Mikel Rouse in conversation with Mike Ross and Michael Roux
On Thursday evening, composer Mikel Rouse spoke on a panel with Mike Ross (Director of KCPA) and Michael Roux (Marketing & Sales Manager, U of I Press). Though the event was to promote Rouse’s new memoir, The World Got Away (2024), the talk quickly turned into a reunion celebrating friendship and colleague-ship. Rouse and Ross’ connection began in New York, but quickly came to KCPA and C-U after Ross became the sixth director in 1997. When hearing his friends and colleagues describe his work, the highpoint of the story is usually where they say, “Mike, I don’t know what I just heard, but I loved it,” or “Mike, I’ve just seen the future of opera.” His memoir often reflects his art; operas on the scale and level of inventiveness that he works on are rarely solo efforts, and they have a special place in the performing arts. When his opera Dennis Cleveland was mounted in KCPA’s Tryon Festival Theater, the crew effectively turned the venue into a TV studio (the opera is a talk show, and staged as television). One particularly emotional moment in the talk came while remembering the One Boy’s Day project, which was postponed during the beginning of the pandemic.
Throughout the panel, Rouse was effusively grateful to KCPA, PYGMALION, and the Champaign-Urbana arts community for supporting his work over the years and for being a community that is so broadly supportive of the arts. “This kind of thing doesn’t usually happen in communities this size.” He concluded by thanking Rebecca McBride, whom he credits with the call to action to write The World Got Away. After telling her about the scandal of his opera Failing Kansas in New Zealand, McBride responded, “Mike, you’ve gotta write this stuff down.” (KM)
Mikel Rouse at Channing Murray Foundation
Mikel Rouse returned to Champaign-Urbana for the first time since 2019 to play for an audience of enthusiastic friends and family. At last Thursday’s opening night of PYGMALION at the Channing-Murray Foundation, Rouse enthralled a packed house with a mesmerizing set of his deceptively folksy, yet intricately complicated songs, written over a career of nearly 50 years, full of poignant emotions and poetic images. Standouts from his set included selections from “Gravity Radio,” Rouse’s multimedia song cycle with shimmering visuals by Jeff Carpenter (who works at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications here at the University of Illinois). “Plug Nickel” was a wistful crowd-pleaser, with a catchy meter-shifting chorus. The intimate seating and the stripped-down acoustic guitar settings of Rouse’s songs added to the warm (literally and figuratively) atmosphere of the event, making it easy to get absorbed in the enigmatic lyrics of songs like “Good News:” “Well I’m running out of time for good news/Our time is running out/And the burden’s on me…” It was a wonderful show that felt special and meaningful to everyone there. If you missed it, Mikel Rouse also has a new memoir, The World Got Away, that sounds like a fascinating read for fans, detailing his fascinating and varied career in music. (KL)
