Updated Cast Announced For West Coast Premiere Of SATAN'S FALL

GRAMMY Award-winning founding member of the rock group the Police Stewart Copeland will host the West Coast premiere of his original oratorio Satan's Fall at Pepperdine University's Smothers Theatre in Malibu on Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets, priced starting at $20 for adults and $10 for full-time Pepperdine students, are available now by calling (310) 506-4522 or visiting the event page.

Pepperdine University presents a new, commissioned work by rock drummer/founder of the Police and seasoned composer in film, opera, ballet, and orchestral music, Stewart Copeland. Written for chorus and rock orchestra, Satan's Fall delves into the title character's darkness, insurrection, and eventual fall from grace as conceived by John Milton in Books V and VI of Paradise Lost.

Satan's Fall features guest soprano Jamie Chamberlin as Raphaella, guest tenor Scott Wichael as Raphael, Assistant Professor of Vocal Studies and Director of Opera Keith Colclough as God. The production also features Seaver College students Brittany Rose Weinstock as Messiah, Jack Gerding as Satan, John Silva as Abdiel, Jace Vendelin as Belial, and Sakeenah Godfrey as Zophiel.

The art, art history, great books, and creative writing departments are pleased to offer a curated exhibition of student work related to the Satan's Fall Cross School Collaborative Research Project. Utilizing the Mobile Art Truck, patrons and guests may view the works of our students painters, poets, essayists, and more as they reflect on the themes of John Milton's Paradise Lost. The Mobile Art Truck will be available for viewing before and after the performance in the Smothers Theatre Main Parking Lot.

Satan's Fall Background

In 2019, the Pepperdine choral program joined a distinct group of choral organizations from across the US and Europe in order to commission the composition of a new oratorio by rock drumming legend Stewart Copeland. The team includes the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, the Minnesota Oratorio Society, Vocal Essence, Trinity Church Wall Street of New York, Montclair State University of New Jersey, the Huddersfield Choral Society in the UK and Pepperdine University. Pepperdine will present the West Coast premiere of Satan's Fall.

Stewart Copeland chose Milton's Paradise Lost as primary inspiration; from Milton's nearly 100,000-word epic, Copeland selected roughly 15,000-from Books V and VI-in order to tell the story of the clash between God, the Messiah, and Satan in a 40-minute musical work entitled Satan's Fall. Copeland sets his selected text to music performed by mostly classical instruments, soloists and a choir, but the style is anything but traditional. His composition is expectedly rhythmic, edgy, and blends styles as diverse as jazz and death metal.

In order to expand the scope and impact of the project, a team of professors from seven different programs at Seaver College applied for support from Pepperdine's Cross-School Collaborative Research Grant. With this support, the project now includes collaboration from students and faculty in art, art history, great books, music, poetry, and religion. Students have created original poetic works, essays, screen plays, and visual art, and have engaged in discussions, lectures, and rehearsals, all of which leads up to our culminating events on the weekend of April 23.

The concert will include additional music performed by Pepperdine's Pickford Ensemble and the Pepperdine Concert and Chamber Choirs. Much of the first half of the program will focus on themes of heaven, angels, and paradise; the second half depicts the "fall" from grace and Satan's plunge into hell. A jam-packed and brisk 90 minutes, the full program includes both the classical and the contemporary.

"In the vast 17th century epic of John Milton's Paradise Lost, there lives a story within the story," says Copeland. "It concerns the essential prequel to the sacred tale: Why did Satan do it? How and why does Almighty God have an adversary? We get an answer when we learn of Satan's journey to the dark side and of the mighty battle that cast him out of heaven. Such a story must be told with a heavenly choir!"

About Paradise Lost

John Milton's Paradise Lost, published in 1667, is a poem that draws from Genesis 1-3 to tell the story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton states his thesis in Book 1: to assert Eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to men. Over 350 years later, the poem continues to shape the modern Western imagination.

