In dark and light

The cancellation of Rufus Wainwright's performances during the New Zealand International Arts Festival last summer left many fans with long faces. But then they heard of the sad reason: his mother and his "greatest admirer and critic", folk singer Kate McGarrigle, had lost her long fight against cancer.
Instead of taking time off to mourn his beloved mother, he threw himself into more creative work. In March, Wainwright released a new studio album, All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, and embarked on a world tour to share his grief with the audiences. In October he will be in New Zealand for three shows.
"Music is a muscle for me because I started pretty early ... so it was just natural to communicate my strife in music first before I would deal with it on a personal level," he says.
"I went straight out on a tour right after my mother died and it seemed like the natural thing to do."
He hopes to take some time off when the tour comes to an end to deal with his loss on a personal level.
The singer's latest album, All Days Are Nights, is an intimate and intense compilation of songs featuring only Wainwright's vocals and piano. It also includes three Shakespearean sonnets that he set to music for director Robert Wilson's play, Sonette, as well as an aria of his opera Prima Donna.
Performing these personal songs is an emotional act for the 37-year-old, but also an athletic task, he says. "These songs are the most difficult piano-voice songs I have ever written. Just to get through the show is a feed in itself - not to imagine the emotional pitfalls.
"In a lot of ways it mirrors the grief that I am experiencing, but it is also hard work to get through and when you think you've got through it and you think you are fine that's almost when you're the most vulnerable, because that is when you actually have to deal with the psychological stuff."
After Wainwright revisited Judy Garland's legendary 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall in 2006, he shifted his focus for his new album to another long-gone actress. The Lulu, to whom he dedicates All Days Are Nights, is silent-film actress Louise Brooks, known for her role as Lulu in the 1929 movie Pandora's Box.
"She is to me a symbol," the musician explains. "Louise Brooks in that movie for me is the most ferocious version of decadence that you could imagine because she looks so innocent and she isn't."
"And that is sort of an image that hounds me sometimes in my life. When I see it, I know I am in terror. And these songs are a sacrifice to that deity."
The singer-songwriter has been dubbed a "baroque pop star" referring to his ability to navigate the border between pop and classical music. Wainwright has also written his first opera, Prima Donna, which premiered in Manchester last year.
Now he is working on bringing the production to audiences in North America and hopes it could come to New Zealand. "That would be the ultimate success, I suppose, if it would make it there," he says.
Working in the classical world has been an eye-opener. "I have been working a lot in the classical world and it is a total transformation of what I thought the genre held for me.
"I had a much more idealistic view on the classical world before. I thought everybody was brilliant and open and willing to share, but when I got in there it was very treacherous and very territorial, and a very hierarchical system."
But for now, he's taking his latest album to the road. So will his concerts be completely sombre events? Not at all, he says.
The show is in two parts. The first half is based on the new album and is performed as a song circle (where he asks the audience not to applaud between songs) and "that's very sombre and very, very sad and tragic".
"But then in the second half of the show I come out and I rejoice and have fun with the audience, I play all the old songs and we have a party. It is kind of like the title of the album, it's like the days and the nights of my life."
October 28: Town Hall, Christchurch
October 30: Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
October 31: The Civic, Auckland
- NZPA