'Man in the Mangroves' comes out to play as prelude to Word of South

A new art form — the first speech-synthesized opera-novella — will debut in Tallahassee at The Challenger Learning Center’s Planetarium on April 6 at 6:30 p.m. as a pre-festival event for the 2022 Word of South festival.

The 13-minute work —"The Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep" (aka Man) is the collaborative result of two Tallahasseeans: composer Dr. James A. “Andy” Moorer, and poet, Dr. Donna Decker.

Decker and Moorer have been joined by "Toy Story" producer Ralph Guggenheim to transform this musical work into an animated short film which will be featured as a work in progress at the event. Decker, Moorer and Guggenheim will unite with Sopchoppy singer-songwriter Frank Lindamood. The presentation will include a Q&A session moderated by Dr. Helen Decker.

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Donna Decker, a FSU Creative Writing grad and Tallahassee transplant wrote the poem from the point of view of a homeless mathematician she encountered in a Key West mangrove swamp while living there during the summer of 1996. It appears in her book of dramatic monologues, "Under the Influence of Paradise: Voices of Key West."

From poem to opera-novella

Moorer, an Oscar and Emmy winner for sound editing, composed the work from Decker’s poem of the same title. Calling it an “opera-novella,” "The Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep" premiered in October 2019 at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. It’s since been performed at the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival 2020 and Santiago, Chile’s International Computer Music Conference 2021.

Most people are familiar with Moorer’s work without realizing it. He’s the creator of “The Vroom Sound”—the THX sonic logo that has played at movie theaters for decades.

Moorer, who holds an honorary faculty position in FSU’s Math Department, says, “This poem struck me especially deeply, since the speaker of the poem could be considered a fallen mathematician. As I have a mathematics degree from MIT, I mused at the whims of fate that separate me from this character.”

At the 2019 Stanford University premiere, audience members talked about how the piece related to the epidemic of homelessness in the U.S., particularly in San Francisco and Los Angeles. “As a poet, having these conversations with audience members in the heart of the California homeless dilemma was especially moving,” Decker says.

The Stanford audience included modern music luminaries, contemporaries of Moorer, and fellow pioneers in digital sound and image synthesis.

One premiere attendee was Ralph Guggenheim, a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and producer of the 1995 hit animated film, Toy Story. “I was awed by the mood and tone of Andy’s composition and the way he constructed a performance of Donna’s poem through speech synthesis. The three-dimensional sonic space he creates made it easy to visualize this work,“ says Guggenheim. “When I congratulated Andy on his composition, our conversation immediately turned to how we might make a film of Man.”

Animated film vision

Moorer, Decker, and Guggenheim quickly decided that the opera could have a future as a short-animated film and have been working remotely throughout the pandemic to realize that vision.

A Tallahassee native, Moorer worked on the composition for two years. He created the bulk of "Man" on Alligator Point where he and his wife Nancy Elgin live part-time. Before the pandemic, Moorer had been speaking about the making of "Man" with small groups of listeners who trekked to his surround-sound living room on Alligator Point to hear the opera.

Moorer says, “Needless to say, nobody was going to employ me to write a piece of experimental music. I did have to wait until I was ready to retire to free up the time required for a project of this magnitude, so in 2016, I retired my position of Principal Scientist at Adobe Systems at the age of 70 and began the work on the piece.”

“The first challenge was to find an appropriate narrator,” Moorer says. “My previous experiments in speech synthesis suggested that it is much better to start with a human being reading the poem than to try to synthesize all the subtlety of a truly artistic performance.“

Lindamood as narrator

He and Decker had met Frank Lindamood in 2010 at Butterfield’s, a former blues club in Sopchoppy. The next year, they collaborated on Decker’s poetry CD, "Petty Secret." So, it was natural that Moorer chose Lindamood’s signature resonant bass as the opera’s" narrator.

Each of the opera’s 13-minute multi-layered electronic sounds is based on mathematical algorithms, using Lindamood’s voice as source material. It defies easy description until one listens to the finished work.

“All through the piece, there are parts of extreme order contrasted with soaring and mumbling disorderly textures with sweeps up to the Heavens and down,” Moorer says.

They subsequently found their animators in the husband-and-wife Minneapolis design team, Squawk Productions, after Decker saw their work in a short documentary about sled dogs, Lure of the North. “Caitlin [Hargarten] and Sam [Blake Thompson] understand The Man in the Mangroves’ vision.

This team of five, Team Mangrove as they call themselves, has made good progress over the last year and a half, developing visual concepts for the project and creating a rough draft of the film, called an animatic.

Kickstarter grant and Homeless Coalition donations

They have partnered with the Tallahassee Writers Association and presented "Man" at one of the group’s monthly meetings. The State of Florida DOS Division of Cultural Affairs seeded the project with a Fast Track grant which has been augmented by a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Team Mangrove feels that it’s not enough to raise funds for a project about the plight of those experiencing homelessness without, themselves, making a difference in the local community. To that end, they have contributed five per cent of their Kickstarter donations to Tallahassee’s Big Bend Homeless Coalition and plan to continue this philanthropy with future donations.

The team is working to raise the rest of the film’s budget and, once completed, they plan to enter the short animated project in film festivals worldwide.

On April 6 they will debut the opera-novella to Tallahassee‘s audience as a pre-festival event for Word of South. Along with a screening of the work-in-progress animatic, Lindamood will read Decker’s poem and Decker and Moorer will offer a live performance.

A Q&A panel, including Guggenheim, and moderated by Man’s Associate Producer, Helen Decker, will cap off the event.

The event will also be live streamed by Tallahassee’s Berger Media Productions, Lee Berger. Free tickets are available through Eventbrite at mangrove-man.com or by contacting info@mangrove-man.com.

Decker adds, “We’re happy that The Man in the Mangroves will be live streamed for our backers and audience members who live out of town. And for in-town folks, seeing it in-person on the Planetarium’s large domed screen, under the Tallahassee sky, while listening to the sounds flow from surround-sound speaker to speaker is an exciting sensory opportunity.”

'Passion project'

“It’s a conversation of the stars,” says New York poet, Gari Gullo, who has seen the evolution of the film animatic and has listened to the opera more than two dozen times in the stereo format to which Moorer has converted the opera to make it accessible for more audiences.

“A poem has become an opera, and now is becoming a short-animated film,” Guggenheim says. “It’s a passion project for Andy, Donna, and me.”

Now audiences in Tallahassee will have the chance to sit under the night sky in Moorer’s native hometown and Decker’s adopted city while being immersed in the surround-sound cosmic conversation of the stars talking to Man.

While admission is free (reserve at www.mangrove-man.com) donations help the team complete the film, with 5% of all donations benefiting the Big Bend Homeless Coalition.

The Man in the Mangroves is being made in partnership with the Tallahassee Writers Association and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.

If you go

What: "Man in the Mangroves," a speech-synthesized opera-novella

When: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, as a pre-festival event for the 2022 Word of South Festival.

Where: The Challenger Learning Center’s Planetarium on Kleman Plaza; parking at Kleman Plaza

Tickets: Free tickets available at mangrove-man.com; for more information, email info@mangrove-man.com. While admission is free donations help the team complete the film, with 5% of all donations benefiting the Big Bend Homeless Coalition.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: From poem to movie: 'Mangroves' comes out to play for Word of South