Heavy, REAL and life-affirming interview with Benjamin Hackman, frontman for the Holy Gasp and composer-in-residence at the Historic Kiever Synagogue in Toronto. We talk about our father's deaths, the grieving/mourning process, grief in today's culture, losing a parent, choosing life and much more.
The upcoming show, The Holy Gasp presents Grief, is on Wednesday, July 1, at 9:03pm – 5:41am Eastern Standard Time. Link to the livestream on Facebook and Youtube or on www.theholygasp.com. The public is invited to record the names of their deceased loved ones in the Database of the Dead. Each name entered into the database will later be inscribed into a scroll, from which Benjamin will read throughout the evening as the ensemble of 10 vocalists, 2 pianists, and percussion, performs Grief. The performance will be considered complete only after every name has been read, and the sun has come up.
Here's a quote from Benjamin as part of his motivation
"In the last five years, my father died of a heart attack; my therapist died of pancreatic cancer; my brother-in-law overdosed; my oldest friend hanged himself—then another friend died in a car accident, and my grandmother, God bless her, died of good ol’ fashion old age. Death is happening all over. Indeed, it always has. It is awkward, and painful, and it unites every last being who has ever lived."
Find Benjamin on Twitter and Facebook.
About The Holy Gasp: Formed in 2011 by front man Benjamin Hackman, The Holy Gasp make music for fans of theatrical, darkly comical, genre-defiant entertainment, with instrumentation and personnel changing regularly to meet the needs of each new project. At its core, The Holy Gasp is concerned with renegotiating the parameters of a “band,” and seeks to find the intersections between music, literature, theatre, and performance art. Their most recent release, Mmm Urkh But , is a 16-minute work of musical fiction, written for bass clarinet and percussion. Readers my also be familiar with The Holy Gasp’s orchestral performance of The Love Songs of Oedipus Rex back in 2018, the making of which was the subject of a CBC Short Doc by director Luke Sargent.
Quotes Mentioned
"Better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of merriment, for death is the destiny of every man, and the living should take this to heart."
Ecclesiastes 7:2
Books Mentioned
Photo Cred: Alex Gray
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