Tucson native's 'Closing Time' offers quirky opera fix at PCC  By Daniel Buckley; Citizen Music Critic
 
The curtain rises to reveal a dingy bar with a clearly troubled customer hovering silently over a glass of beer.
 
Behind him, a couple in the corner dances to a pop song called ''A Chance For Love,'' while the bartender can't wait to holler ''closing time!''
 
The work is Tucson-born composer and Arizona Republic music critic Kenneth LaFave's ''Closing Time'' - a compact, jazzy one-act music theater work, which received its world premiere last night at Pima Community College.
 
Tuneful, often oddly witty and always dramatically potent, LaFave's setting of the libretto by Arizona State University gerontology Professor Robert Kastenbaum effectively captures the brooding mood of a bartender and patron who discover they have something important in common - an overwhelming desire to kill themselves.
 
This is a great opera on a lot of different levels, not least of which is the fact that it's 35 minutes long. The work's sheer brevity prompted the producers to perform it twice, with a discussion by the composer and librettist sandwiched between. What makes this work magical is the combination of the text's richness and LaFave's musical versatility.
 
Scored for piano, bass, drums, flute and saxophone plus tenor, baritone and soprano, the music satisfies an audience's need for drama, variety and continuity. And while the musical forces may seem limited, LaFave's skillful weave of sonic elements was as impressive as his tunes were memorable.
 
The pop song that started the piece in many ways set the tone. Vernacular in musical language yet energized by lively syncopations, its thematic material popped up several times in the short work, connecting like Wagnerian leitmotif. It is, after all, the lack of love that drives these two to desperation.
 
Much of the instrumental scoring, too, proved brilliant, particularly LaFave's melodic treatment of the drum kit (augmented by the use of brushes and mallets for additional color) and the snazzy interplay of the alto sax and tenor, anticipating and completing each other's lines like an old couple.
 
In the end, Erda (Mother Earth, sung by Stephanie Dreisbach) convinces the pair that they don't want to go out like this. And while it may be a touch odd to imagine Mother Earth doing a sultry dance, dressed in a leaf-bedecked gauzy top and faux-leopard-skin stretch pants, in this case, it worked.
 
Both Stan Krugeel as the customer and Mark Jarvis as the bartender proved superb, particularly in the second run-through where earlier poor balances and nervous vocal production disappeared outright. In the end, it was a pleasure to hear again, both to catch more of the detail and to savor the delicious melodies.

Copyright The Tucson Citizen. 

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