Composer Neal Kosaly-Meyer has embarked upon a 17-year project to learn and perform each chapter of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake from memory, and with acute attention to the musical detail of this remarkable text.
For the third year Kosaly-Meyer is presenting a series of performances of the Wake chapters worked up thus far. The culminating show this year will be the first performance of Chapter 3 in December at Chapel Performance Space. This presentation of Finnegans Wake Part I, Chapter 3 is formal, theatrical, even liturgical, exploiting the acoustics and evocative qualities of the Chapel, supported by minimal but thoughtfully designed sets, props, lighting and sound.
A Finnegans Wake Project proceeds from the conviction that Finnegans Wake is best experienced and understood when read or heard aloud, and that such reading and hearing will best occur if the text has been learned by heart, and rehearsed with care, in the same way a musician prepares a complex piece of music for performance.