as a kind of sermon about John Waters and values," Keckler laughs of his "Poor Francine" stand-alone piece the next day over brunch at an East Village cafe. "Values that matter. When Hairspray on Broadway came out, I understood, on the one hand, that commercialization is just another perversion for John Waters, and I appreciate that. But I was very hurt by Hairspray the musical. I was hurt and traumatized by it, and I needed my voice to be heard.
"And I just started ranting to people about it," he continues. "People would be, 'Oh, did you see Hairspray?' And I would start giving all these examples. Do you remember in the movie, Penny Pingleton says, 'I'm just a little nervous,' but in the musical they transferred that line to Tracy Turnblad--this is important because Tracy Turnblad should not be a little nervous. I remembered that movie neurotically, so I knew every little change that they made and I just started doing this rant and deconstruction of it. Eventually I just thought, I feel strongly about this, so I should write it."
That the personal is the political is the ideal kernel for material is a peek into Keckler's process. Keckler has a degree in painting but has always studied theater and classical music as well, and in college at the University of Michigan he started "writing autobiographical monologues that were kind of like short fictions, little slice of life things," he says. "They tended toward character portraits, but with a very strong narrative voice. The longer solo work that I've developed usually has a strong personal element, about somebody in my life, and often a family member. I have two shows about my mother and one about the funeral of my aunt, a community theater actress of Kalamazoo, and a couple of strange moments. One where everyone started clapping watching this video for [Little Shop of Horrors'] 'Suddenly Seymour' and another one where I was singing 'Ave Maria' at the funeral and I started noticing all these people that I recognize, and I came to realize they were all these patrons at the gay bar Brothers in Kalamazoo, where I'd gone as a teenager. So then I imagined my aunt as the Judy Garland of Kalamazoo."
During his "Midnight Mass" performance, Keckler moved seamlessly from musical numbers--original songs, such as the opening number about a man and his iguana, and ingenious covers, such as a scorching reading of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs"--to spoken-word pieces to somewhat improvised character monologues and interactive pieces with text and film. It was a smorgasbord of Keckler's various performance contexts, and it'd - Baltimore CityPaper

