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Bobby Previte's Coalition of the Willing performs "Ministry of Truth"

The Separation, sayeth the press material, is the following: “a dark parable about the death of the individual”; “a heavy metal requiem”; “an essay on the short life of a lonely sheep.” The nine-movement choral piece is also the brainchild of drummer/composer Bobby Previte and playwright/director Andrea Kleine—a rethinking of Guilliaume Dufay’s 15th-century choral epic, Missa Sancti Jacobi, and Olivier Messiaen’s organ masterwork, La Nativitié du Seigneur. The piece, co-commissioned by Hallwalls and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, hurls the electro-metallic work of Previte’s Coalition of the Willing (Previte on drums, Marco Benevento on organ, Reed Mathis on guitar) against the voices and instrumentation of Jordon Sramek’s Rose Ensemble, whose reconfigurations of renaissance, baroque and medieval music have won international acclaim. Against and throughout, Kleine’s story unfolds, carried forth by shadow puppet films. Previte, a native of Niagara Falls and a UB graduate who studied with John Cage, Morton Feldman and Jan Williams, performs the piece twice in Asbury Hall at the Church this week—a terrific venue for this rare fusion of art, theater and music.

Wednesday & Thursday, February 7 & 8 at 8pm. Asbury Hall at the Church, 341 Delaware Ave (854-1694, hallwalls.org). $15 members, students, seniors; $20 general admission.