Playwright: Peter Saltzman. At: Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Tickets:773-935-6875; www.athenaeumtheatre.org; $27. Runs through: July 6
We are born first hearing, then seeingand only years later do we learn to speak, making the task of using words to describe music one of the most difficult translations imaginable. Striking down barriers is Peter Saltzman's mission, however, his re-integrative iconoclasm reflected in the combination of visual, verbal and aural devices he employs in recounting his quest for the holy grail uniting classical, jazz and pop music.
Projected images of talking headsMonty Pythonesque collage puppets or sometimes Saltzman, himself, on videotapequibble over taxonomic issues like the orderliness of Baroque vs. the spontaneity of be-bop, while our hero proceeds to lay out his manifesto autobiographically, the stages of his growth marked by such diverse influences as Bach and Beethoven, McCoy Tyner and Randy Weston, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Thelonious Monk, Stevie Wonder and Sting. In the course of his search for his own voice, our voyager illustrates the path of his journey with excerptslive and recordedfrom the milestones encountered thereon.
Don't confuse the results with a simple multiple-disciplinary revue, though. Saltzman is capable of reproducing, say, Duke Ellington's "Caravan" or James P. Johnson's "Carolina Shout" with note-for-note accuracy, but his gestalt leans more to improvisationfor example, riffing on Beethoven's "Fur Elise" which he gradually embellishes with a few contrapunto ostinatos, a thrumming modal bass line and an abundance of lush arpeggios. Don't come expecting a comedy turn after the fashion of Victor Borge or Dudley Moore, either. Along with tickling the ivories, Saltzman also delivers Carl Sagan-style lectures analyzing the principles upon which he mapped his progress. ( There's no quiz, don't worry. )
Playgoers who don't know a tacet from a semiquaver, or who associate "jazz" with Frank Sinatra, needn't sweat, in other words. The dynamic of live performance is that of a conversationin this case, a solo performer wishing to share his discoveries with us. Saltzman's slate for the evening is still under revision ( director Edwin Wald apprised us pre-curtain of changes in the printed playlist ), but by the time our guide returns full circle to his early experiments in melody-making with his rendition of "Song to My Younger Self," the intrepid curiosity of this solitary knight, armed only with his piano, is sufficient to sustain our attention for the 75 minutes of its press preview and maybe, whether we fully understand its every component, win our support for his cause.