Transmodern Festival 2010
By Bret McCabe | Posted 4/14/2010
Francine is down. The zaftig woman who just a few moments ago was decrying the way her future looked--a long dark highway full of endless tollbooths and no exits--just chug-a-lugged her last tipple and passed out in a heap onstage at New York's Joe's Pub, the cabaret-like space attached to the Public Theater. Almost immediately a groovy gal in early '60s doo and mini-dress takes a place behind a microphone. The three-piece band onstage begins a stately introductory dirge. And then, Joseph Keckler, the New York performance artist presiding over his "Midnight Mass" the Saturday before Easter, opens his mouth and sings, in a robust baritone, the tale of "Poor Francine."
Dapper in a light suit with his long-ish hair tucked behind his ears, Keckler at first sounds like Leonard Cohen singing an operetta, before switching mid-verse to a less deep range to delivery sassily, "Don't worry Francine, I hear every word this skag says and I'll testify in a court" before switching back just as seamlessly to sing, "You'll find another man, Francine." The song is a mash note to her, the "drinkingnest gal that I've ever seen," a musical reminder to not let the fuckers get you down.
It's an arresting display of vocal control and disarming wit, but Keckler is just warming up. He starts by recalling watching John Waters' Cry-Baby before moving through a pyrotechnic dissection on the dilution of Hairspray as it moved from the 1988 original movie through its 2002 Broadway musical and the eventual 2007 movie based on the musical, parsing its subtle changes and alterations before arriving at the observation that the weight-related self-loathing of John Travolta's Edna Turnblad is downright poisonous.
It's a tour de force of deconstruction, and a singular moment that brings all three of Keckler's strengths together into a Windsor knot of heady entertainment. A gifted musician/vocalist, writer, and actor, Keckler can work individually in each setting, but as a performance artist he can pull each of those talents into his multifaceted stage events.
"I see that as a kind of sermon about John Waters and values," Keckler laughs of his "Poor Francine" stand-alone piece the next day over brunch at an East Village cafe. "Values that matter. When Hairspray on Broadway came out, I understood, on the one hand, that commercialization is just another perversion for John Waters, and I appreciate that. But I was very hurt by Hairspray the musical. I was hurt and traumatized by it, and I needed my voice to be heard.
"And I just started ranting to people about it," he continues. "People would be, 'Oh, did you see Hairspray?' And I would start giving all these examples. Do you remember in the movie, Penny Pingleton says, 'I'm just a little nervous,' but in the musical they transferred that line to Tracy Turnblad--this is important because Tracy Turnblad should not be a little nervous. I remembered that movie neurotically, so I knew every little change that they made and I just started doing this rant and deconstruction of it. Eventually I just thought, I feel strongly about this, so I should write it."
That the personal is the political is the ideal kernel for material is a peek into Keckler's process. Keckler has a degree in painting but has always studied theater and classical music as well, and in college at the University of Michigan he started "writing autobiographical monologues that were kind of like short fictions, little slice of life things," he says. "They tended toward character portraits, but with a very strong narrative voice. The longer solo work that I've developed usually has a strong personal element, about somebody in my life, and often a family member. I have two shows about my mother and one about the funeral of my aunt, a community theater actress of Kalamazoo, and a couple of strange moments. One where everyone started clapping watching this video for [Little Shop of Horrors'] 'Suddenly Seymour' and another one where I was singing 'Ave Maria' at the funeral and I started noticing all these people that I recognize, and I came to realize they were all these patrons at the gay bar Brothers in Kalamazoo, where I'd gone as a teenager. So then I imagined my aunt as the Judy Garland of Kalamazoo."
During his "Midnight Mass" performance, Keckler moved seamlessly from musical numbers--original songs, such as the opening number about a man and his iguana, and ingenious covers, such as a scorching reading of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs"--to spoken-word pieces to somewhat improvised character monologues and interactive pieces with text and film. It was a smorgasbord of Keckler's various performance contexts, and it'd - Baltimore CityPaper

"One of the finest performances in years... an unmatched range, endless and flawless... The intimacy of Jeff Buckley with the swagger of Freddy Mercury."
Translated excerpt. Link to full article in Dutch. - Alternative Blog, Netherlands

"One of the finest performances in years... an unmatched range, endless and flawless... The intimacy of Jeff Buckley with the swagger of Freddy Mercury."
Translated excerpt. Link to full article in Dutch. - Alternative Blog, Netherlands

“I’m not really an opera,” says dynamic performer Joseph Keckler at the start of his tantalizing song cycle–cum–multimedia one-man show I am an Opera. “I just said that to intrigue you.” Joseph, you tease! If not nearly as overblown as an opera, he certainly exemplifies what would happen if you took Julian Casablancas and gave him Rufus Wainwright’s opera jones and piano chops, a striking basso profundo, and Adrien Brody’s fantastic nose. This charismatic mop-top delivers an off-handed, clever mise en scène combining Laurie Anderson and Nature Theater of Oklahoma technique: While interacting with giant video projections and supertitles, Keckler sings, in three languages, a classical pastiche whose text describes a (possibly autobiographical) bad trip on shrooms in familiar colloquial jargon: “I was re-becoming a teen goth.” He’s most successful when he exploits his Warholian deadpan; the tension between the bombast of his singing and the inconsequence of his tale create a high percentage of what’s charming about the piece. The man himself handles the rest, with magnetism and poise so high that he seems (like Wainwright) to have been born onstage. By singing a finale cloning Antony & the Johnsons, though, he makes it clear that earnest isn’t his best mood, his falsetto’s less fun than his bass, and that rock ballads don’t suit him as well as cheeky arias. Somehow it all works as long as he follows the Lieder. - Village Voice

