Mark Morris laughs when asked if he enjoys coming to the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven because it’s not so close to the Brooklyn headquarters of his internationally renowned Mark Morris Dance Group.
“I know, it’s really far. Seriously, we go where we’re brought. The festival is great. They’ve always treated us well there.” The dance group has appeared previously at the festival, performing the operas “Dido and Aeneas” in 2009 and “Acis and Galatea” in 2015.
“Pepperland,” Morris’ colorful, trippy piece inspired by The Beatles’ historic 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” has traveled far and wide. Arts & Ideas is one of numerous co-presenters who jointly commissioned the piece.
“Pepperland” premiered last year in The Beatles’ birthplace of Liverpool. “I was asked to participate in the Liverpool Festival,” Morris says. “The festival had the theme of ‘Sgt. Pepper at 50.’ Each artist was asked to do one track. At first I mistakenly thought I had to do the whole album.”
Morris ended up doing a suite of six songs. “It’s interesting because ‘Sgt. Pepper’ was a studio recording. It was not meant to be performed live.
“I asked Ethan Iverson immediately,” Morris says. In January of this year, Iverson — who has collaborated numerous times with Morris — played his last show with The Bad Plus, the audacious modern jazz combo that he’d been a part of for 17 years. He not only created new arrangements for The Beatles songs in “Pepperland” but composed several original pieces.
“Neither of us started working on this,” Morris says, “until we’d secured the global rights to use the songs. That was really really complicated.”
“I’m 60-something. I’m not that interested in The Beatles at all. It’s not memory lane for me. But I went back and listened to the album, and I liked it better than I thought I would. I was able to create this really complicated, multi-referential piece of sound.”
“I like to say that this is for people who love The Beatles or hate The Beatles.”
“Pepperland” is performed at 8 p.m. June 21 and 22 at the Shubert, 247 College St., New Haven. Tickets are $20 to $125.
More Highlights
“Requiem for an Electric Chair,” Toto Kisaku’s one-man show about his near-fatal persecution by the Congolese government for his political theater work and how he found asylum in the U.S. (Kisaku now lives in Middletown.) June 22 and 23 at 6 p.m. in the Iseman Theater, 1156 Chapel St., New Haven. $25.
The final performances of Compagnia de’ Colombari’s radical reworking of “The Merchant of Venice.” 8 p.m. June 21-23 in the Yale Law School Courtyard, 127 Wall St., New Haven. $45-$65.
Free talks on, among other things, “Curation and the Democracy of Arts” at 5:30 pm. June 21; and “New Haven 2040: Looking Toward the Next Twenty Years of Art and Culture” at 1:30 p.m. June 22, both at the Yale Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven.
Thematic tours, including a bike tour in honor of International Make Music Day in New Haven and a walking tour of Massaro Farms in Woodbridge, both on June 21, and a murder mystery bike tour on June 23.
A full schedule of the dozens of Arts & Ideas events can be found in booklet form at the festival’s information booth on New Haven Green or at artidea.org.