Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert & Vân-Ánh Võ
Music by Jonathan Berger
Libretto by Harriet Scott Chessman
On March 16, 1968, in South Vietnam, US Army pilot Hugh Thompson, Jr. nosed his helicopter down three times into the carnage at My Lai in an attempt to stop the civilian massacre. In this fevered character study of the once-vilified, now-lionized soldier, composer Jonathan Berger enlists Southeast Asian zithers and xylophones and an amplified Kronos Quartet to consider the line between duty and conscience. Tenor Rinde Eckert portrays the latter-day Thompson, who—in a manic barrage of soldier speak, gritty poetry, and hallucinatory recollection—reflects on a decisive moment when breaking rank in the name of human decency forever changed the public perception of a war.
Direction and set design by Mark DeChiazza and Rinde Eckert
Video projection design by Mark DeChiazza
Lighting design by Brian H. Scott
Commissioned by Harris Theater for Music and Dance with support from the Laura and Ricardo Rosenkranz Artistic Innovation Fund and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Gerbode-Hewlett Foundations 2013 Music Commissioning Awards initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts.



