(HUDSON, N.Y.) – “The Lives of Hamilton Fish,” a cinematic rock opera with live music performed by the writer and director, Rachel Mason, will be performed at the Hudson Opera House on Saturday, March 14, 2015, at 7pm. For this performance, Mason will sing all of the songs synced to the film’s backing soundtrack.
“The Lives of Hamilton Fish” won Best Picture at the 2014 New England Underground Film Festival. It follows the lives of two men related only by name who lived in New York during the Great Depression. Both men were pronounced dead on the front page of a newspaper in 1936; one was a statesman from one of New York’s most prominent families and the other was a notorious serial killer of children. Both men were named Hamilton Fish. In Mason’s film, a newspaper editor steps into a fantasy world attempting to comprehend the coincidence.
Based on a true story, the majority of the film was shot in locations in upstate New York where the events of the two men’s lives played out. Most of the film was shot at Garrison, N.Y., where Hamilton Fish II, a speaker of the New York State Assembly, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a son of a former governor and secretary of state, died when he was 86. Scenes were also filmed at Sing Sing Prison, where Hamilton Albert Fish, the serial killer, was executed in the electric chair and where Mason was looking up the date of his execution when she stumbled onto the article that inspired the film while she was a volunteer art teacher with Rehabilitation Through the Arts.
Tickets are $20 ($18 for members) and can be purchased by calling (518) 822-1438 or online at Hudson Opera House.
Rachel Mason is a sculptor, songwriter and performer. A graduate of UCLA and Yale University, she has written three operas, recorded ten full length albums of songs, and has toured, screened films, exhibited sculpture, video and performance at the Queens Museum, Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Henry Gallery in Seattle, James Gallery at CUNY, University Art Museum in Buffalo, Sculpture Center, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard and Occidental College, Kunsthalle Zurich, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The New Museum, Park Avenue Armory, Art in General, La Mama, Galapagos, Dixon Place, Human Resources, and Empac Center for Performance in Troy. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, The LA Times, Art in America, and FlashArt among other publications. Mason’s band is called Little Band of Sailors.
The Hudson Opera House offers a year-round schedule of arts and cultural programming in the former Hudson City Hall, which houses New York State’s oldest surviving theater. Ongoing programs include concerts, readings, lectures, exhibitions, theatre and dance presentations, after-school programs, workshops, classes and community arts events like the annual Winter Walk on Warren Street.