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The word opera conjures up images of large casts, a huge orchestra and chorus and massive logistical issues. Not Cooperstown! A jazz opera in nine innings, Cooperstown utilizes five solo singers and a 1950s modern jazz quintet. Based on A. Bartlett Giamatti’s essay, “The Green Fields of the Mind,” composer Sasha Matson has, with librettist Mark Miller, used baseball as an art form, with the capacity to express the deepest emotional truths about individuals and society. Matson reflects baseball’s own specific historical musical attributes in his composition. One is the sound of the stadium organ, which led him to score the music for a “Miles” jazz quintet. This particular grouping of instruments is as capable as any large orchestra of realizing music in all its potential variety. The musical materials boil down to the rising three-chord “Charge” fanfare still heard in stadiums everywhere. Sasha Matson graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and UCLA, where he received his Ph.D. He has scored music for feature film and other multi-media in addition to own his compositional work. He writes about audio and music and is an associate editor for Positive Feedback Online.
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