'The Glass Hammer' captures poet's childhood with music

By Sonia L. Johnson, The Herald-Sun; Jun 27, 2008

CHAPEL HILL -- On the big stage at UNC's Memorial Hall Saturday comes a small-scale production that could fill the space with force of spirit alone. "The Glass Hammer: Scenes From a Childhood Kept Against Forgetting," reaches back into the life of poet Andrew Hudgins, recounting experiences from a youth spent mostly in the South as the son of a military man. It's a work for baritone and piano that critics have lavished praise upon. Saturday's performance, part of the Long Leaf Opera Festival's final week of shows, will be the only chance to catch it.

The power of "The Glass Hammer" starts with the text, 15 poems selected by composer Jorge Martín from the larger collection that formed the original book, titled "The Glass Hammer: A Southern Childhood." The book's characters and scenes intensely describe Hudgins' recollections of a childhood that was not a genteel or gentle affair, given a cultural inheritance that combined the military with an authoritarian father. The poet's voice is sturdy and unflinching, with anger alongside understanding and humor for good measure.

Hudgins lives in Ohio now, after living the somewhat nomadic life common in military families. Hudgins lived in Goldsboro from kindergarten to fifth grade, when his father was stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.

A reading of the poems immediately caught the composer's attention. Some of the poems immediately called out to Martín, he said, suggesting the song cycle to come. Yet completing the work took more than a year, the task made challenging by the intense nature of the text.

"At a couple points I stopped and put it aside," Martín said. "I was sometimes overwhelmed by it."

The finished work was greeted with critical acclaim, praised as a perfect marriage of words and music. Since the text ranges far in mood and message, the music does, too, the composer dipping into a broad well of American musical idiom. What's in store for the audience is a wild sightseeing tour of what it is to love and be loved imperfectly, a condition most people experience in childhood, some to more tragic degree than others.

Performing "The Glass Hammer" is baritone Jonathan Hays and with him on piano is Craig Ketter. They aren't newcomers to the work, having performed it together before. Martâ??â? n will be on hand for the performance, knowing well the difficulty of the piece.

"You see the performer put through the wringer, really," said Martín.

Hays doesn't deny it: "It is, bar none, the most challenging cycle I sing musically, vocally and dramatically," he said. "It takes several days to put me in the emotional condition to perform it, and Craig and I spend a lot of rehearsal time leading up to the concert ironing out any kinks in the ensemble. While on stage, we must be incredibly focused on delivering the same message, and that takes enormous intuitive concentration. After the performance, I usually feel both absolved and peaceful, as though I've actually gone through the poet's experience myself. That said, the effort of going through it leaves me feeling physically exhausted."

The singer has been getting to know the piece since about 2004. Based in Manhattan, Hays first heard the work on a recording owned by a fellow baritone. He found it "absorbing," and when he saw an advertisement for a live performance he wanted to attend.

"If it was absorbing on CD, it was mind-blowing in person," Hays said. "The poetry was so personal and transparent, the experiences described by it so familiar and the music weaved the words directly into the tonal fabric. I decided that very evening that I was going to perform it, and I contacted Jorge shortly thereafter to order a score and to arrange a meeting to hear his thoughts on it."

At almost 37 years old, Hays is about the right age to perform the music. Hudgins wrote his poetry just on the other side of 40, a place where he had gained some perspective, but still retained strong feelings about his youth. Hays is at a similar place, though he feels he may be a bit young to take on "The Glass Hammer."

"The poet doesn't flinch when he looks back on his youth, and, though I've made peace with many of my childhood demons, some of them

still make me angry," Hays said. "I haven't reached the totality of forgiveness, either of myself or of my family, that the poet reaches at the end of the cycle."

For his part, Hudgins has said he intentionally wrote The Glass Hammer before he had set the past to rest. He wanted to be angry when he wrote it. Thus, the scenes are, as the words say, kept against forgetting.

Glass Hammer Links

Longleaf Opera - http://www.longleafopera.org/pages/64/glass-hammer/

Jorge Martin - http://www.jorgemartin.com/