Removable Parts
Removable Parts is a theatrical series of love songs about voluntary amputation. Performed by Corey Dargel with pianist Kathleen Supové, Removable Parts comprises the second CD of Dargel’s critically acclaimed double-album Someone Will Take Care of Me. Removable Parts won the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Performance-Art Production and was nominated for Best Solo Performer (Corey Dargel) and Best Director (Emma Griffin).
“Removable Parts is …almost perversely pleasurable… but also desperately sad and layered with other meanings… Amputation, especially when it’s self-imposed, is a loaded and problematic metaphor. Mr. Dargel and company handle it with an intelligent grace that is as moving as it is impressive.” -Claudia LaRocco, New York Times
“[Removable Parts] is at once uproarious and harrowing; one moment Dargel is prancing gawkily about in a style that might be called Weimar Village People, the next he is curled up in self-inflicted agony.” -Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“…an amazing work… an intense, heartfelt, funny, emotional piece of contentious individuality and somehow without any hint of sarcasm…” -Parterre Box
“Dargel deals with these dark topics… with unflinching directness but also with grace and empathy… Dargel’s light tenor is well-suited to the songs, which in some ways could be heard melodically as fairly conventional, but whose accompaniments… are wittily skewed enough to situate this music in the realm of the very odd.” -Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide
Removable Parts can be presented by itself as a short concert performance (approx. 50 minutes). For a longer concert, it can be paired with any of Corey Dargel’s other projects.
Photos from the premiere performances:
Kathleen Supové is one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists. She regularly presents a series of solo concerts entitled The Exploding Piano, in which she has performed and premiered works by the world’s leading composers as well as countless emerging ones. The Exploding Piano is a multimedia experience that employs theatrical elements, vocal rants, performance art, staging, electronics, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines. Supové has appeared with The Lincoln Center Festival, Wordless Music, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Bang On a Can Marathon, Music at the Anthology, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and other venues, ranging from concert halls to theatrical spaces to clubs. Her most recent CD is Infusion, released on the International Classics label, which features music for solo piano and electronics. In August, 2010, she is releasing a new solo CD on Major Who Media, entitled The Exploding Piano, featuring multimedia piano works by Missy Mazzoli, Anna Clyne, Michael Gatonska, Daniel Becker, and Randall Woolf.
