Holcombe Waller

Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest

Holcombe Waller’s Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest is a vocal performance that imagines movement, video, costume and character to be instruments as inextricable from the process of musical arrangement as piano, guitar and strings. Drawing largely on his own body of songs, Holcombe presents an intimate gesamtkunstwerk contemplating the mysterious manifestation of hope in hopeless situations. Revolving around his virtuosic ability as a singer, Into the Dark Unknown: The Hope Chest invokes Holcombe’s unique style of multi-media, interdisciplinary story-telling once described as “John Kelly meets Robert Wilson in Claus Nomi’s fainting room.”

Holcombe Waller is a singer-songwriter with three critically acclaimed albums. Waller’s songwriting melds personal introspection with political commentary and allegory, an understated reflection on the American political condition. Holcombe’s most recent performance piece, Mihael Sagalovesky and the Tragic Torments of Patty Heart Townes, reinterpreted the folk songs of two classic American songwriters into an emotionally affecting folk operetta sung by a down-and-out, drunken, Pierrot-inspired clown, thrilling audiences here in Portland as well as at Joe’s Pub in New York and the Trocadero Theater in Philadelphia.

This performance is made possible in part by the Kristy Edmunds Fund for New Work. Space generously donated by Someday Lounge.

www.holcombewaller.com

“Astonishing...haunting post-rock, post-Gershwin, post-No Depression, post-whatever bits of timelessness that reminded me at moments of my first experiences hearing Antony and the Johnsons.” Portland Mercury