“I’m not really an opera,” says dynamic performer Joseph Keckler at the start of his tantalizing song cycle–cum–multimedia one-man show I am an Opera. “I just said that to intrigue you.” Joseph, you tease! If not nearly as overblown as an opera, he certainly exemplifies what would happen if you took Julian Casablancas and gave him Rufus Wainwright’s opera jones and piano chops, a striking basso profundo, and Adrien Brody’s fantastic nose. This charismatic mop-top delivers an off-handed, clever mise en scène combining Laurie Anderson and Nature Theater of Oklahoma technique: While interacting with giant video projections and supertitles, Keckler sings, in three languages, a classical pastiche whose text describes a (possibly autobiographical) bad trip on shrooms in familiar colloquial jargon: “I was re-becoming a teen goth.” He’s most successful when he exploits his Warholian deadpan; the tension between the bombast of his singing and the inconsequence of his tale create a high percentage of what’s charming about the piece. The man himself handles the rest, with magnetism and poise so high that he seems (like Wainwright) to have been born onstage. By singing a finale cloning Antony & the Johnsons, though, he makes it clear that earnest isn’t his best mood, his falsetto’s less fun than his bass, and that rock ballads don’t suit him as well as cheeky arias. Somehow it all works as long as he follows the Lieder. - Village Voice

BOMBLOG
PERFORMANCE
I am an Opera: A Deconstructionist’s Dream
by Cassie Peterson Jul 05, 2012
Cassie Peterson discusses deconstructions of form in Joseph Keckler’s I am an Opera


The first time I encountered the enigmatic voice of Joseph Keckler was at the Chocolate Factory for an installment of the Catch Performance series. Nearing the end of the informal, cabaret-style show, Keckler quietly walked on stage to perform a seven minute excerpt from a performance-in-process called I am an Opera, the completed version of which will play at Joe’s Pub on July 8. I remember that I was sitting on a hard, tin bleacher. The artists from the previous performances were downstairs, talking loudly and working off their adrenaline by drinking cheap beer from a keg. It was loud, casual, a familial gathering. Keckler began his performance by addressing the audience in a very colloquial, nearly apathetic tone. He told us some mundane story from his day, chock full of minute, conversational details.
Keckler laughed as I recounted this moment over brunch recently and said, “I’m not afraid of being boring.” Which made it all that more surprising when, after that “boring” prelude, he opened his mouth and began to sing a breathtaking aria. He sang in low, bold Italian with English subtitles projected onto a screen behind him. Instantly, I felt like Jonah or Pinocchio being unwittingly swallowed by the whale. Keckler’s transition from the initial, improvised structure into a very formal, operatic structure was jarring to say the least. For the next seven minutes, he worked methodically to juxtapose and seamlessly combine the grandiosity of the opera with his more personal, pedestrian, and muted style of storytelling, something like the late great Klaus Nomi, but with a more understated, coy, and dry-witted theatricality about him.
“I like the drama and the discipline of opera,” Keckler says matter-of-factly. Typically, a lot happens in a classical opera. Worlds are upended and kingdoms toppled. But in a stark and purposeful contrast to this expectation, I am an Opera unfolds without much actually happening. The piece is framed as an internal monologue, a memory of a bad mushroom trip that Keckler had in the early 2000’s. “I work a lot from personal and autobiographical experiences,” he says. In fact, the “events” of the piece happen almost entirely inside of his thoughts and memories. “My work is not made up of events, but rather a series of inclinations,” he told me. Thus, as viewers, we are asked to exist inside the narrator’s mind, as Jonah lives inside the whale, and to follow him on his incredibly subtle and introspective journey. Keckler’s voice transports and transforms us even though there are no “actual” events to move us through the performance. It is an exquisite exercise in operatic abstraction.
In I am an Opera, Keckler gives pride of place to form and craft in this contemporary, avant-garde, “anti-performance” performance. He is a mediator of sorts, existing comfortably in what he calls the “interstitial space between forms.” As the consummate, interdisciplinary, performance artist, Keckler has intentionally embedded contemporary content/context (young, 20-something man accidentally eats too many chocolate-covered mushrooms with his friends at a party and then goes home by himself where he is overwhelmed by hallucinations and flashbacks that derive from various applications on his Mac laptop), into a classical, nearly antiquated form. It is a contemporary subject presented with a classical method. Yet within this framework, Keckler is able to evade camp and kitsch. He never mocks or fetishizes opera, nor his role as a classically trained opera singer. Rather, he believes in opera. He is opera. Keckler plays and experiments without compromising the integrity or composition of the forms that he is employing and it is this commitment that adds an element of rigor and sincerity to his performances.
I am an Opera simultaneously deconstructs and re-animates the operatic form, making it contemporary, relevant, and even urgent. Joseph is possessed by the demand and discipline of high art while continuously locating himself in prosaic realities. In this way, his work is both an elevation and a grounding. Celestial archetypes meet quotidian anti-heroes, all within the insularity of the narrator’s discursive thoughts. This alchemy of high/medium/low art subject matter elicits particular emotional responses from audiences. The sheer, visceral gravity of the aria overlapping with its irreverent content caused me to laugh hysterically while simultaneously giving me the chills that only a bravura performance can. In this way, I am an Opera operates both as a formal materialization and as a conceptual dematerialization, creating a palpable fissure that allows for new experiences and subjectivities to emerge. I can feel all of these potentialities arise (like my neck hairs) during the piece. It is a new and exhilarating - BOMB

