A VOICE FOR ALL REASONS

There's a cacophony of sound in Joseph Keckler's apartment in Brooklyn. Trains on an elevated train line screech toward Manhattan, ambulance and fire engine sirens wail. Yet there are harmonious tones too, coming from the Puckish performer whose commanding voice cuts through the hubbub. 

During a video chat ahead of the unconventional writer musician's Australian tour, Review tries in vain to put a label, on Keckler who resists categorization. So, how does he describe himself for the first time he meets someone at a party? continue reading…

OPERA WIN FREE JOSEPH KECKLER FOR EVERYONE

THE MAN A NEWSPAPER ONCE DESCRIBED as “a more debonair, calmly coifed Edward Scissorhands“, Joseph Keckler, greets me from a theatre dressing room where behind him are photographs of Nona Hendryx, Laurie Anderson, Judy Collins and some he has not yet identified. It’s as if they knew he was coming.

Not that Keckler, who has a classically trained voice that can travel from operatic bass or nightclub schwing to mocking croon and high flutiness, sounds like them, or is trying to channel them. But there is a sense that this singer, writer, comic performer and alternative-to-alternative-cabaret star (“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,” he once said) is part of a tradition that straddles multiple genres, theatricality, and a sense of purity. And maybe even a touch of iconography.

There is even a little shared history given Keckler a few years ago commented on how he took a different approach to Anderson who had said that part of her career choices was because she thought she wasn’t good enough as a violinist to focus on it and therefore this freed her to explore a melding of many elements into a kind of performance art.

For Keckler, however, becoming good enough in one area to specialise – in his case, that operatic voice – was crucial in his multifaceted career. continue reading…

INTERVIEW WITH LYDIA LUNCH AND JOSEPH KECKLER

Tales of Lust & Madness is a new show from Lydia Lunch, New York’s ‘punk poet queen of extremities’ and Joseph Keckler, a singular performer once crowned the ‘best downtown performance artist’ in New York City.

Combining the dynamic spoken word of Lunch and the dark humour and unnerving musicality of Keckler, Tales of Lust & Madness brings these two notorious performers together to create an intimate evening of provocative musical poetry.

Passionate, confrontational and bold. Whether attacking the patriarchy and their pornographic war-mongering, turning the sexual into political or whispering a love song to the broken-hearted, Lydia Lunch’s fierce energy and rapid-fire delivery lend testament to her warrior nature.

Performing in Australia for the first time, Joseph Keckler is a singular artist who performs in a genre of his own design that fuses operatic vocals and contemporary subject matter into absurd and affecting underworld voyages.

One of these performers on their own is enough to discombobulate a person but together, they are a riot – Seven caught up with them from their homes in Brooklyn very early Sunday morning AEDT. continue reading…

AT THE BAR WITH SINGER, PUNK POET AND COMPOSER JOSEPH KECKLER

Singer/songwriter, writer and composer Joseph Keckler opens for his traveling sidekick and scream queen of spoken word Lydia Lunch in a string of shows around the country in March. Known for his distinct storytelling and impeccable delivery, the New York based Keckler has appeared at NPR’s Tiny Desk series, performed at the Lincoln Center, New York and Centre Pompidou in Paris, unleashing verses and prose like no other.

He brings his dark wit and goth energy to The Write Drop for our At the Bar series. continue reading…

FEARLESS VOICES: JOSEPH KECKLER AND RAEHANN BRYCE-DAVIS

Joseph Keckler creates operatic monologues that cover subjects such as psychedelic mushroom trips, haunted houses, and buying a jacket. He also does Schubert lieder. He’s about to tour to Australia with no-wave legend Lydia Lunch and joins Andy to unpack his unique sound and influences.

Mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis makes her Australian debut with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jaime Martín for Mahler’s 3rd Symphony. She’s a booked and busy opera performer too, with repertoire as varied as classics like Verdi’s Aida to contemporary remounts like X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X and world premieres like 10 Days in a Madhouse. continue reading…

WE COME TO PRAISE JOSEPH KECKLER

Last week I went to see Sleater Kinney for the first time since 2015. That T5 gig had Lizzo as the opening act, last Thursday’s show had Joseph Keckler opening.

