Harry Partch's "Oedipus" will be the first performance in the Alexander Kasser Theater produced by Montclair State's Office of Arts & Cultural Programming in association with Newband and New York City's Ridge Theater. The production features music direction by Dean Drummond of Music and direction by Bob McGrath, co-founder and artistic director of Ridge Theater.

Harry Partch (1901-1974) was a composer, innovative theorist, creator of musical instruments and a musical dramatist. Between 1930 and 1972, he created a large and varied body of work that included music dramas, dance theater, multi-media spectacles, vocal and chamber music. Much of his work was performed on the now-famous instruments that he designed and built himself.

"Harry Partch is one of the most original composers in Western music history. He's one of the greatest composers in American music and perhaps the only composer of import in Western music history to singlehandedly rebel against a couple hundred years of theory and practice," said Drummond. "Specifically, he developed the concept of corporeality (from the body), which referred in a broad sense to the integration of different arts media into music/movement drama, the integration of text and music in vocal music, and the integration of a more rhythmic vitality into his music. Partch was special and unique."

Partch first adapted guitars and violas to play his music, then began to build other instruments in a new microtonal tuning system. He built more than 25 instruments including cloud chamber bowls, marimba eroica, gourd tree/cone gongs, chromolodeon, kithara, spoils of war and harmonic cannon in addition to numerous small hand instruments.

In 1930 Partch broke with Western European tradition and developed a theory of music based on the tones that comprise human speech. Instead of the traditional western octave, Partch's scale is divided into 43 note--the same number of tones he identified in speech.

Partch composed "Oedipus" in 1952 while on the faculty of Mills College in Oakland, Calif. After losing the rights to perform the original libretto written by William Butler Yeats, he rewrote a new text, creating a subsequent version that was produced twice in 1954 in Sausalito, Calif. The third and final version of "Oedipus" was composed in 1967 and was performed by Newband at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1997. For "Oedipus," Partch made it clear that his intention was to focus on the text he had developed based on Sophocles' wrenching tragedy Oedipus Rex. To this end, he employed his concept of corporeality in which speech, music and movement seamlessly coalesce to move the story forward.

Three-time Obie Award-winner McGrath envisions Sophocles' story set, "in a hallucinogenic world of projections that range from ancient Greek icons to Sigmund Freud's Vienna to our own contemporary culture," he said. "The production looks at 'Oedipus' through a prism of psychoanalysis, where a man sees beyond his projected perceptions and finally looks within to confront the truth about himself."

"Oedipus" features a cast of vocalists who speak, intone and sing the text but to many fans of 21st century music, the real star of "Oedipus" is the original Partch Instrumentarium, which has been housed at the Partch Institute at MSU since 1999.

The Harry Partch Instrument Collection includes all the instruments built by Partch between 1930 and 1974, as well as several instruments replicated by the Harry Partch Foundation between 1974 and 1984 in addition to several replications created by Newband since 1990. "This is the first time a major Partch production has happened on the East Coast since 1959," said Drummond. "When is the last time there has been a production of something this big in New Jersey or in the New York metropolitan area? This is simply not to be missed."

Performances take place March 30, April 1-2 at 7:30 p.m. and April 3 at 2 p.m. For tickets call the Box Office at 973-655-5112.