Photo by Ryan Jensen
Sit under the stars for a special campfire rendition of David Malloy’s acclaimed song cycle about love, death, and whiskey. In this haunting, theatrical presentation, a camera breaks and four friends drink in an interwoven tale spanning seven centuries, with a murderous sister, a treehouse astronomer, a bear, a subway, and the ghost of Thelonious Monk.
Seated amongst the audience, Brittain Ashford, Gelsey Bell, Brent Arnold, and Malloy perform music for four voices, cello, guitars, dulcimer, Celtic harp, erhu, autoharp, accordion, keyboards, and percussion, raising the spirits of murder ballads, doo-wop, angular bebop, Chinese folk, Islamic adhan, and the music of Bernard Herrmann and George Crumb. Ghost Quartet is designed by Christopher Bowser and directed by Annie Tippe.
Best of 2014 in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Broadway World, Playbill, The Cast Album Review, and nominated for Drama League and Drama Desk Awards.
“4 Stars...The brilliantly inventive Dave Malloy's theater songs make you blue like the sky: sad but high.” — Time Out New York
About the Artists
Dave Malloy is a composer, writer, performer, and sound designer. He’s written the music for ten musicals, including the multiple award-winning Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on Tolstoy’s War & Peace.
Brittain Ashford (vocals, autoharp, percussion) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, performer and songwriter. She fronts the Brooklyn-based band Prairie Empire, co-created the BCAT & CTOWN Variety Show and can be found performing in the various basements and bars of New York. Last spring she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for her role as Sonya in the acclaimed Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.
Gelsey Bell (vocals, Celtic harp, metallophone, accordion, percussion) is a singer, songwriter, and scholar. She is a core member of thingNY and Varispeed, and has worked with numerous artists in the creation of new work, including Robert Ashley, Jonathan Bepler, Matthew Barney, Yasuko Yokoshi, Kimberly Bartosik, Rachel Chavkin, Kate Soper, Rick Burkhardt, and John King, among others. Gelsey has a doctorate in Performance Studies from NYU, and is the Critical Acts co-editor for TDR/The Drama Review.
Brent Arnold (vocals, cello, guitar, dulcimer, erhu, percussion) is a cellist, vocalist, and composer. His albums of original cello music include Night, Exquisite (2013) and An Albatross And A Half (2010). He composed the cello music for Louis C.K.’s tv show Louie, and has worked with The Antlers, Reggie Watts, Kristin Hersh, Filastine, Eyvind Kang, DJ/Rupture, Modest Mouse, and Jherek Bischoff, among many others. Brent studied the cello with Walter Gray of the Kronos Quartet and jazz violinist Michael White.
Ghost Quartet was developed with support from The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, CA, and The Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn, NY.
Performance Program