Arts & Culture

The Church is, from left, Ian Haug, Tim Powles, Steve Kilbey, Jeffrey Cain and Ashley Naylo.

Talking music, fame, festivals Steve Kilbey

By Nancy D. Lackey Shaffer Pasadena Weekly Staff Writer

Looking back on the music of the late 1980s, one can see a myriad of genres simultaneously pulling on the popular zeitgeist. Pop divas such as Whitney Houston and Madonna loomed large even as rockers in the mold of Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses were burning up the charts.

George Michael was shedding his Wham!-era teen idol persona; Morrissey was shedding the Smiths. Grunge’s iron fist in a flannel glove hadn’t quite grabbed the alt-rock scene by the throat, but Sonic Youth, Jane’s Addiction and the Pixies were on the rise.

Amid this fertile chaos came The Church. Already a darling of the underground in their native Australia, the indie rockers found mainstream success with 1988’s “Starfish,” which spawned the hits “Under the Milky Way” and “Reptile.”

Praised by fans and critics for its lush melodies, mystical overtones and introspective lyrics, the Church quickly became a favorite on college radio stations, joining Echo and the Bunnymen, The Fall and Joy Division in the post-punk, pre-dream pop pantheon.

Despite decades of shifting fortunes and membership changes, The Church has continued to record and tour — with singer/songwriter and bassist Steve Kilbey the sole linchpin holding it all together.

“It’s a bit like the Cure, I guess — just Robert Smith now, isn’t it?” said Kilbey, speaking by phone on April 13 from his home on Australia’s Gold Coast. “That happens. Mark E. Smith, he once said, ‘if it’s me and your granny playing bongos, that’s The Fall.’ And I’ve sort of reached that stage now.”

Love and lyrics

Kilbey was born in England in 1957, but moved to Australia as a child. He distinctly recalls being influenced by the music his parents played.

“We were very poor. My dad only had two records; luckily one of them was a really good one. This record by Frank Sinatra, called “Only the Lonely,” had all these torch ballads of unrequited love, written by the best songwriters in the world at the time.”

These “beautiful, sad songs” filled the young Kilbey with love and longing, and an appreciation for skilled lyricists.

“It’s why I’m very dissatisfied with lyrics like, you know, ‘baby, we’re gonna rock all day!’” Kilbey said, emulating a loud, screeching rock ’n’ roll chorus. “It doesn’t really cut the mustard after these wonderful lyrics.”

By the time he was 9, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rocking the music world into a new era, and Kilbey was as enamored as “every other kid in the world.”

“I was influenced by all of that,” he recalled. “And then at age 16 to 18 I took to Marc Bolan and David Bowie — who were more than influences. They were more like obsessions. While I liked the Beatles, I didn’t want to be the Beatles. With Bolan and Bowie, it wasn’t just their music — it was everything about them.”

Going to Church

The Church came together as a trio in 1980 in Sydney, with Kilbey on bass, Peter Koppes on guitar and keyboards and Nick Ward on drums. Shortly thereafter Marty Willson-Piper came on board as a second guitarist. Together they recorded the band’s first album, 1980’s “Of Skins and Heart.” Ward was quickly replaced by Richard Ploog, and it was this foursome — Kilbey, Koppes, Willson-Piper and Ploog — that would find widespread success.

The band continued to intrigue with the 1981 EP “Too Fast For You,” but it wasn’t until “Of Skins and Heart” was re-released in 1982 as “The Church” that the band really caught on. That album made big moves in both New Zealand and Sweden. Three more albums were to follow, garnering the band more fans and critical acclaim.

The Church’s success was aided by the solid musicianship of its members, but their equally strong personalities created conflict.

“Starfish” brought the band international attention in 1988 — and revealed the cracks in its foundation.

“It should have been a wonderful experience,” Kilbey recalled. “However, I mainly remember all the jostling for position in the band. As soon as we had success, everyone in the band was a superstar. We were all arguing and fighting with each other.”

