History
Overtone Industries was founded in 1980 as a professional ensemble dedicated to experimentation in new music theater and opera. Since its first production of After Stardrive by founding members O-Lan Jones and Kathleen Cramer (nominated for a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best Music), Overtone has performed more than eleven original works across the country by such talent as Catherine Stone, O-Lan Jones, Sam Shepard, Julie Hebert, Kathleen Cramer, J. Raoul Brody, Beth Custer, John Pappas, Richard Marriott and the Club Foot Orchestra.
One of our most highly regarded works, Superstitions, was produced at the Magic Theater in San Francisco and at La Mama in New York. It was subsequently produced and aired by KQED (PBS San Francisco), winning two Emmy Awards for original music and design. Other acclaimed productions include Katy Cruel, which won a Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Original Score; Painted Jazz, an innovative collaboration between jazz and visual artists; and String of Pearls at the Met Theater, recipient of a Dramalogue award for best overall production.
After 14 years of successful work in San Francisco, OVERTONE INDUSTRIES relocated to Los Angeles in 1994 to expand our audience and take advantage of the huge talent pool in this region. Since moving to Los Angeles, OVERTONE INDUSTRIES has successfully mounted a production of String of Pearls at the Met Theatre; It's a Pretty Good Life at The Actor's Gang and Theater Theatre and The Woman Who Forgot Her Sweater at [INSIDE] the Ford.
We are currently developing two new operas, Songs & Dances of Imaginary Lands that incorporates contributions from 21 librettists and 11 composers from around the country who share their visions of myths and rituals of these lands and The Woman in the Wall, a story that reflects on the 14th century tradition of the Anchoress, the woman who volunteers to be immured in a church cell for the rest of her life with one window looking onto the sacred---with her luminous faith---and a second window allowing her to gaze upon the world. Over the course of seven "Days" which each cover many years, we follow the woman on her inward journey. We track her doubts and fears as she accustoms herself to her solitude and evolves to become the oracle to whom the community turns for wise counsel. We watch how her understanding develops; her wit and wisdom grow, as she opens and transforms the peoples' questions into the seven Virtues who light her Way. The Woman In the Wall echoes our mission to create new musical works of original myths and fables that illuminate the eternal forces that reverberate in our contemporary lives. By exploring new relationships among words, acting, movement, and music, we seek to make the invisible visible ad bring our audience and ourselves closer to understanding some of life's Mysteries.