2022 - The Hamlet on Alcatraz Soundtrack
We’re thrilled to announce the release of our Hamlet on Alcatraz album by Composer Charlie Gurke!
"Space and sound have an intimate and complex relationship. The shape of a space, as well as what it’s made of, determines its acoustic properties. Some spaces amplify sound, others absorb it, still others bounce sounds off surfaces, echoing off ceilings and floors and down corridors. Sites connote sound as well, provoking music from the imagination. Composers and musicians of all kinds have been inspired by geography and landscape, from folk songs to symphonies."
- Charlie Gurke, saxophonist, composer, educator, and We Players’ Music Director
The album is streamable on a variety of platforms, and downloadable from Bandcamp. Please leave a tip for our musicians if you can, in support of future musical projects!
Featuring:
Charlie Gurke - baritone saxophone/compositions
Steve Adams - alto saxophone
Jamie Dubberly - trombone
Henry Hung - trumpet
Luke Kirley - tuba
Eric Garland - drums
Music Director Charlie Gurke on KPOO, discussing the Hamlet on Alcatraz album:
The Score: Hamlet on Alcatraz
Charlie adapted and further developed his original score for new instrumentation and your listening pleasure.
The Tracks:
1. The Players
2. Transition Music
3. Dumbshow/Madness
4. Gravedigger
5. What Ceremony Else?
6. O Proud Death
A bit of reminiscent, anecdotal context:
1. The Players
The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-
comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor
Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
liberty, these are the only men.
Except they were all women. We first met the traveling troupe on the expansive Parade Ground below the Cell House. Thereafter they dispersed themselves about the isle... Sometimes blending into the environment, watching and waiting... Sometimes whirling and twirling, spinning their stories to catch the conscience of us all.
2. Transition music
The audience follows the musicians throughout the island. Sometimes moving through spaces open to the general public, and often being carefully led up fire escapes, through secret side trails, and into buildings usually closed to park visitors.
3. Dumbshow and Madness
The audience traversed the fire escape outside of the Hospital and into the tiled spaces of this part of the Cell House, usually closed to visitors. Packed shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, they witness, -along with the King, the Queen, and the Danish court - "The Murder of Gonzango", a thinly veiled reenactment of Claudius' murder of his brother, Hamlet's father.
KING CLAUDIUS
What do you call the play?
HAMLET
The Mouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play
is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is
the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see
anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o'
that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it
touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our
withers are unwrung.
Ophelia’s madness
A rare glimpse into the former 'Laundry' or 'Industries' warehouse building on the western side of the island, Ophelia and her fractured psyche shattered hearts as she sang snatches of old tunes, making fragile nests with bits of string and feathers, and ultimately taking flight into the wild waters of the unknown.
4. Gravedigger
Perched atop the enormous "Rubble Piles" on the western side of the Parade Ground, the gravediggers sang of youth, love, age, and ultimate disappearance. A grave song to be sure.
In youth, when I did love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,
To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,
O, methought, there was nothing meet.
But age, with his stealing steps,
Hath claw'd me in his clutch,
And hath shipped me intil the land,
As if I had never been such.
5. What Ceremony Else?
A solemn parade of mourners, haunting bells jangle, as Laertes carries his dead sister Ophelia in his arms, to lay her in the earth.
Sweets to the sweet, farewell...
6. Oh Proud Death
Back on the Parade Ground, the earth is strewn with bodies - Hamlet, Laertes, Queen Gertrude, King Claudius, all down.
PRINCE FORTINBRAS
This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?
The rest is silence.