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BRINGING SLAPSTICK TO OPERA’S CLASSIC DEATH SCENES

Joseph Keckler has been called the next big thing in opera because of his voice. In fact, he’s more of a comedian and performance artist. He has performed at Lincoln Center, the Pompidou Center in Paris—and at Weirdo Night at Zebulon, a hipster café in Los Angeles. The bass-baritone that resonates from his thin frame and baby face almost seems like an optical illusion. His versatile voice can climb to what he calls “this sort of theremin-like sound up at the top.”

Mr. Keckler mostly writes his own pieces, like “Goth Song,” which he performs in German, about a character who reverts to his teenage years shopping for black vinyl pants on St. Marks Place. His new show, “Let Me Die,” is a departure—or rather, a series of departures. A greatest hits of death scenes from classic opera, it runs this month as part of Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O19 and the city’s Fringe Festival.

“I’m going to open the show with some quick deaths,” Mr. Keckler says. “I don’t think it’s going to make anybody cry. It’s going to be a little slapstick, really. But gradually we want to find other emotions.”

Sarah Williams, new works administrator at Opera Philadelphia, says Mr. Keckler “has a very dry sense of humor, but he’s also very poignant.” continue reading…

FROM A TRICYCLE TO MANY VEHICLES.

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. continue reading…

JOSEPH KECKLER ON DEATH, OPERA, AND LET ME DIE

In constant motion between the art and opera worlds by way of popular culture, Joseph Keckler is best known for his vocal shape-shifting and his “faux arias,” which recount daily experiences with great verve. Earlier this year, he performed his Train With No Midnight at the Prototype Festival in New York. In October, he’ll offer a concert series at the Soho Theatre in London. He is also at work on a TV special to be aired at the end of this year. Here he speaks about his first ensemble piece, Let Me Die, which will premiere at FringeArts and Opera Philadelphia on September 21, 2019.

I USED TO WORK FOR A MAN who sold pirated opera recordings. People called him the Opera Pirate. We would listen to recordings and copy them at the same time. At some point I recognized that death is at the center of tragic opera, the event that everyone waits for. And I thought it would be fun to die over and over again, and ultimately to have other people participate in that. It was something of a childlike impulse. On a formal level, I’m curious about how to sustain something that is constantly ending. The idea of going in and taking out all of these little deaths from different operas came from “Lasciatemi morire,” which is the aria of Ariadne when she’s stranded on the isle of Naxos. It’s from a Claudio Monteverdi opera, and it’s the only extant part. So it’s a death song from a lost opera, and I really liked the way that she’s doubly stranded. So I thought, What if all operas were lost, and the deaths were the only parts that survived? I used that as the jumping-off point for fragmentation.

Let Me Die will be performed by myself, three very singular opera singers—Veronica Chapman-Smith, Augustine Mercante, and Natalie Levin—and an actress/dancer, Saori Tsukada. I will function as a kind of master of ceremonies; Elizabeth Gimbel will direct. I haven’t counted how many deaths there are, but it’ll be at least forty. We’re using very short ones often. It’s going to be very dense. There are suicides; there are murders. There are more abstract deaths, where somebody has a lament but you don’t see them expire on the stage. There’s a mass suicide, just for a second. There’s also a lengthy section at the center that’s very witchy, with self-immolation and a lot of vengeful women. Azucena from Il Trovatore puts a baby in the fire and relives the trauma of watching her mother burn at the stake. She is essentially in dialogue with Medea, who similarly burns herself and her own children; and Electra; and also the grandmother in Jenůfa, who puts the baby under the ice. There’s a freewheeling medley of extreme women. continue reading…

JOSEPH KECKLER’S NEW MUSICAL IS AN ENIGMATIC HIGHLIGHT OF NYC’S PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL

I sometimes wonder if we have enough Muses.