Personal differences among the band members were exacerbated by poor management. Kilbey noted that the band “had a really terrible manager . . . who ripped us off. Any money he made, he managed to put in his own pocket.”

By 1990, Ploog had left the band, while Koppes departed in 1992 (he would return in 1997) and Willson-Piper and Kilbey eventually parted ways in 2013.

“When I look back on it now, I just remember all the (expletive) arguments that I was always having with everybody. Some of which were my fault — and some of which weren’t,” Kilbey said.

“I’m glad none of those people are in my life anymore, I’ll tell you that. I like the band I play with now a lot more.”

The Church of Kilbey

Today’s Church includes three guitarists — Jeffrey Cain (Remy Zero), Ian Haug (Powderfinger) and Ashley Naylor — plus Kilbey (vocals, guitar, bass and keyboards) and Tim Powles (drums). Most of this lineup will hit the U.S. on May 4, with a series of shows starting in Northern California and moving through the Southwest.

Drummer Powles is dealing with medical issues, and will be replaced on the tour by Nick Meredith.

The Church ends its 2022 U.S. tour in Pasadena with an appearance at Cruel World at Brookside at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, May 14, and Sunday, May 15.

The all-star lineup includes Bauhaus, Blondie, Echo and the Bunnymen, Violent Femmes and several other luminaries of the 1980s new wave and alt-rock and scenes. Kilbey is candid about his feelings about this festival — and music festivals in general.

“I don’t like festivals; it’s no fun for me,” he admitted. “You don’t get a soundcheck. The thing about the Church is we’re not really a scene-stealing band. We’re not like Prince or someone — wherever he would play, he would steal the audience because he’s so brilliant. We’re more of the kind of thing you’ve got to like and know a bit about.”

Regarding Cruel World, Kilbey said, “They’ve got almost every . . . alt-rock band from the 1980s that they could get, and we’re just fortunately and unfortunately lumped in with all of that. I can understand why we are playing there, and when I play there, I will be doing my best. But I’m looking forward more to the gigs where we play to our own audience who know and understand us rather than a bunch of people who probably are waiting for (expletive) Morrissey or something to come on.”

Happy outsider

The Church may have fit into the ’80s indie sound, but Kilbey said outright that he has always been “battling the zeitgeist.” As a band member, a solo musician and even a citizen of the world, he has forged his own path.

“In the ’80s when people were trying to make me sound like the ’80s, I fought against that. Just like I don’t feel like I’m an Australian or an Englishman . . . I was born in England but I moved out here when I was a kid. I have never been sort of sucked in by patriotic feeling. So, I still am in awe and wonder at Australia, like an outsider . . . And I like the feeling of not really belonging here.

“I think that’s a good thing to have that ambiguity . . . I sort of enjoy that I’m not pinned down to any nationality or any loyal-

ty to anywhere. I feel free from all of that sort of stuff.”

Committed to the arts

One thing Kilbey will never be free of: the need to create. In his 40-plus years as a musician, he has recorded dozens of albums — with The Church, with other bands he founded, solo and as a collaborator with artists such as Grant McLennan (The Go-Betweens) and Donnette Thayer (Game Theory).

As a songwriter, he has more than 1,000 original compositions registered with the Australasian Performing Right Association, and in 2011 was inducted into the Australian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

Kilbey is also a writer, having published several books of poetry (a fitting format for the master lyricist) as well as his 2014 autobiography, “Something Quite Peculiar.” His current project, still under development, is a graphic novel about Carthaginian general Hannibal. Furthermore, he is an accomplished visual artist (mainly in pastels), whose work was notably used in the creation of the tarot card deck “Tarot of the Time Being.”

“I’ll have a go at anything having to do with the arts,” Kilbey said.

Renewed appreciation for music

Unsurprisingly, the multitalented artist had no trouble filling his time during the pandemic shutdowns. He played a lot of acoustic guitar, wrote songs and did shows on Instagram — one of the first musicians to do so.

