Oracle Hysterical

Oracle Hysterical started as a rap album I made with Brad Balliett and turned into a band: Brad and his twin Doug Balliett on bassoon, double bass, and viola da gamba; Majel Connery on voice and keys; Dylan Greene on percussion; and me on voice, guitars, and keys. Part band, part book club, we wrote genre-bending, literature-inspired works for more than a decade — everyone performing, everyone composing, each project built collectively.

The songs sit somewhere between a classically-inclined song cycle and an art-rock concept album. We liked to illuminate fragments of big literary works like a child in a dark forest with a flashlight — Grimms’ fairy tales, Greek tragedy, falsely-attributed Shakespeare — distilling centuries-old writing through a contemporary lens.

Every show was its own production. Babinagar, a living-room opera on an Afghan folktale. The Rake, where it began. Billy Budd for the Lucerne Festival, where we were Spotlight Artists in 2011. Cleopatra, Doug’s cantata. The Brothers Grimm at National Sawdust. The Sea: Tales of Lapham, an evening-length cycle with the string orchestra A Far Cry. And Terra Nova, songs on problematic explorers, for Hub New Music. We released two records — The Passionate Pilgrim and Hecuba.

We’re not actively booking anymore; everyone went their other ways. But the band’s still around for the occasional show.

More — records, video, and the full back catalog — at oraclehysterical.com.