We’re not talking about the lowercase “muse” here, the female artist who is usually pretty brilliant in her own right but instead spends most of her time to doing some male artist’s laundry, but rather the uppercase demigoddess who personifies the mysterious process of artistic inspiration.

Yes, Greek mythology provides (among others) Melpomene, who sends us ideas for great dramatic theater, and of course Terpsichore, who kicks the minds of choreographers into gear after that first cigarette. But there must be another Muse for, say, copy editors? For surely it was she (let’s call her “Helvetica”) who devised the exquisite headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” No mere human mind could do that.

A less in-demand Muse (she might have to pull a couple of shifts as a barista to make ends meet) is the one who appears to stand-up comics, cabaret singers and performance artists. She is Anecdotia, and her brief is to tweak the performer’s real-life experiences into the witty and meaning patter that binds a show together.

Anecdotia was definitely in attendance Sunday evening at Train With No Midnight, one of a dozen events packed into this year’s iteration of Prototype, a week-long New York festival of cutting-edge opera and musical theater works. Though the piece let out before 7:30 p.m., the unnerving artistry of writer and performer Joseph Keckler left us feeling like it was four in the morning, and the streets surrounding the HERE venue in SoHo were uncharted canyons on the dark side of the moon. continue reading…

SLEATER KINNEY AND JOSEPH KECKLER AT HOUSE OF BLUES IN BOSTON

This past August, Sleater Kinney released The Center Won’t Hold. The St. Vincent produced album is a polished, slick sound with industrial elements integrated that feel new but familiar for the band. Opening their Boston show last Tuesday with the eponymous track from this album, their stage matched the stark, graphic sound. Bold, bright lights synchronized with their dramatic beats revealed rigid graphics standing tall behind them. They shown flickering silhouettes of tense, reaching hands amidst dead branches in a style reminiscent of a Saul Bass “Vertigo” poster. With Corin Tucker shouting the climax of the song, and Carrie Brownstein raging through the riffs surrounded by synth layers, the dynamic opener showed a band rising yet another peak of their creative career.

Opener Joseph Keckler began the evening as unguarded and humorous as expected for a musician noted for his absurdist output and multi-tier vocal range. Bounding from the deepest deeps of his voice to falsetto with sneering inflection, the performance was operatic and darkly comical. continue reading…

REVIEW: JOSEPH KECKLER SHARES OPERATIC OVERTONES AND TALES AT PANGEA.

Operatic arias delivered in a commanding bass-baritone voice, bird calls, lovers’ baby talk, the blues — all this and more were part of Joseph Keckler’s performance at Pangea on Thursday. The sounds were woven with electronics and videos, but first, last and always, Mr. Keckler is an operatic singer whose range shatters the conventional boundaries of classical singing.

The man behind the voice has the sensibility of a magician, a trickster’s dark humor and a formidable musical and literary erudition. His instrumental partners were Dan Bartfield on violin and Matthew Marsh on piano. Luscious recorded strings arranged by Mr. Bartfield augmented some arrangements.

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ADULT SWIM FANS SWARM INAUGURAL FESTIVAL

The inaugural Adult Swim Festival was held at The Row DTLA over the Oct. 5-7 weekend. For the occasion, dozens of musicians and comedians took to the Tabby and Calico stages, which were erected on either side of the festival grounds. The rest of the festival area was comprised of interactive arts and games installations, which bore the themes of various Adult Swim programs, as well as a marketplace and food and beverage vendors. Angelenos turned out in droves — many of them dressed to the nines — for the occasion. These photos represent the programming and attendees during the day on Saturday, Oct. 6. All photos by Scott Feinblatt. continue reading…

