The Living Earth Show presents: Luciano Chessa’s “Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!” If Michael Gordon’s Timber, one of Luigi Russolo’s futurist noise intoners, and Captain Ahab had a ménage à trois in a dentist’s office, the resultant surreal, minimalist, psychosexual, microtonal tour-de-force of a music-baby would be Luciano Chessa’s Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze!: A Meditation Over Chapter 94 of Herman Melvilles Moby Dick, commissioned for and performed by Bay Area extreme chamber music iconoclasts The Living Earth Show. The performance occur at sea on November 11, 2016, embarking from Alameda.

Over the course of 60+ minutes, the piece twists, modulates, and melts into a sumptuous bath of microtonal drones, a bath from which the main theme re-emerges and accelerates to a rapid and increasingly tense climax. Taken as a whole, the piece allows the listener to become truly immersed in the sound world conjured by the microtonal electric guitar and vibraphone. Supplemented by amplified toothbrushes and the recitation of the text through a megaphone by the composer, the work crafts noises both immediately recognizable and profoundly otherworldly.

The score dictates that the only appropriate venue in which to perform the work is at sea. As such, The Living Earth Show and Luciano Chessa will present, for the first time, the work as it was intended: in the middle of the San Francisco Bay aboard 91-foot-long yacht. Converted into a concert venue and art installation by renowned Bay Area sculptor and mixed media artist Terry Berlier (MA 2003), the yacht will hold 100 audience members and will depart from Alameda, CA on November 11, 2016. 

The stage upon which the piece is performed is extended to include the entirety of the yacht itself. As specified in the score, a fishmonger will be aboard the yacht serving canned fish and coffee to the audience, a seance will be held to channel the spirit of Herman Melville, and the performers and audience members will participate in a staged, dadist protest ritual as the boat sails out to sea.

Join us for an immersive, surreal, and transformative concert experience that will deconstruct the boundaries between stage and audience and performer and spectator. Additional collaborating artists include Luciano Chessa (composer/vocalist) and Terry Berlier (set and costume design).

Tickets are sliding scale $60-$90 for this entirely original production, presented for one night only. Please pay what you can afford!