“So much in the piece is pleasurable… and if the audience member can surrender himself to the embrace of the proverbial whale sperm, Chessa’s riches come forth”

—San Francisco Classical Voice

Luciano Chessa’s Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! is an evening-length opera/meditation on the 94th chapter of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, perhaps the most homoerotic chapter in great American literature. Written for microtonal electric guitar and vibraphone, an amplified red Solo cup, electric toothbrushes, voice, megaphone feedback, collaborative direction and design by Terry Berlier, and a variety of audible theatrical gestures, Chessa’s composition crafts noises both immediately recognizable and profoundly otherworldly.The score dictates that the only appropriate venue in which to perform the work is at sea. As such, for each performance The Living Earth Show, Luciano Chessa, and Terry Berlier turn a boat into a floating concert venue and art installation. 

The “stage” upon which the piece is performed is extended to include the entirety of the vessel. As specified in the score, a fishmonger is aboard the boat serving canned fish and coffee to the audience, a seance is held to channel the spirit of Herman Melville, and the performers and audience members participate in a staged, dadaist protest ritual as the boat sails out to sea.

Above all, the piece is one of Luciano Chessa’s masterpieces: it draws immense power in its innate fragility and intimacy.

Chessa purposefully puts obstacles in the way of getting lost in the meditations he creates: namely, the inherent silliness and absurdity required to make them. Chessa often blurs the line between musician and performance artist, requiring the musicians to do things that might seem somewhat silly and surreal to accurately perform the work. And the sounds themselves, taken in isolation and within a context of western music, can be seen as abrasive, harsh, and dissonant.

As a performer and a listener, these obstacles--and Luciano’s compositions as a whole--force one to make a conscious choice: should I dismiss something because it is absurd and different from that which is considered classically ‘beautiful,’ or do I reject my own preconceptions and do the work necessary to accept and find the beauty in what’s in front of me?

The fragility is omnipresent: one could always shut off, and use the dadaist nature of the performance as an excuse to stop paying attention. Once one makes a choice to embrace the sounds and meditate within them, though, it’s as if Luciano’s music has unlocked a completely new world: one can find moments more beautiful, intimate, gorgeous and haunting in their surroundings, and the act of exploring these new soundscapes can be as liberating as exploring exotic, alien terrain.

This piece, ultimately, was built to celebrate the communal nature of music-making and performance. The audience, the musicians, the composer, the director, and the stage will be sent out to sea, where, for a moment in time, we’ll all quite literally be in the same boat.

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze is made possible by the generous support of the following partners:

The Clarence E. Heller Foundation, Russ Irwin.