JOSEPH KECKLER BY OLIVIA LAING

Joseph Keckler is a magician, a vagabond of the outer boroughs with an eye for the unorthodox, irregular, anomalous, and eccentric. The first time I met him, in 2011, I was struck both by his silver jacket and his impeccable manners. He’s the most charming man I know, also the most fragrant. We both travel constantly, so we often find ourselves in the same city, slipping back into a long, ongoing, rambling conversation about art, performance, gender, and sex. Thinking about his work now, I’m struck most by its generosity. He describes himself in his collection Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World (Turtle Point Press, 2017) as an “obscurity impersonator.” I think that means he has a knack for drawing strangeness to him, for absorbing anecdotes and confessions, alchemizing them into mesmerizing, intricately constructed performance pieces. As a writer and singer he nudges language to its limits; as a performer he is uncannily commanding.

—Olivia Laing || Have you had coffee?

Joseph Keckler || Yeah, I’ve been guzzling it for a half an hour.

OL || Good, okay. Where are you?

JK || I’m in Seattle, on tour. I was just performing in Austin. And Vancouver, where I was playing at a lovely little performing arts center, then at a former porn theater—every Vancouverite told me with glee, “This used to be porn theater!” Last night I did an impromptu show with no tech or anything at this gallery café with the musician Ahamefule Oluo. Next I’ll head to Ann Arbor. And where are you? What are you up to?

OL || I’m sitting in my study, which is at the top of my house in Cambridge, trying desperately to steal the next couple of moments before Crudo (W. W. Norton, 2018) comes out to write Everybody, the nonfiction book I need to finish by the end of the year. The chapter I’m doing at the moment is about violence and sex and Francis Bacon and the Holocaust. (laughter) I don’t know why I write these cheerless, miserable books. I’m about to go to Berlin to do some research. Are you possibly at Chavisa’s house?

JK || Yes. (laughter) And we’ve put a blanket over her bird. To keep him quiet. continue reading…

APPROVAL MATRIX

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JOSEPH KECKLER AND ARIANA REINES IN CONVERSATION

Each season, Baryshnikov Arts Center invites writers into the studio to interview BAC Resident Artists. The resulting essays offer an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the creative process. Joseph Keckler was a Spring 2019 BAC Space Resident Artist.

A conversation between Spring 2019 BAC Space Resident Artist Jospeh Keckler and poet, playwright, and performing artist Ariana Reines.

Conversation begins late.

Ariana Reines: That gave me time to eat some lamb off the bone. I don’t eat meat generally but…

Joseph Keckler: Only off the bone when you do? Good policy.

AR: Only off the bone, marinated for six hours in Malbec by a former veterinarian, in a country where meat is a kind of religion. You can see it’s affecting me neurologically. I do have some questions prepared though! I’ve always wanted to ask you this, and it is the most clichéd question that gets asked of artists, but I mean it in the most expansive way possible: how did you discover your voice?

JK: It was more gradual, not a singular moment. I decided to cover a Cab Calloway song for the 4th grade talent show. My parents were recently recalling that I started to practice it and sounded very off-tune and — the implication — talentless. But then something clicked and I suddenly was hitting the notes, and sort of “channeling” Cab Calloway, is how they put it — their only explanation for my sudden ability to sing on pitch. As a teenager I started taking voice lessons because I would sing various dirges at the piano very aggressively and become hoarse after only one song, so I needed to learn technique. My voice teacher at that time, Fay Smith, who just passed away this year at 90, wanted me to have an opera career, and when I was a child I was really into Mel Blanc, the Warner Brothers voice actor, and always doing all this vocal shapeshifting stuff. My facility for that was apparent before the facility for singing.

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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO PREMIERE AND INTERVIEW: ‘THE RIDE,’ JOSEPH KECKLER.

ABOVE: JOSEPH KECKLER.