BOMBLOG
PERFORMANCE
I am an Opera: A Deconstructionist’s Dream
by Cassie Peterson Jul 05, 2012
Cassie Peterson discusses deconstructions of form in Joseph Keckler’s I am an Opera


The first time I encountered the enigmatic voice of Joseph Keckler was at the Chocolate Factory for an installment of the Catch Performance series. Nearing the end of the informal, cabaret-style show, Keckler quietly walked on stage to perform a seven minute excerpt from a performance-in-process called I am an Opera, the completed version of which will play at Joe’s Pub on July 8. I remember that I was sitting on a hard, tin bleacher. The artists from the previous performances were downstairs, talking loudly and working off their adrenaline by drinking cheap beer from a keg. It was loud, casual, a familial gathering. Keckler began his performance by addressing the audience in a very colloquial, nearly apathetic tone. He told us some mundane story from his day, chock full of minute, conversational details.
Keckler laughed as I recounted this moment over brunch recently and said, “I’m not afraid of being boring.” Which made it all that more surprising when, after that “boring” prelude, he opened his mouth and began to sing a breathtaking aria. He sang in low, bold Italian with English subtitles projected onto a screen behind him. Instantly, I felt like Jonah or Pinocchio being unwittingly swallowed by the whale. Keckler’s transition from the initial, improvised structure into a very formal, operatic structure was jarring to say the least. For the next seven minutes, he worked methodically to juxtapose and seamlessly combine the grandiosity of the opera with his more personal, pedestrian, and muted style of storytelling, something like the late great Klaus Nomi, but with a more understated, coy, and dry-witted theatricality about him.
“I like the drama and the discipline of opera,” Keckler says matter-of-factly. Typically, a lot happens in a classical opera. Worlds are upended and kingdoms toppled. But in a stark and purposeful contrast to this expectation, I am an Opera unfolds without much actually happening. The piece is framed as an internal monologue, a memory of a bad mushroom trip that Keckler had in the early 2000’s. “I work a lot from personal and autobiographical experiences,” he says. In fact, the “events” of the piece happen almost entirely inside of his thoughts and memories. “My work is not made up of events, but rather a series of inclinations,” he told me. Thus, as viewers, we are asked to exist inside the narrator’s mind, as Jonah lives inside the whale, and to follow him on his incredibly subtle and introspective journey. Keckler’s voice transports and transforms us even though there are no “actual” events to move us through the performance. It is an exquisite exercise in operatic abstraction.
In I am an Opera, Keckler gives pride of place to form and craft in this contemporary, avant-garde, “anti-performance” performance. He is a mediator of sorts, existing comfortably in what he calls the “interstitial space between forms.” As the consummate, interdisciplinary, performance artist, Keckler has intentionally embedded contemporary content/context (young, 20-something man accidentally eats too many chocolate-covered mushrooms with his friends at a party and then goes home by himself where he is overwhelmed by hallucinations and flashbacks that derive from various applications on his Mac laptop), into a classical, nearly antiquated form. It is a contemporary subject presented with a classical method. Yet within this framework, Keckler is able to evade camp and kitsch. He never mocks or fetishizes opera, nor his role as a classically trained opera singer. Rather, he believes in opera. He is opera. Keckler plays and experiments without compromising the integrity or composition of the forms that he is employing and it is this commitment that adds an element of rigor and sincerity to his performances.
I am an Opera simultaneously deconstructs and re-animates the operatic form, making it contemporary, relevant, and even urgent. Joseph is possessed by the demand and discipline of high art while continuously locating himself in prosaic realities. In this way, his work is both an elevation and a grounding. Celestial archetypes meet quotidian anti-heroes, all within the insularity of the narrator’s discursive thoughts. This alchemy of high/medium/low art subject matter elicits particular emotional responses from audiences. The sheer, visceral gravity of the aria overlapping with its irreverent content caused me to laugh hysterically while simultaneously giving me the chills that only a bravura performance can. In this way, I am an Opera operates both as a formal materialization and as a conceptual dematerialization, creating a palpable fissure that allows for new experiences and subjectivities to emerge. I can feel all of these potentialities arise (like my neck hairs) during the piece. It is a new and exhilarating - BOMB