“I found music to be a great solace during lockdown for almost two years,” he recalled. “I think a lot of people found that music was getting them through those hard times much better than anything else.”

Since he’s been playing live again, Kilbey has found a new appreciation for his audience and vice versa.

“The first time, when it was all over, playing to audiences, I was really happy to have an audience,” he explained. “And the audience was really happy to be able to be in an audience. The artists and the audiences have discovered how important it all is.”

Kilbey is very much looking forward to hitting the United States.

“Of all the places in the world to play, America is the best. I’m not just saying that. Australian audiences are very skeptical. When (the Church) first got to America and people loved what we did, I was addicted to that — the audience willing you to succeed. I’m really looking forward to getting there, strapping on my bass and making some noise.”

Cruel World WHEN: Noon Saturday, May 14, and Sunday, May 15 WHERE: Brookside at the Rose Bowl, 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena COST: Tickets start at $150; May 14 is sold out INFO: cruelworldfest.com

COMING MAY 26th

For Advertising Specials Call (626) 360-2811

The Verdi Chorus will perform two shows at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.

Pasadena native returns home for Verdi Chorus

By Bridgette M. Redman Pasadena Weekly Contributing Writer

The Verdi Chorus spring concert will mark a homecoming of sorts for the featured guest tenor, Todd Wilander, who grew up in Arcadia, and is an active participant in each year’s Rose Bowl Parade.

On Saturday, May 14, and Sunday, May 15, the Verdi Chorus will perform “Hélas mon Coeur” at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica.

The concert, which features operatic choruses, will include sequences from Verdi’s “Ernani” and “Macbeth,” Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda,” Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier” and Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffman.”

Guest singers include Wilander, Julie Makerov, soprano, and Roberto Perlas Gómez, baritone.

Anne-Marie Ketchum, the chorus’ conductor, calls the title appropriate on many levels. The phrase translates to “Alas, my heart.”

“The phrase itself sums up both the losses we have all experienced over the past two years and the bittersweet hope for what lies ahead as we launch our 39th season,” Ketchum said.

“It’s a strong and emotive program which our three sensational guest artists…as well as our chorus of over 40 strong, will bring to rich and electrifying life.”

Wilander, who went to Arcadia High School and then California State Los Angeles for his undergraduate — in music and business — has performed across the world from Shanghai to Alaska, including several seasons with The Metropolitan Opera in New York City after winning a competition there in 2000. In his early 20s, he sang with the Lyric Opera.

After spending time in England, Italy and Germany, he moved back to New York in 2010. It was around that time he reconnected with Ketchum, whom he knew in the ’90s when he was at Cal State.

“She said she needed a tenor to sing some repertoire and I did,” Wilander said. “She runs this group (the Verdi Chorus) which is always a joy to sing with. I’ve sung with them seven or eight times.”

In this upcoming concert, he said that he’ll sing four solo arias, a duet, a trio and a finale with the chorus. It is an opportunity for him to test out repertoire and build stamina.

Beethoven’s “Fidelio” is a piece that has been popular in Los Angeles this season with a production at The Broad featuring a chorus of incarcerated singers and a production at the LA Philharmonic featuring deaf actors.

Wilander said 2020 was Beethoven’s 250th birthday, which is one reason why his only opera is getting a lot of attention.

“Anne-Marie and I talked about it in January of 2020 before the world collapsed,” Wilander said. “We were going to do a lot more and I had about five Beethoven’s 9th all over the country that all went away.”

Wilander said he’s looking forward to the collaboration between himself and the chorus.

“There are some pieces I sing where they join me and then a scene from ‘Macbeth’ where they do this whole oppressed chorus,” Wilander said. “It’s this beautiful 7-minute choral work and the tenor aria comes after that. It’s collaborative with the chorus

Todd Wilander attended Arcadia High School and California State Los Angeles.

and I’m making great art with them and the other two soloists. I’m just looking forward to getting back in front of the public who are very appreciative of live performing after two years of nothing.”

