- VAMP is a
rock opera conceived, written, composed, and engineered by Jake
Perrine, who has recently relocated to New York from Seattle
to focus on finding financial backing and producing agents for
mounting a new production here in New York.
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- The score of Vamp
is produced electronically with synthesizers and samplers, save
for some tracks of live cello, violin, electric guitars, a fretless
bass guitar, and most recently, a live choir. To date, the score
has been played back from DAT during performance, allowing VAMP
to be comparitively inexpensive to produce.
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- There are four
main characters in Vamp, and all the text is sung (no spoken
dialogue). Having
only four characters also makes VAMP comparitively inexpensive
to produce.
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- The entire show
has just this year undergone a major overhaul, including sizable
revisions to the book, libretto, and vocal score. This process
also included re-orchestration and re-recording of the entire backing score in
state-of-the-art 24-bit digital.
This process took eight months of continuous work.
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- Several advance
promotional tracks of the new music have been made available
for download online at mp3.com/vamp, and have been downloading
steadily since. For example, one track, "Fallen," has
been continuously in the Top 40 most played / downloaded tracks
of the mp3.com Musicals / Broadway charts since it was posted
back in August.
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- VAMP was first
conceived in 1990 while Jake was attending Hampshire
College in Amherst, MA. Thanks to Hampshire’s unique
revisionary process, it was produced there three times
over the next three years: as a workshop in the fall of 1990,
as a Studio Theatre production in 1991, and as his undergraduate
thesis project as a Mainstage Theatre production in 1993, which
was one of the most ambitious projects ever produced in that
theatre in terms of scope and budget. Upon completion, Jake
(and VAMP) received the Threshold Grant of Excellence.
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- The show’s
musical influences are quite diverse, ranging from Sondheim’s
"Sweeney Todd," Boublil & Shönburg’s
"Les Misérables," and more traditional opera,
to the contemporary sounds of Peter Gabriel, Nine Inch Nails,
Tori Amos, and electronica.
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