Within the 10,000 lines that comprise the poem, Satan describes his internal and external hell:

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell

In this way, Milton helps the reader penetrate Satan's tormented mind.

In a modern revisiting of the story of the garden of Eden, Stewart Copeland's rock opera, Satan's Fall, highlights the role of Satan as one who brings about two falls: his own and that of Adam and Eve. Like Milton, Copeland provides an interpretation that speaks to modern culture, particularly the last half century of global pop/contemporary music-a musical form that often shapes our understanding of what is good, true, and beautiful.

"The students have enjoyed collaborating with a rock legend, and have valued the educational dive into Milton's influence on centuries of art, music, and perceptions of heaven and hell," Ryan Board, Pepperdine Chamber Choir Director, said.

About Stewart Copeland

Stewart Copeland has spent more than three decades at the forefront of contemporary music as rock star and acclaimed film composer, as well as in the disparate worlds of opera, ballet, and world and chamber music.

Recruiting Sting and Andy Summers in 1977, Copeland is renowned as the founder of the Police, a band that became a defining force in rock music from the '80s through to the present day. His career includes the sale of more than 60 million records worldwide, and numerous awards, including five GRAMMY Awards.

Copeland moved beyond the rock arena in the mid-1980s when he returned to his classical roots with creative pursuits in concert and film music. His concert works include BEN-HUR, A Tale of the Christ, which features Copeland as soloist in a live orchestral score for the 1925 silent film; Tyrant's Crush: Concerto for Trapset and Orchestra commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Poltroons in Paradise commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra; and Gamelan D'Drum, commissioned by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for the world percussion group D'Drum.

In 2017, the Chicago Opera Theatre premiered Copeland's surreal chamber opera The Invention of Morel, a co-commission with Long Beach Opera based on the novel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Copeland has also written two operas based on stories by Edgar Allen Poe: The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-Tale Heart. Copeland has continued writing for opera and in 2020 he premiered Electric Saint, commissioned by Staaskapelle Weimar as well as his Oratorio, Satan's Fall, based on John Milton's Paradise Lost, which premiered in Pittsburgh in February 2020 and has continued to be performed across the US and UK in 2022.

The 2018/19 season saw Stewart Copeland premiere concerts of his project Stewart Copeland Lights Up the Orchestra, a concert showcasing the life of Copeland and his compositions, from the Police to Spyro the Dragon and Tyrant's Crush with performances taking place across Germany and the UK.

In 2021, Copeland debuted a new project, Stewart Copeland: The Police Deranged for Orchestra, which focuses on the epic rise of his career. The concert is an evening bursting with the Police's biggest hits including "Roxanne," "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "Message in a Bottle" arranged for full symphony orchestra as well as hand-picked highlights from Copeland's compositions. The project has toured across the US throughout 2021 and will continue with tours also in Europe in 2022.

Recipient of the Hollywood Film Festival's first Outstanding Music in Film Visionary Award, a GRAMMY nominee for his 2005 CD Orchestralli, and a 2003 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Copeland has been responsible for some of the film world's most innovative and groundbreaking scores. His numerous film scores include Oliver Stone's Wall Street, the seminal score for the Golden Globe-nominated soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish, the score for Bruno Barreto's Oscar-nominated Four Days in September and his Emmy nomination for the Showtime pilot and series Dead Like Me. His work in television includes contributions to The Equalizer, Babylon V, and Desperate Housewives and he also scored the blockbuster hit video game Spyro.

The Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University provides high-quality activities for over 50,000 people from over 800 zip codes annually through performances, rehearsals, museum exhibitions, and master classes. Located on Pepperdine's breathtaking Malibu campus overlooking the Pacific, the center serves as a hub for the arts, uniquely linking professional guest artists with Pepperdine students as well as patrons from surrounding Southern California communities. Facilities include the 450-seat Smothers Theatre, the 118-seat Raitt Recital Hall, the "black box" Helen E. Lindhurst Theatre, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.

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