He is grateful to once again be sharing his musical gift with those who may have lived through a depressed period. Music, he said, brings light, hope and life, a shift in one’s perspective, even if just for the afternoon.

Music has been a part of Wilander’s life for as long as he can remember. He grew up singing in church choirs, but during his time at Cal State he was told he should embark on a singing career.

“I grew up never hearing opera,” Wilander said. “The most foreign I heard was Latin music in the Presbyterian Church where we sang a requiem in Mass. I knew all the musical theater ever written.”

His teacher told him that he had a big voice — that he wasn’t a country or rock singer. While he was told he could do musical theater, he’s not a 6-foot beanstalk dancer. Instead, he was told to explore classical music.

He quickly learned that diction was important as opera requires him to sing in multiple languages from French to Czech to Russian to German.

“I can speak German well, but I don’t speak the rest,” Wilander said. “But my diction is pretty darn good, and I understand word-for-word what I’m singing. A lot of the work is homework, translating because you have to know what everyone else on stage is singing. A lot of time it is thorough study and dissecting the part. That challenge was awesome.”

He praised his supportive parents. His mom was in health care and his dad a biologist, but they recognized their son’s gift.

“My mom used to call it controlled screaming,” Wilander said. “She said, ‘You have a loud instrument. You’re passionate, people love it. Why not pursue it?’ We didn’t know anything about this genre, and it was a whole new realm.”

As much as he enjoys performing full operas with the costumes, sets and acting, he said there is a wonderful mental and vocal challenge to performing with a chorus such as the Verdi Chorus.

“It’s just me and a piano and hundreds of people listening,” Wilander said. “I’ve got to be on my game. You don’t have anything to hide behind. That’s one thing I enjoy.”

Singing with the choir gives him a leg up when he auditions for opera companies.

“I’ve never sung a lick of ‘Fidelio,’ but I should be singing that,” Wilander said. “It just hasn’t come up. Now I will have done it twice: once with the chorus and once with an orchestra.”

He said he knows the chorus pretty well and enjoys inviting local friends and his elderly father to hear him without spending hundreds of dollars. He also said it is nice to work with a female conductor, a rarity in the industry.

“She brings a little different dynamic than might be found with a male conductor,” Wilander said.

He travels the world performing opera, but he does return to Pasadena annually. Ever since he was 13 years old, he’s volunteered for the Rose Parade. Now he runs the floral department for an artistic entertainment company.

“This past January, we had 13 floats in the parade,” Wilander said. “It’s so much fun and so much work. Last year was my 30th parade. We do most of the decorating between Dec. 27 and Dec. 31. It’s full-time from the 15th on.”

He’s also been involved with Lake Avenue Congregational Church where he’s been singing for 15 years.

The Verdi Chorus, which rehearses Monday nights, is composed of people from all walks of life. The singers, ages 18 to 80, are drawn together by their love of opera.

In this concert, they’ll perform the eerie witches of “Macbeth” and the inner voices of courage in “The Tales of Hoffmann.”

Verdi Chorus

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 14, and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 15

WHERE: First Presbyterian Church, 1220 Second Street, Santa Monica COST: Tickets are $40 priority seating; $30 general admission; $25 seniors and $10 students INFO: verdichorus.org, toddwilander.com

Sydney A. Mason, Trisha Miller and Cassandra Marie Murphy in A Noise Within’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses.”

‘Metamorphoses’ makes a literal splash

By Bliss Bowen Pasadena Weekly Contributing Writer

For its final play of the 2021-’22 season, A Noise Within is resurrecting Mary Zimmerman’s Tony-nominated “Metamorphoses,” whose title refers to the physical and emotional transformations experienced by the numerous Greek gods whose stories it braids together.

Based on David R. Slavitt’s acclaimed 1994 translation of the ancient Roman poet Ovid, “The Metamorphoses of Ovid,” the play made a literal splash when it debuted on Broadway in 2002. Water is at the center of the action, per Zimmerman’s stage directions, as actors move in, out and around a pool of water.

