\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\u201cKreutzer\u201d is directed by Mike Monroney, who has been a prominent member of the theater community in the Roaring Fork Valley for over three decades. The cast and ensemble include actor Micha Schoepe, pianist Chih-Long Hu, and a string quartet and ensemble featuring violinists MinTze Wu and Delaney Meyers, violist Chieh-Fan Yiu, cellist Michael Graham and others.<\/p>\n
The artistic roots of \u201cKreutzer\u201d date back 200 years. Beethoven\u2019s \u201cKreutzer Sonata\u201d was composed in 1803. It then inspired Leo Tolstoy to write a novella of the same name in 1889. The novella in turn inspired Czech composer Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek to write String Quartet No. 1, called “The Kreutzer Sonata,” in 1923. Ninety-five years later, Wu created her multi-genre play \u201cKreutzer\u201d that combines elements from Beethoven, Tolstoy and Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s work.<\/p>\n
Michael Graham is a California-based violinist who performed in the 2019 version of \u201cKreutzer\u201d in Taiwan. Graham is primarily a classical musician but he has toured the world with Van Morrison. He\u2019s also played with The Who, and John Densmore, the drummer for The Doors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a part of the chamber sextet for \u201cKreutzer.\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we\u2019re crossing the border of time and space with \u2018Kreutzer,\u2019\u201d Graham said, \u201c[based on] the fact that we did it in Taiwan in 2019 and we\u2019re doing it here now, the fact that the music that inspired the play spans several centuries, and that Tolstoy\u2019s novel was written in the mid-19th century but feels like it could be a conversation people are having now about marriage, about gender and marital roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re exploring what\u2019s universal and what’s common to people, no matter where they live or what time period.\u201d<\/p>\n
Basalt resident and valley theater mainstay Micha Schoepe plays the lead character, Pozdnyshev. The play is essentially a monologue with the musicians performing minor acting roles in addition to playing their instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Kreutzer\u2019 is an interweaving of absolutely astonishing music and my character\u2019s reflections on life, and love and his disillusionment around love and a deep dive into jealousy and ultimately madness, but there\u2019s redemption in the end,\u201d Schoepe said. \u201cI hope that people take away that even if things have gotten really really bad in your life, even where you don’t think it\u2019s possible to get through it, you can come out on the other side and live your life changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chih-Long Hu grew up in Taiwan with Wu. They went to elementary school together and have collaborated on many projects as adults. Hu is the chair of the piano department at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He was the pianist in the 2019 performance of \u201cKreutzer\u201d in Taiwan and will be performing this weekend.<\/p>\n
Hu said that playing music and performing as an actor at the same time is a great but welcome challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to memorize the music, which is quite a task but at the same time it allows us to free ourselves to actually explore the deeper meaning of the music,\u201d Hu said. \u201cI have played Beethoven\u2019s \u2018Kreutzer\u2019s Sonata\u2019 with many violinists in many places, but I never was able to play music like this production where we combine music and theater and literature, where we are giving our imagination to the music but actually acting to the music which makes it more intimate. It\u2019s a whole new experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Monroney said he feels the production is circular in its nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started with music, became literature, and then went back to music and now we\u2019re combining all of it,\u201d he said. \u201cI love that it\u2019s a journey through the different forms. If someone chose to come to see this just for the music, they would be totally justified.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the words \u2014 which are essentially directly translated from Russian from Tolstoy and concern the journey of the lead character, Pozdnyshev \u2014 give it another level of meaning. I am confident that when people walk out of the theater, they will realize that we are all a part of each other\u2019s story, a passenger on each other\u2019s journey.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aspendailynews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cKreutzer\u201d is a play that weaves theater, literature and music from the last 200 years into an original production. Its U.S. premiere will be held this weekend at Carbondale\u2019s Thunder River Theatre.\u00a0 Courtesy image A unique production combining music, literature and theater will come to life in Carbondale this weekend. \u201cKreutzer,\u201d a genre-bending show, will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2048279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2048278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/A-musical-and-literary-journey-through-time-and-space.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2048279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"mintze\"](\"https:\/\/bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com\/aspendailynews.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/c\/13\/c1366bbb-9c58-4546-92a5-2d35b71a9d49\/68d4aa9ff33ef.image.jpg?resize=150%2C135)
\n <\/div><\/div>