Rinde Eckert

Rinde Eckert is a writer, composer, librettist, musician, playwright, vocalist, director, and educator. Possessed of a crystalline tenor and resonant falsetto, his intense vocal style indicates classical and rock training, while his libretti are complex, often paradoxical reflections on the pressure and instability of everyday life. His work, while accessible, makes flexible otherwise fixed definitions of plays, dance pieces, operas, and musicals. Eckert released three acclaimed singer/songwriter albums including 1996's Do the Day Over. He served as vocalist/lyricist on Jerry Granelli UFB's Sandhills Reunion in 2004. Eckert and guitarist/composer Steven Mackey formed the prog rock quartet Big Farm, who issued a 2013 self-titled effort. In 2018, he released the globally acclaimed album The Natural World, which navigated musical genres from Indian classical to Americana. In 2022, with Kronos Quartet and Vietnamese multi-instrumentalist Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ, he issued the premier recording of My Lai, a mono-opera composed for him by Jonathan Berger.