The nine-member cast features DeJuan Christopher (King Ceyx and others) and Sydney A. Mason (Aphrodite and others), both of whom played lead roles in A Noise Within’s fall production of August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars.” Where Wilson’s language hewed to a steady blues groove, Zimmerman’s poetic text yields “a whole new sheet of music,” as Mason puts it.

“There is a certain meter, a musicality … a sense of harmony that us artists are naturally saying yes to,” Christopher said. “We’re riding this vibration of a wave, if you will.”

Aside from its striking visual impact, the pool heightens the sensuality of dialogue in certain scenes and facilitates the comedy of others. There’s plenty of drama — these are Greek myths, after all — so it’s no surprise the pool also represents the ocean and the River Styx as the play shuttles between ancient and contemporary settings.

In a recent live Instagram chat, ANW Director of Cultural Programming Jonathan Muñoz-Proulx noted the “hypertheatrical” quality of the production, in which each actor shoulders multiple roles. Kasey Mahaffy, who portrays Phaeton and other characters, called it a “huge ensemble effort” and humorously detailed the cast’s first rehearsal with the pool’s empty shell.

“It’s always a big undertaking for every theatre that does it, because of the amount of water in the pool and the logistics that go into it,” explained scenic designer François-Pierre Couture (fpcouture.com) in a phone interview. He would know: he won an Indy Award for his scenic and lighting design for the Ensemble Theater Company’s 2014 production of “Metamorphoses” in Santa Barbara. “Everything is tied to the water, and the imagery is tied to it. The beauty of (the play) is doing it with the water.”

ANW’s presentation will be imprinted by Couture’s signature aesthetic: bold colors, strong lines and juxtapositions of positive and negative space. The grand chandelier specified in Zimmerman’s script is being swapped out for a giant disk that functions as a giant sun or moon and helps reshape the performance space. Images of water as well as gold are more deeply integrated into the scenic painting and stage setup; the play opens and closes with the story of King Midas (played by ANW producing artistic director Geoff Elliott) and his fateful passion for gold. “The other stories weave through that,” Couture said, “and I wanted the whole environment to feel like it’s been touched by him somehow.”

Bacchus, Hermes, Orpheus and an assortment of sailors, scientists, servants and underworld spirits are also featured in the play. To Mason, the “refreshing spin” Zimmerman’s script gives to familiar “pillars” of Greek mythology such as Aphrodite and Zeus makes the characters easier to interpret.

“Probably my favorite (story) right now is Orpheus and Eurydice. We’ve learned so much of the tragedy of the two young lovers and Orpheus’ tragedy in leaving to go get her. Zimmerman (incorporated a poem by) Rainer Maria Rilke, and we see Eurydice’s newfound journey even after her death, which is just the start of the main part of the story.”

She cited the deal-making, cellphone-distracted Midas when discussing the humanity of the play’s larger-than-life narratives, saying he “symbolizes our present-day man.” Christopher agreed: “There are a lot of Midases walking around whose selfworth is the state that they live in, the car they drive the Lear jets,” he observed. “And you find out, when it’s time to close your eyes for good, like the great Denzel Washington says, ‘You’ll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.’”

The bigger picture that the play offers, according to Christopher, addresses the value of love — “why it’s important to have and why you must fight for it” — as well as the ripple effects of choices made and not made.

“Time is a continuum. It’s a portal that connects the past and present and future,” he noted. “That’s why I love history; history shows you who you are, who you have been, who you can become. … Sometimes, you can make a decision and you can’t come back from it, but then sometimes there’s grace and mercy that comes your way. Throughout these tales, sometimes grace and mercy is bestowed upon certain people, and certain people it’s not. I just see that as a parallel for life.”

A Noise Within presents Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” WHEN: Various times Thursdays to Sundays May 14 to June 5 WHERE: A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena COST: Tickets start at $25 INFO: 626-353-3100, visit anoisewithin.org