The first time we saw Joseph Keckler perform 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. continue reading…

THE EXCITEMENT OF SHIFT: JOSEPH KECKLER COMES TO THE LONG CENTER

Last April, as the evening weekend revelries began at Fusebox, Austin’s annual cross-disciplinary arts festival, performer Joseph Keckler took the stage at Al Volta’s Midnight Bar. The audience for this not-quite-midnight performance was the ideal mix for the festival’s late night hangout: the international, national and local arts-connoisseur attendees, who came to Fusebox to see innovative dance, theater and music performances, as well as ordinary Austinites on the prowl for good beer, a free show and maybe some bowling. Even this discerning crowd seemed scarcely prepared for the likes of Joseph Keckler and the astonishing performance and voice they encountered.

That Fusebox show might have been the first introduction of the New York-based artist to an Austin audience, but since then Texans are getting better acquainted with the sublime but hard-to-define Keckler. He has made several recent trips here, culminating Jan. 23-24, 2018 in two upcoming performances at the Long Center, co-presented by Fusebox Festival, simply titled An Evening with Joseph Keckler.

Almost a year after Fusebox 2017, I still have trouble describing Keckler’s performance. Monologist, vocalist, opera composer, deadpan-ironic humorist: all of these titles apply to Keckler, but none of them is sufficient in itself. Keckler uses his multi-octave vocal range to delve deep and then high into operatic arias of his own composition. These songs, some in German or Italian, are filled with longing, despair, and tales of hallucinogen-laced chocolate. Once he finishes one song in a show, he might use that glorious voice in service of dynamic storytelling, to mimic the speech and complaints of high-maintenance bosses, clients and even the odd talking parrot.

I caught up with Keckler in the late fall as he embarked on something of a book/demolition performance tour. Along with promoting his new collection of essays and narratives, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, Keckler has been back and forth to collaborate with Texas artist friends in performance pieces to mark endings.

For Austin multi-media artist Alyssa Taylor Wendt, Keckler performed and read as one of the final events at Co-Lab Projects’ downtown gallery space slated for demolition. Then, in Houston, he climbed atop conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll’s Prototype 180 house to sing a requiem for this project that turned urban policy into an artistic medium. After three songs, Keckler got down but continued to chant a kind of “Om” mantra as Carroll bulldozed the single-family home/architectural performance art into shredded oblivion. continue reading…

JOSEPH KECKLER, INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVELER

I have a copy of a brand new book, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, sitting on the edge of my desk. Inside it is inscribed: “Hope we stay in the same reality. Love, Joseph.” At the time, I did not fully appreciate the extent to which Joseph Keckler, the author, is a dimension-traveling wizard. But I already had inklings.

Three days earlier, late one evening in Austin, Texas, I received a text message: “Hi, this is Joseph.” Joseph and I had never met, but he is the friend of a good friend and created a beautiful piece for Mirror Mirrored, an art book I co-published. Also, a year and a half earlier, I had arranged a performance for him at a DC gallery on the only night I can remember when the entire city’s metro system shut down (the small group that managed to make it to the event was treated to a very intimate showing).

Joseph was in Austin for his book tour and thought it would be a fantastic opportunity to finally meet in person. He happened to know a chef who ran a restaurant that was a thirty minute walk from my apartment. Joseph, who was staying on the other side of town, came by ride share.

Upon arriving at the restaurant, I did not see Joseph, who my friend had described as looking like a more talented and refined Johnny Depp. On that particular dark evening, I was very much wondering exactly what talent looked like. The answer was a thin figure in a leather jacket casually wandering about the street at the edge of the park. I waved and we went in together.

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THEATER LISTINGS FOR JULY 24-30

‘Preludes’ Writer’s block turns out to be more inspiring than you could have imagined — and sad and stirring and gloriously fun — in Dave Malloy’s account of three years of silence in the career of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Gabriel Ebert and Or Matias are marvelous as two sides of the stymied composer in a production directed with extravagant inventiveness by Rachel Chavkin (2:00). Claire Tow Theater, 150 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, 212-239-6200, lct.org/lct3. (Brantley) continue reading…

REVIEW: IN ‘PRELUDES,’ A HYPNOTIST TRIES TO GET RACHMANINOFF TO MAKE MUSIC AGAIN

Writer’s block turns out to be a lot more inspiring than you could ever have imagined — and sad and stirring and gloriously fun. In “Preludes,” which opened on Monday night at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center, Dave Malloy makes beautiful music out of a composer’s three years of creative silence.