TALL AND STRIKING (imagine a more debonair, calmly coifed Edward Scissorhands) Joseph Keckler stood in the middle of a stage, rehearsing his new work, “I am an Opera.” “Then there’s a Minotaur,” he explained to an observer. “He turns out to be a delightful companion.”

The largely autobiographical, often fantastically framed mix of song, text and video resists neat summations — much like its creator, whose artistic output draws from theater, music, performance and visual art. “I am an Opera,” which will have its premiere on Friday at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side, has been nearly two years in the making and has garnered no small amount of buzz along the way.

The piece ties together Mr. Keckler’s diverse inclinations, and stems in part from his galvanizing discovery that the virtuosity of his operatic voice somehow worked as a way to deliver everyday stories. “I always thought it would be cheesy,” he said.

Mr. Keckler, 28, grew up in a small town in Eastern Michigan. He always had a theatrical bent. As a child he staged accidents on the front lawn, positioning his body under a tricycle; the rule was he had to stay there until a concerned driver stopped.

At the University of Michigan, Mr. Keckler studied with the performance artist Holly Hughes and the tenor George Shirley.

After graduating, he headed to New York, taking on odd jobs while working his way into the club scene. A classically trained singer, he has performed widely, including at the New Museum, Joe’s Pub and Performance Space 122. This spring, in addition to “I am an Opera,” he will appear on the BBC America show “The Nerdist.”

Claudia La Rocco chatted with the quietly charming and bright Mr. Keckler at a cafe around the corner from Dixon Place, about singing the blues and dying on stage. These are excerpts from their conversation.

Q. How did you get into opera?

A. As a teenager I was interested in being a visual artist and being a blues singer. But I was very aggressive as a vocalist. I would blow out my voice. I grew up listening to Bessie Smith, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Cab Calloway and Aretha Franklin. So I wanted to become a white androgynous blues singer. Then I started training my voice so that I could make it through more than one song.

You were drawn to the strictness of opera technique?

Yes. I want to be completely legitimate as a singer. I don’t want it to be ‘O.K., couldn’t quite cut it as an opera singer, so he had to do performance art.’ It always bothered me that Laurie Anderson said she wasn’t good enough to be a professional violinist. I thought, I wish that Laurie Anderson were good enough, and that she still was Laurie Anderson.

