Composer and pianist Jack Perla creates compositions for stage and recording, using a palette that includes symphonic, operatic and chamber music, as well as varied jazz and popular idioms. He was recently commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera (HGO) to create a one-act opera with San Francisco playwright Eugenie Chan, for their HGOco “Song of Houston” project, funded by the Mellon foundation. “Song of Houston” is an ongoing series of new works that share the stories of Houstonians who define the unique character of that city. The new work, Courtside, received its premiere run in early 2011, and is a part of the “East + West” component of “Song of Houston”, which celebrates the city as a meeting place for Eastern and Western cultures, and explores the stories of first and second-generation immigrants. Jack also recently completed his first full-length chamber opera, Love/Hate, with writer Rob Bailis, co-commissioned by ODC Theater (San Francisco) and American Opera Projects (New York). In September 2010, Center City Opera presented scenes from Love/Hate as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival of the Arts. In March 2009, Love/Hate was presented in early development by the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) Opera Program, at both MSM and at the Galapagos Artspace (Brooklyn, New York). The complete work is scheduled for its premiere run in 2012, with performances in New York (American Opera Projects), Arlington (Urban Arias), Philadelphia (Center City Opera Theater), San Francisco (ODC Theater) and Houston (Houston Grand Opera, HGOco). The San Francisco performances are in co-production with The Opera Center of San Francisco Opera, and will feature singers from its prestigious Adler Fellows Program, directed by influential mezzo soprano and educator Sheri Greenawald.
Commissions for 2012-2013 include a new composition for TwoSense – the duo of pianist Lisa Moore and cellist Ashley Bathgate (Bang on a Can All Stars) funded by the Barlow Endowment; a one act opera entitled Belongings, for the Seattle Opera, with librettist and Atlantic writer Jessica Murphy Moo; a new vocal chamber work for soprano Sylvia McNair, violinist Jorja Fleezanis and pianist Karl Paulnack; an orchestral song cycle for The Oakland East Bay Symphony with tenor Thomas Glenn; and a new one act opera for The Houston Grand Opera, HGOco. Jack is also at work on two new, and distinctly different, recordings due out on Innova Records in 2012-13. The Bastard Wind is a vocal and chamber music disc engineered by Grammy Award-winner Leslie Ann Jones, featuring Thomas Glenn (Doctor Atomic, San Francisco Opera, The Metropolitan Opera), Melody Moore (San Francisco Opera, English National Opera), and other beloved American opera singers. Poet’s Cabaret is an alt-jazz collection of twelve original songs on love, loss, fear, fight and hope, featuring an array of San Francisco Bay Area performers.
Recent performances include the Blaine Jazz Festival in Northern Washington (June 2011), an all Jack Perla vocal program for the Noe Valley Chamber Music Series (May 2010) in San Francisco, and a featured performer/composer appearance at the White Pines Festival in Minnesota (June 2010) with renowned violinist Jorja Fleezanis, trumpet virtuoso Charles Lazarus (The Minnesota Orchestra) and the Miro Quartet. Other recent projects include Pretty Boy, an electro-acoustic piece commissioned by the Paul Dresher Ensemble, with original text by Canadian playwright and poet David Brock. The work is a song cycle based on the final capture and last moments in the life of American bank robber and folk hero Pretty Boy Floyd. On a Train Heading South, Jack’s innovative score for his collaboration with choreographer Brenda Way and visual designer Alex V. Nichols, commissioned by ODC Dance (San Francisco), toured the U.S. in 2005 – 2006 to extensive critical praise, culminating in performances at the Joyce Theater in New York City. Following this success, Jack was named Artist-in-Residence at ODC Theater San Francisco from 2006 to 2009, in a program supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund and the San Francisco Foundation. He participated in American Opera Projects’ “Composers and the Voice” program from the fall of 2007 to 2008, and Tapestry New Opera’s (Toronto) “LibLab” program during the summer of 2008. The James Irvine Foundation commissioned Jack in 2002 to compose Pixels at an Exhibition, premiered in 2003 by Patrick Summers conducting the Oakland East Bay Symphony, which also commissioned ‘Trane of Thought in 1999, noted in the press for its “high-energy impact” and for Jack’s “superb jazz performance”. He has received awards, grants and fellowships from the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition (2011), the American Composers Forum (Subito 2011; NCCCP 2008), the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund (2006), the American Music Center (CAP 2005), Meet the Composer (2003), the Civic Orchestra of Chicago (1990), Yaddo (1985), the MacDowell Colony (1995) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1990). Jack’s music has been performed and/or presented by the Louisiana and Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestras, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Absolute Ensemble (New York City), New Music Chicago, Music at the Anthology (New York), Yerba Buena Arts Center (San Francisco), Merkin Concert Hall (New York) and the British Music Information Center (London).
In 1997 Jack received the Thelonious Monk Institute’s Jazz Composers Award, designated by Terrance Blanchard, Pat Metheny and Michael Brecker. Subsequently Jack performed at the Texaco New York Jazz Festival, The Knitting Factory (NY), the Tampere Jazz Festival (Finland), the Big Sur, Monterey and Pacifica Jazz Festivals, throughout California, and at the Millennium Festival (England). He has performed with Seamus Blake, Rodney Whitaker, Gene Jackson, Kenny Davis, Kermit Driscoll, Craig Handy, Scott Wendholt, Steve Smith, Kai Eckhardt, Paul Hanson and many others. In 1998, he toured Japan and was featured on the Tokyo television program LP Jazz Time. Jack’s debut CD, Swimming Lessons for the Dead, features Roman Candles, the piece that won the award. The recording received prominent coverage and garnered wide critical praise in the U.S. and European jazz press, including Downbeat Magazine and Jazz Times.
Jack’s second Jazz CD, The Visit, features Will Kennedy (The Yellowjackets), Zakir Hussain (Shakti, John McLaughlin), Paul McCandless (Oregon, Bela Fleck), Karl Perazzo (Santana), Darol Anger (Turtle Island String Quartet), Mike Marshall, Alex Ligertwood (Santana). Metro Santa Cruz said about the disc: The Visit brings together a stellar and eclectic collection of the Bay area’s finest jazzers for far-ranging aural expeditions – from Oregon-like world fusion jazz with reed player Paul McCandless to taut cosmopolitan funk with violinist Darol Anger and tabla master Zakir Hussain. Jack Perla’s genius is composition. With broad swaths of color detailed by many fine strokes, he crafts pieces of glittering beauty, melodies that sneak into a listener’s consciousness and deeply insinuate themselves with each iteration or variation.” Jack has also performed and recorded with several of India’s most prominent musicians, including Zakir Hussain, Aashish Khan, Krishna Bhatt and Ronu Majumdar. He is featured on “Night Spinner”, George Brook’s 1998 recording produced by tabla master Zakir Hussain, with Hussain, Sultan Khan (Sarangi) and Aashish Khan (Sarod).
Jack Perla earned his DMA in composition from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick and Lukas Foss, and earned his BM from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with John Corigliano.
