Rinde Eckert
Rinde Eckert is an accomplished American playwright, composer, musician, and performer known for his innovative contributions to contemporary theater. He gained significant recognition for his play *Orpheus X*, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2007, and for his Grammy Award-winning music in the play *Slide*. Born in Mankato, Minnesota, Eckert was raised in a musically enriched environment, thanks to his parents, both classical music singers. His early exposure to various musical styles and performance arts influenced his eclectic artistic approach.
Eckert has produced a diverse body of work that often blends theater, music, and dance, with notable pieces including *And God Created Great Whales*, which explores the psyche of a composer. He has received multiple accolades, including the Obie Award and the Marc Blitzstein Award, and has taught at Princeton University. Throughout his career, Eckert has collaborated with various artists and composers, showcasing his versatility and commitment to pushing the boundaries of traditional theatrical forms. His recent projects reflect a continued exploration of complex themes, marrying classical narratives with contemporary contexts.
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Subject Terms
Rinde Eckert
Writer, composer, director, performer, and musician
- Born: 1952
- Place of Birth: Franklin Lakes, New Jersey
Contribution: Rinde Eckert is an American playwright, composer, musician, and performer. His play Orpheus X was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and his music for the play Slide, which he also performed in as a vocalist, won a 2012 Grammy Award for best small ensemble performance.
Background
Rinde Eckert was born in Mankato, Minnesota, the son of classical music singers Robert Eckert and Doris Rinde. He and his three siblings grew up in New York. Their parents exposed them to opera at a young age, opting to bring them to rehearsals and performances as an alternative to at-home childcare.
Throughout his childhood, Eckert was influenced by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix. During his teenage years, he acted in plays and performed in barbershop quartets, operas, and musical comedies prior to his graduation from high school.
Eckert began his theatrical career in the 1980s as a librettist and dance choreographer. He often performed various roles in both his musical and his theatrical works. His 1987 play Not for Real earned him a San Francisco Critics Circle Award for best new theater performance.
Career
Eckert continued to hone his playwriting and musical composition skills in 1988's Dry Land Divine, which earned the Isadora Duncan Dance Award for best text and music score. He began composing and performing his own musical theater productions in the 1990s, notably The Gardening of Thomas D (1992), which was hailed by critics throughout an extensive performance tour in both the United States and France.
With his play And God Created Great Whales (2000), Eckert established himself as a major new voice in modern American theater. Exploring the psyche of a composer attempting to create a musical based on the famous novel Moby-Dick (1851), the play received widespread critical acclaim. It was performed at notable venues such as the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Baltimore's Center Stage. It received the 2000 Obie Award and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award.
The 2000s were a prolific decade for Eckert. His plays Four Songs Lost in a Wall (1995) and Highway Ulysses (2003) earned him the 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Eckert then reinterpreted the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus in his musical theater production Orpheus X, which became his most acclaimed work. Eckert's take on the myth paints the eponymous protagonist as a rock star who exiles himself in his studio to mourn the loss of Eurydice.
Orpheus X, which premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2006, was hailed for the technicality of its musical score and its elaborate set design. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 and earned Eckert a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, Eckert became a part-time professor at Princeton University, instructing graduate students from both the university's English department and its school of music.
In May 2009, Eckert was a recipient of the prestigious Alpert Award from the Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts for his past success and continued work in the creative and theatrical arts. In 2011, he performed with composer Steven Mackey in the musical theater piece Slide; the music from the play, released as the album Lonely Motel: Music from Slide (2011), won Eckert and Mackey a Grammy Award in 2012 for best small ensemble performance. In 2012, Eckert was also named an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.
Many of Eckert's works combine mediums and are difficult to categorize into a single theatrical realm; they are often part play, part choreographed dance, and part musical theater. As evidenced by his research into Herman Melville's work for what is perhaps his best-known play, And God Created Great Whales, Eckert was continually inspired by prominent historical thinkers and writers, notably W. B. Yeats, Dante, Homer, and the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Collaboration also often figured into Eckert's pieces, as seen in his work with designer/director Julian Crouch, composer Paola Prestini, and others on the hybrid music-theater creation The Aging Magician. The collaborative development process for that work began in 2013 and continued to its official debut in 2016, with various workshopped versions in between. In 2016, Eckert also premiered My Lai, a "monodrama" written for him, musician Vanh An Vo, and the Kronos Quartet by composer Jonathan Berger.
In 2018, Eckert released his first album as a solo musician, The Natural World. The songs, which range from classic standards such as "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" to originals, showcase both his vocal talents and his skills on a wide variety of instruments. The album also displays Eckert's eclectic tastes, combining elements of seemingly disparate genres such as Americana, opera, world music, and avant-garde jazz.
In 2022, Eckert partnered again with Vanh An Vo and the Kronos Quartet to produce a studio recording of Jonathan Berger: My Lai under the Smithsonian Folkways label.
Impact
Eckert's creative endeavors are marked by his defiance of convention and a fierce willingness to tackle each of his creative conceptions regardless of their weight or scale. While many major contributors to contemporary American theater might shrink from the notion of reinterpreting narrative classics or ancient myths, Eckert forged an artistic legacy out of his examination, reinterpretation, and celebrative reimagining of great works of art.
Personal Life
Eckert married the American playwright and actor Ellen McLaughlin. They lived in New York.
Bibliography
"2009 Alpert Award Winners Unveiled as Fellowship Program Reaches Fifteen-Year Mark." CalArts. California Institute of the Arts, 2009. Web. 12 July 2013.
Eckert, Rinde. Interview by Tom Sellar. "Idiots' Paradise." Theater 30.2 (2000): 82–91. Print.
Isherwood, Charles. "A Rock Star Singing the Blues over His Lost Muse." New York Times. New York Times, 5 Dec. 2009. Web. 13 July 2013.
"Lonely Motel: Music from Slide." Cedille Records. Cedille Records/Cedille Chicago, n.d. Web. 10 July 2013.
Rinde Eckert, www.rindeeckert.com. Accessed 19 Sept. 2023.
"Rinde Eckert." AllMusic, 2024, www.allmusic.com/artist/rinde-eckert-mn0002230545. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.
"Rinde Eckert." Princeton University. Trustees of Princeton U, 2013. Web. 10 July 2013.