PILSEN — Composer Jacob Ter Veldhuis is soft-spoken and careful with his words, and his Dutch-flavored English has a gentle cadence to it. However, he sure has a lot to say.
Take “The News” — Ter Veldhuis’ pop opera that examines and satirizes talking-head media around the world.
The performance, set for April 21 at Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St., was inspired in part by the crowds that gather in front of the ABC7 street-level studio on State Street Downtown. The way people gathered, watching the news being made, trying to get on television themselves, gave him the inspiration for his opera in 2009.
He has since opera-ized TV news media from news outlets all around the world, playing with the clips to create a dramatic narrative — though some sources needed less help in that regard than others.
“I realized, these are the media. This is our world,” says, Ter Veldhuis, who is known as JacobTV. “There’s no way I can be topical; the news just changes too quickly. But I can use the news as a metaphor for society.”
He points to FOX News and Bill O'Reilly specifically. “He’s fantastic! It’s almost like a play!” he said.
When The News debuted in 2009 at the Park West, JacobTV told the Tribune, "If the formula works, I hope to keep writing and updating this piece for the rest of my composing career."
Indeed, the show has been presented all over the world with revisions. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette described it as "a multimedia experience that splashes political hot potatoes across the stage yet refuses to be cynical or polemical," adding, "it leaves the audience puzzled and delighted at the same time."
The News is loud, manic, and likely alien to most peoples’ conception of an “opera.” Besides its social commentary, it could almost be described as an homage to autotune and AV editing. Almost, but for the professional musicians of Fulcrum Point New Music, whose playing is synchronized with the video clips.
“It’s a real challenge, playing a piece like this,” says Stephen Burns, Fulcrum Point’s founder, director and conductor. “We’re like the band on a late-night talk show, except that we have to keep playing whenever the host says anything.”
Also adding to the challenge is the composer's known affection for unusual compositions. As an avant-garde composer, JacobTV often gets his inspiration from less-than-likely sources — and produces less-than-likely pieces.
“I once did a composition for harp… inspired by crack-addicted homeless women in New York City,” he saaid. “I listened to their voices and tried to make that in the harp… It was sometimes beautiful, sometimes very harsh.”
As might be imagined, that piece, as with others he has created, went over like a lead balloon with more conservative elements of the musical community. One critic went so far as to label him a “musical terrorist.”
The same controversy can follow The News; the opera's pokes and potshots at world leaders have not gone unnoticed.
At an exhibition of a piece of the show in the Maxxi Museo of Rome, for example, a concerto he wrote involving former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had disappeared. When he asked the Italian curators about it, they told him it had been removed because, apparently, poking fun at the prime minister wasn’t something that could be done without consequence.
With The News now coming back to Chicago, Burns reports that JacobTV hasn’t lost any of his bite. Fulcrum Point has worked with him for several versions of The News, and each version, Burns says, is better and more interesting than the last.
“Every time we do this show, it gets cleaner, tighter… This is also the funniest it’s ever been, I think,” he said.
Ter Veldhuis, who started as a rock musician and studied composition and electronic music, said, “I’m not a journalist; I’m just an artist."
"But if you can make people think a little bit about the world, the media, that is my mission.” he said. “And I think in that way, my mission has been successful.”
Tickets can be purchased at thaliahallchicago.com. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. The show is at 8 p.m. Tickets are $26.
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