Living in Peru : your everyday companion

(LIP-jl) -- The East Village Opera Company (EVOC) has announced the date of their only show in Peru.  EVOC, which some would say is a cover band that spins traditional operas with modern twists, will offer an incredible experience never before seen in Peru on April 12, at the Vértice de la Cultura del Museo de La Nación, in Lima, Peru.

EVOC's members include cofounders Tyley Ross (vocalist) and Peter Kiesewalter (instrumentalist) as well as 8 other members who include; a bassist, a percussionist, two guitarists, and a string quartet.


About East Village Opera Company


The concept of the East Village Opera Company is totally fresh, but not unprecedented in pop. In 1985, for example, former punk-rock impresario Malcolm McLaren released Fans, an album of “hip-hopera” that brought funky beats and electronic programming to the works of Puccini and Bizet. But EVOC is a whole new thing: an integrated, eleven-strong working band dedicated to rocking the opera and electrifying the classics, as the ensemble has been doing to spectacular effect ever since its New York stage debut in the spring of 2004.

The East Village Opera Company was co-founded by lead singer Tyley Ross and arranger/multi-instrumentalist Peter Kiesewalter. They assembled a full-on rock band, adding two guitars, bass, and drums to Peter’s keyboards, then synched it to a string quartet. A second superb vocalist, AnnMarie Milazzo, was recruited for impassioned duets with Tyley Ross (cf. "Au fond du temple saint," from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers) and soaring solos like “Ebben? — Ne andrò lontana” (from La Wally by Alfredo Catalani).

EVOC’s Decca/Universal Classics debut was produced and recorded in April-July, 2005 by Neil Dorfsman, a three-time Grammy Award winner whose credits include international bestsellers by Sting, Dire Straits, Paul McCartney, and Bjork. The string arrangements were recorded in Prague by the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra featuring lead violinist Pauline Kim.

By embracing what Peter Kiesewalter calls “the pomposity of rock and the pomposity of opera” without demeaning or satirizing either form, the East Village Opera Company flies where countless other “classical-crossover” efforts have failed.

“We have a profound love and respect for the opera,” Peter insists. “But it’s so dramatic, so over the top by today’s standards, that it cannot be delivered with a straight face. You need a little bit of irreverence in it.”

“With modern recording technology and a wide variety of musical styles at our disposal, our goal has been to approach these songs the way we feel the composers would were they alive today,” says Tyley Ross.


More on co-founders Tyley Ross and Peter Kiesewalter


Ottawa, Canada natives Tyley Ross and Peter Kiesewalter bring decades of eclectic musical experience to their groundbreaking new project, the East Village Opera Company (EVOC).

Tyley Ross has been performing since his early teens as a street busker, a cartoon voice-over specialist, an actor, and a professional singer-songwriter with two solo albums to his credit. He was hand picked by Pete Townshend to play the title character in the Canadian production of The Who’s Tommy, and later starred in Miss Saigon on Broadway. As the lead voice of EVOC, Tyley’s controlled power and emotional com¬mitment reflect the early influences of impassioned and iconic singers from both the worlds of opera and pop/rock.

Peter Kiesewalter began piano lessons with his dad at age six, and was a professional musician by the time he graduated high school in 1986. He earned a classical performance degree in clarinet from Ottawa University (with a minor in jazz saxophone) while working in a dizzying array of musical contexts as a keyboardist and reed player.

“The great thing about a small city like Ottawa,” Peter explains, “is that in order to make a living playing music, you had to be very flexible.” He worked as a sideman with numerous Canadian singer-songwriters (Jane Siberry, Lynn Miles), house keyboard player at a country music studio, contributing member of a Celtic fusion band and original jump jive project, orchestra pit musician, Aquarius/EMI recording band Fat Man Waving, and leader of his own world music outfit the Angstones.


That flexibility came in handy when Kiesewalter moved to New York in 1997 to act as musical director of The Bottom Line’s Downtown Messiah, a Manhattan seasonal presentation that recasts Handel's oratorio as a setting for pop-music performers. Peter was working as a house com¬poser at ABC-TV in 2001 when he was approached to create contemporary settings of tradi¬tional arias for Kiss of Debt—a Canadian film starring Tyley Ross as an aspiring opera singer under the thumb of a crime boss.

“Peter agreed to do one song, initially,” says Tyley Ross, “but we had such a good time that we quickly recorded 15 songs” with a 20-person musical cast that included guitarist Vernon Reid (Living Colour) and bluegrass banjo master Tony Trishka. After sitting on the mixes for two years, they finally decided in 2003 to master and self-release the first EVOC album, La Donna. The album featured brash, inventive treatments of operatic arias and Neapolitan folk songs--"Vesti la giubba," "La Donna e mobile," "Ave Maria"—interpreted as everything from disco to bossa nova to stadium-strength rock.

In March 2004, the East Village Opera Company appeared at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan for what its founders thought might be the group’s first and last live show. “We played one show to maybe 80 people,” Tyley recalls, “but among them were a number of record business folks and media types. The reaction was unbelievable—from that one show, we had national press virtually overnight.” “What was meant to be our last show became our first show. Joe’s Pub had a cancellation two weeks later, brought us back to fill in—and within a couple months, we were selling the place out. Within a year, we had signed a deal with Universal Classics.”

** Special announcement**

LivininPeru.Com is holding a special drawing for tickets to EVOC's only presentation in Lima.  To find out how you can have a shot at winning tickets to the show please visit this (link).

Information for this article was taken from the East Village Opera Company's official website (link)