What’s been your trajectory in New York?

I started working at the Guggenheim as an audio guide salesperson for $8 an hour. I started performing at places like the old Galapagos, and also doing experimental theater things at Here, and then moved back into solo text-based performance. I started doing some roles at the Amato Opera on Bowery, at the same time. I once had to die on stage at the beginning of the opera, and then come back as the statue that takes Don Giovanni to hell. But in the middle I went down the street to the old Dixon Place and did a two-person experimental play.

How do you define yourself?

Lately I’ve been working with “interdisciplinary artist,” which is a vague identity. People come up to me and say ‘Oh you’re really a conceptual artist.’ I’m not saying I’m a conceptual artist; I’m saying I’m a bewildered person who does things. I like traversing different forms. [Slyly smiles.] I would like to infiltrate the mainstream. - New York Times

TALL AND STRIKING (imagine a more debonair, calmly coifed Edward Scissorhands) Joseph Keckler stood in the middle of a stage, rehearsing his new work, “I am an Opera.” “Then there’s a Minotaur,” he explained to an observer. “He turns out to be a delightful companion.”

The largely autobiographical, often fantastically framed mix of song, text and video resists neat summations — much like its creator, whose artistic output draws from theater, music, performance and visual art. “I am an Opera,” which will have its premiere on Friday at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side, has been nearly two years in the making and has garnered no small amount of buzz along the way.

The piece ties together Mr. Keckler’s diverse inclinations, and stems in part from his galvanizing discovery that the virtuosity of his operatic voice somehow worked as a way to deliver everyday stories. “I always thought it would be cheesy,” he said.

Mr. Keckler, 28, grew up in a small town in Eastern Michigan. He always had a theatrical bent. As a child he staged accidents on the front lawn, positioning his body under a tricycle; the rule was he had to stay there until a concerned driver stopped.

At the University of Michigan, Mr. Keckler studied with the performance artist Holly Hughes and the tenor George Shirley.

After graduating, he headed to New York, taking on odd jobs while working his way into the club scene. A classically trained singer, he has performed widely, including at the New Museum, Joe’s Pub and Performance Space 122. This spring, in addition to “I am an Opera,” he will appear on the BBC America show “The Nerdist.”

Claudia La Rocco chatted with the quietly charming and bright Mr. Keckler at a cafe around the corner from Dixon Place, about singing the blues and dying on stage. These are excerpts from their conversation.

Q. How did you get into opera?

A. As a teenager I was interested in being a visual artist and being a blues singer. But I was very aggressive as a vocalist. I would blow out my voice. I grew up listening to Bessie Smith, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Cab Calloway and Aretha Franklin. So I wanted to become a white androgynous blues singer. Then I started training my voice so that I could make it through more than one song.

You were drawn to the strictness of opera technique?

Yes. I want to be completely legitimate as a singer. I don’t want it to be ‘O.K., couldn’t quite cut it as an opera singer, so he had to do performance art.’ It always bothered me that Laurie Anderson said she wasn’t good enough to be a professional violinist. I thought, I wish that Laurie Anderson were good enough, and that she still was Laurie Anderson.

What’s been your trajectory in New York?

I started working at the Guggenheim as an audio guide salesperson for $8 an hour. I started performing at places like the old Galapagos, and also doing experimental theater things at Here, and then moved back into solo text-based performance. I started doing some roles at the Amato Opera on Bowery, at the same time. I once had to die on stage at the beginning of the opera, and then come back as the statue that takes Don Giovanni to hell. But in the middle I went down the street to the old Dixon Place and did a two-person experimental play.

How do you define yourself?