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OUTTAKES

We are all traditionalists in a sense and though it’s rare, when an artist manages to find a new approach to an old tradition, infusing it with a fresh sense of individuality, while at the same time paying deep respect to its original form and intent, we invariably end up with the likes of one Joseph Keckler.

Keckler, a fan of Bessie Smith and a trained opera singer, is well aware of his origins and continually shows that, and though he’s irreverent about those origins, he never disrespects them, even as he goes well beyond their borders. He is a rare breed: the comedy that surrounds “una furtiva lagrima” and the tear itself. continue reading…

If you combined Phillip Glass, Rufus Wainwright, and Franz Schubert into one person, you might end up with someone like New Yorker Joseph Keckler, an opera singer who clearly values the intersections between traditional and contemporary musicality. He stopped by our studio with renowned Austin pianist Peter Stopschinski continue reading…

PEN DIY: JOSEPH KECKLER ON HOW TO SING YOURSELF

Discussed: Cat names inspired by Robert Pinsky’s abecedarian poem, magic mushrooms, how to live above a gospel choir, and a taxi ride to Yonkers.

In a fresh and inventive PEN DIY talk titled “How to Sing Yourself,” Joseph Keckler used opera, fiction, poetry, photography, and performance to give the audience a glimpse of his genre and medium-bending creative process. From an Italian aria inspired by a psychedelic experience with mushrooms, to a darkly hilarious piece of performance art on the mundane intricacies of nine-to-five office culture, Keckler filled our DIY stage with sound, song, and brilliant performance. The discussion following his talk was moderated by Angela Ledgerwood. continue reading…

WATCH: Q&A WITH JOSEPH KECKLER.

In a fresh and inventive PEN DIY talk titled “How to Sing Yourself,” Joseph Keckler used opera, fiction, poetry, photography, and performance to give the audience a glimpse of his genre and medium-bending creative process. Here, he speaks with PEN DIY host Angela Ledgerwood, and answers audience questions about his work. continue reading…

JOSEPH KECKLER’S TEEN GOTH RELAPSE

Just in time for Halloween, New York performance artist Joseph Keckler premieres his St. Mark's teen goth relapse on VICE. continue reading…

THE BLOG-CUM-NONPROFIT WILL HOST A GOTH OPERA BENEFIT STARRING JOSEPH KECKLER

Fundraisers can be stuffy, painfully boring affairs … or they can be elaborate goth operas starring the performance artist Joseph Keckler. Art F City’s is, unsurprisingly, the latter.

Chances are you know Art F City as a blog, which started in 2005 as the art-related outlet for the honest, at times contrarian, voice of Paddy Johnson. “I would say that vision was about … to put it in blunt terms, speaking truth to power,” she told Hyperallergic.

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ARTISTS AT THE CROSSROADS.

The second ‘Artists at the Crossroads’ talk as winter and spring residents present their residencies and join in conversation with fellow resident artists R. Luke DuBois and Okwui Okpokwasili, moderated by Adam Sternbergh, Cultural Editor at New York Magazine.

During the Winter 2015-2016 residency, visualist/software designer Joshue Ott and composer Kenneth Kirschner collaborated to research and develop mobile technologies for visual and sound art with the ultimate goal of creating a free, publicly available smartphone app. Through public engagement, research and digital collection, they created soundscapes and a new iteration of their variant app series, variant:breaker.

In Spring 2016, Joseph Keckler set out to challenge New Yorkers’ supposed rejection of Times Square and their claims to “never go there,” by lurking around and looking for locals he recognized to ask questions. As the approach became passive observation, his practice shifted indoors. From a small, ubiquitous office on 46th Street, he created a rehearsal studio, writing room and even film set.

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