On Jan. 11, one night before its spring semester line-up begins in earnest, the Yale Cabaret is presenting a special one-night engagement of Yale College alum Holcombe Waller, the introspective yet theatrically inclined singer/songwriter/producer who originally hails from California and now lives and works in Oregon.
Earlier this month, Waller debuted Surfacing, which he described to OregonLive.com as “an hour-length, meta-theatrical singspiel-style pop opera,” at Portland’s BodyVox Theater. His previous multidisciplinary stage productions include Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest and the Patty Griffin/Townes Van Zandt mash-up Patty Heart Townes.
Describing the album version of Into the Dark Unknown in an interview on Salvatore Bono’s Officially a Yuppie blog,
Waller says, “One thing you do in theater is there are a lot of smoke and mirrors. You do not have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of lighting, you don’t have a lot of people, but you want to make it this huge show. And there are the tricks you learn to do that and it’s a lot about what you don’t see and it’s a lot about the elements that you bring in and how they interact with each other,” Waller says about arranging the record and getting its sound to exactly what he wanted, drawing on his theater lessons and creative side, he got the album to sound the way it should. “When I was arranging the record, I was drawing on that from theater, how to make a big majestic moment with just five people.”
Holcombe Waller was part of a rare and precious music scene on the Yale campus in the mid-‘90s, from which sprung not just Waller but The National, Clogs, Mia Doi Todd and other fragile, full-blown acts of musical merit which fell outside the barriers of the reigning jam and punk gaggles of the era.
While at Yale, Waller was a member of the Duke’s Men, the current edition of which will appear as his opening act at the Cabaret. Also performing: Laura Gragtmans, the Yale School of Drama student who co-starred as the nurse in the Cabaret’s stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona last October and its production of Young Jean Lee’s Church in November.
The Jan. 11 performance begins at 9:30 p.m. in the Yale Cabaret, 217 Park St., New Haven. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door.