Lately I’ve been working with “interdisciplinary artist,” which is a vague identity. People come up to me and say ‘Oh you’re really a conceptual artist.’ I’m not saying I’m a conceptual artist; I’m saying I’m a bewildered person who does things. I like traversing different forms. [Slyly smiles.] I would like to infiltrate the mainstream. - New York Times

Small Beast
w / Les Colette / Joseph Keckler / Paul Wallfisch
31/05/14 Schauspielhaus, Dortmund

The last Small Beast before the summer break was notably one of the weaker this season, because Les Colette I had heard even at my very first Small Beast and Joseph Keckler, a baritone from New York, did not say anything to me. But as creatures of habit we were there, of course, this time in the studio and not in the smaller institution.

Paul Wallfisch

The theme of today's introduction of Paul Wallfisch seemed to be repeats. As of last month, he crawled on all fours into the studio and once again told the story of his friend Robbie Leaver and his project to crawl along Broadway before he played the song he had already presented last time.
Here Paul then in his approach gave a brief insight. He must play at least twice stuff over, the third time he would then already bored. When he then another song by Robbie leaver then played this for the first time, he already announced the repeat of this piece for the first Small Beast of the new season in September. He remained true to this statement in the course and also repeated his new song that he had presented the last time with the guitarist from Elysian Fields, this time alone.

Joseph Keckler

After Paul's set then came Joseph Keckler and I was expecting a normal concert, but it was a spectacular performance, which was one of the best things I had ever seen at the Small Beast.
He began with a fanciful story that he had met today and that an old acquaintance from New York on his first ever visit to Germany in Dortmund's pedestrian zone. It soon became clear that this was just an introduction, which passed into an abstruse story about the enjoyment of hallucinogenic mushrooms, presented in the style of an Italian opera and also sung in Italian (for better understanding ran a translation of the text on a canvas with.


On this screen then a clip of Keckler called I Was A Teenage Goth was shown with the brand name. Musically it went classic, called by Paul Wallfisch at the piano and sang accompanied by Schubert's Death and the Maiden. But his opera voice he could put effortlessly and with a pleasantly normal voice recite her own songs to myself piano. Time he let the music come from the band and helped David Bowie You've Been Around vor.All this was always interrupted by wonderful comedic monologues. In between, yet Paul Wall fish neighboring Wim Wollner joined on saxophone to the two for two songs and then went almost an hour just flew by. The audience was thrilled and of course an addition was erklatscht. To which Keckler wrapped in toilet paper and contributed to a wonderful version of Tim Buckley's classic Song To The Siren ago. He then unpacked again except for a small ponytail made of toilet paper on the pants and even played a song on the piano, before it went into the mandatory break.


Les Colette then had a hard time with me. The French women have now shrunk from the quartet to a trio. The drummer has left the band, the rhythm work occasionally took over the singer with a simple Tom, otherwise was reduced (alternately also violin) makes music with guitar and bass. The recalled minimum rock and sounded generally good, especially the violin not fiddled, but also almost sounded like a guitar, and has already brought the band into the opening for Nick Cave, but could not quite convince me.

Les Colette

Firstly, the voice of the singer was quickly quäkig when they got louder, on the other hand especially her drumming was sometimes a bit too bumpy and let the songs sound out of true in my ears. Also, I found their cover of In Heaven from Eraserhead not so great, but easy to'm very fan of the Pixies version. But with my lack of enthusiasm, I was probably the only one in the studio, even if my girlfriend noticed that Joseph Keckler, who followed the appearance of Les Colette's at the edge, also did not seem to work particularly impressed. But for adding reconciled me Les Colette then with a very successful version of me For you are beautiful by the Andrews Sisters.


After I previously blew the days Son Lux and also the nerves had again convinced, had the Small Beast actually had a bad standing up front, but Joseph Keckler cared for one of these magical moments where you expect nothing and end up sitting with shining eyes as and is completely blown away, and me repeatedly confirm that I attend too many concerts.
For adoption Paul Wallfisch announced then to more that the next Small Beast in September Howe will be yellow by Giant Sand to guest what the anticipation of the new season still increased. - Allroy for Prez