RINDE ECKERT
Performer/Librettist/Composer

Rinde Eckert is critically renowned as a composer, writer, director, singer, actor and movement artist. He conceives, creates, composes, writes and performs in Opera / New Music Theatre productions which tour throughout the United States, in Europe and Asia.

American Repertory Theatre commissioned and produced the playwright / composer’s first full-evening opera conceived and written for a major theatre company. Directed by ART artistic director Robert Woodruff, Highway Ulysses carries a cast of eight, including Eckert, with music performed by the Empty House Cooperative. Highway Ulysses had a success 24-performance run in March 2003 and won the Norton Award for Best New Play in Boston.

Eckert conceived, wrote the book and music, and performed in And God Created Great Whales. Produced by New York’s Foundry Theatre, the two-person opera opened in May 2000, taking national critics by storm, and winning a special Obie-Award. And God Created Great Whales was remounted again twice for off-Broadway runs. The opera was part of Baltimore’s Center Stage season, ran for a week at the Mondavi Center at the University of California, Davis, and is at London’s Barbican Center in June 2003.

Solo staged works by Eckert include An Idiot Divine, Romeo Sierra Tango, Quit This House, and the two-person musical play The Gardening of Thomas D. Shoot the Moving Things and Four Songs Lost in a Wall were written for radio. Eckert frequent collaborates with Paul Dresher, and wrote and performed in Slow Fire, Power Failure, Pioneer, and the one-person opera Ravenshead, with music by Steve Mackey. Eckert is also a frequent collaborator with choreographer Margaret Jenkins. The three artists won the San Francisco Bay Area’s Isadora Duncan Award for the text and music of Shelf Life written for the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, and reunited for Jenkins’ 30th Anniversary in April 2003.

Record producer Lee Townsend and Eckert have created three CDs of his uniquely eclectic music: Finding My Way Home, Do the Day Over and Story In, Story Out are available on the Intuition label in Köln, Germany. Eckert was the featured playwright when three of his librettos were published in the Summer 2000 issue of Theater ("New Music-Theater"), Volume 30, Number 2 published by Yale University. Rinde Eckert now lives in New York.