Pivot Festival Begins with Celebration of Gorey

During his lifetime Edward Gorey was known primarily along the New York-Boston corridor as an author and illustrator of odd little books that milked humor from the macabre. His works were anthologized after his death by Berkley Windhover Books in three Amphigorey volumes. I have been a “faithful follower” since my undergraduate days in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and those three volumes remain a treasured corner in my generously-endowed library.

Cover of the book that inspired Carla Kihlstedt’s 26 Little Deaths (from Wikipedia, fair use under the copyright law of the United States)

Last night in Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Performances Pivot Festival began with a full-evening composition by Carla Kihlstedt, who performed as both vocalist and violinist. Her libretto was inspired by Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which was published in 1963 (the year in which I first encountered Gorey’s books at the Paperback Booksmith store in Harvard Square). Gashlycrumb is an alphabet book in which each letter of the alphabet introduces a child who comes to a bad end. So it was that Kihlstedt took this book and turned it into a cantata entitled 26 Little Deaths.

Since I was not sure what to expect last night, I brought along my copy of Amphigorey, in case I wished to consult the illustrations on each of the pages of The Gashlycrumb Tinies for reference. (The words had been familiar to me for quite some time. I even recall my composition teacher Ezra Sims setting them to music.) Those references tended to be helpful, since there was already a fair amount of activity on stage. 26 Little Deaths also included performances by pianist Sarah Cahill, the members of the Del Sol Quartet (violinists Hyeyung Sol Yoon and Benjamin Kreith, violist Charlton Lee, and cellist Kathryn Bates), Sandbox Percussion (Ian Rosenbaum, Terry Sweeney, Jonny Allen, and Victor Caccese), and five visitors from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (students and alumni), all conducted by Gabriel Kahane, who also served as Master of Ceremonies.

This may seem like a generous number of resources to assemble for a little alphabet book. However, the “Gorey Universe” is an expansive one, full of a diversity of rhetorical devices both in the texts and in Gorey’s illustrations for each of the letters of the alphabet. I have to confess that it was hard for me to repress the nostalgic feelings in my recollections of each encounter with a new Gorey book. More often than not, the text was grotesque; but there always seemed to be a twinkle in the author’s eye. (Except when he had to autograph books in the back room at the Gotham Book Store for Christmas sales. Then one heard howls of despair reflecting those images of the damned in Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment!)

Kihlstedt managed to find just the right path along which to negotiate all of Gorey’s twists and turns between the grotesque and the twinkles. Yes, her instrumentation was diverse; but so were the individual illustrations in Gashlycrumb, leading the attentive reader from one surprise to the next. Personally, I went in to 26 Little Deaths worrying that the performance would not capture the same spirit that those of us of Gorey’s generation had experienced. However, those worries had dispersed long before 26 Little Deaths had reached its halfway mark. Kihlstedt “got the spirit;” and Kahane knew exactly how to lead his ensemble to convey that spirit.