Curated craft shop. Culture hub. Block party organizer. The Silver Room in downtown Hyde Park — what locals call the commerce-heavy commercial stretch of 53rd Street — is many things.
Starting April 16, the neighborhood stalwart can add another descriptor to that list: opera house. For the foreseeable future, passersby will be able to catch a hurtling, high-energy “hip-hopera” outside The Silver Room’s storefront at 1506 E 53rd St.
“It’s like if Hans Zimmer composed something for Kendrick Lamar,” says K.F. Jacques, the M.C. and operatic baritone who composed the work.
It won’t be the only place to undergo such a transformation. The same day, a QR code will spring up near Promontory Point field house, a short walk away. On April 30, they’ll be joined by QR codes in Lincoln Square, Wicker Park, and Uptown, and again on May 14 in Edgewater, Bronzeville, and more as organizers work with store managements to secure window-front permissions to display the codes. When scanned, you’ll see and hear on your smartphone a brief, brand-new work by a local composer, free of charge. All you need is a smartphone and less than five minutes of your time.
The mini-operas sprouting all over are part of A City of Works, a project by Chicago Fringe Opera (CFO). The ambitious indie company workshopped the concept over the past year, tapping 10 composers and librettists to film site-inspired works in conjunction with neighborhood businesses and the Chicago Parks District. Freer public health guidelines (and better weather) have provided a golden window for the initiative to take flight.
“We realized we needed to create a project that actually gets people out of their houses and into their communities in a safe, exploratory, and celebratory way,” says CFO artistic director George Cederquist.
How “safe” are we talking? According to the artistic team and participating composers, very. The QR codes posted in collaboration with participating businesses will face toward the sidewalk. Passersby can choose to engage with the codes without setting a foot inside. If you’d rather not schlep across the city in the first place, anyone will be able to access the videos on CFO’s website as they become available.
CFO’s QR-code conceit sounds straightforward. However, as many presenters have learned on the fly, where video work is involved, it’s anything but. All save one of the works had to be recorded in two different sessions: one for audio (recorded at Lincoln Park Presbyterian, with the composers present or dialing in via Zoom) and one for video (filmed in the respective neighborhood, with performers miming along). To minimize expenditures and in-person exposure, the CFO creative team has donned multiple hats throughout A City of Works: Cederquist is filming the music videos — all in a single shot, citing aesthetic and practical reasons — while music director Catherine O’Shaughnessy is moonlighting as audio engineer.
“Right now I don’t have a lot of conducting work, for obvious reasons, so I’ve taken it as a challenge to learn about audio recording,” O’Shaughnessy says. “Now, it’s a skill CFO has on its roster. The more we can keep things in house and just build our strengths, the more we’ve been able to do.”
They’re also not starting from zero. Earlier in the pandemic, CFO tapped Jacques (also behind 2019’s exceptionally clever Rosina Project ) to compose and perform a “micro-opera” for Decameron Opera Coalition , a commissioning initiative inspired by the Black Death — era text of the same name. Cederquist and resident designer Brad Caleb Lee produced a visually stunning video of Jacques’s 10-minute contribution. That micro-opera, “Corsair,” is behind a paywall, but those hoofing it past The Silver Room can catch a snippet for free: “The Bay,” featuring Jacques’s vocals over meaty synths.
“This merchant’s ship is under siege, so there’s big, brassy orchestral hits with the rap coming in between it,” Jacques says. “It really is the culmination of [that] hip-hop opera, as told in a minute and a half.”
“Corsair” prepped CFO to produce A City of Works’ nine “camera operas,” as Cederquist calls them. Organizational oversight and tech assistance aside, however, the creative team has mostly let composers take free rein with their contributions, including the locations.
“We let the composers and librettists lead on that,” O’Shaughnessy said. “It engages parts of the city they love and have a connection to.”
Jacques, who grew up at 57th Street and South Kimbark Avenue, wanted to partner with an iconic Hyde Park business, making The Silver Room an obvious choice. Meanwhile, multidisciplinary artist Renée Baker knew she wanted to film her piece in one specific storefront: Phantom Gallery in Bronzeville, where she has been an artist-in-residence since 2016.
“When they first contacted me about working in that gallery, back in 2013, the Bronzeville Art District revitalization wasn’t fully developed yet. Now, there are art and venue spaces popping up all over the place,” Baker says. “I thought it was an area that should not be ignored, and I didn’t want something fake.”
Baker recently double-barred “Lone Alchemy,” the last of her operatic trilogy on the life and philosophies of James Baldwin. The aria she’s presenting for A City of Works, “Sweet Fruit Falling,” is part of that opera. Written in 2018, the aria’s text grew out of Hindu monasticism, particularly the practice of eating only fallen fruit. Then, a year later, Baker revisited “Sweet Fruit Falling,” haunted by the self-deprecating pleas of 23-year-old Elijah McClain — himself a musician — to the Aurora, Colo. police officers who restrained him with a chokehold; McClain’s death sparked musical protests against police brutality around the world including in Chicago. When CFO came calling, Baker immediately knew she wanted to record this aria in particular.
“I wrestled with the title, because when people think of Black people and fruit, the first thing that comes to their minds is ‘Strange Fruit.’ I wanted to stay away from that allegory [and emphasize that] our journey is fraught with all sorts of dangers, but also all sorts of pleasures,” Baker says.
“Someone can potentially find joy, love, and peace in something someone else would devalue. Many African Americans live our best lives inside the cracks of how other people pigeonhole us.”
“Sweet Fruit Falling” is the only work that will be recorded live on-site in one sitting. For that session, Baker reunites with two longtime collaborators and AACM members: vocalist Dee Alexander and multi-instrumentalist (and Elastic Arts director) Adam Zanolini. Baker’s first two “Baldwin Chronicles” premiered at the Arts Club Chicago and Symphony Center; she’s thinking of this abbreviated City of Works outing as “Lone Alchemy’s” trial run, especially while she eyes a presenter.
“I’m shopping the third opera, so ‘Sweet Fruit Falling’ will probably be revised yet again,” Baker says.
In other words, it’s a beginning, not an end. That also goes for A City of Works at large. The CFO team is still scrambling to finalize details ahead of the staggered launch dates, but they aren’t kidding themselves about the current iteration’s geographic limitations. A City of Works is noticeably North Side heavy; the only West Side-ish locale is Chopin Theatre (for Michael Oldham’s “Wicker Park, In Caricature”), and Hyde Park — with enough locations to boast its own City of Works walking tour — is as far south as it gets.
That’s just one of the reasons Cederquist considers City of Works a “pilot season” for a larger, more aspirational CFO initiative down the road: 50 songs for Chicago’s 50 wards.
“The hope is that people do stumble across this and [think], ‘Well, what is this three-minute song in this neighborhood I’ve walked every day of my life?’, or that they just moved to, or happened to be passing through,” Cederquist says. “We’d love to expand the project over the course of months, and possibly years.”
Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.
The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism helps fund our classical music coverage. The Chicago Tribune maintains complete editorial control over assignments and content.
