On June 18, 1896, the usually jovial, soft-spoken Horace P. Dibble went to his job at the Pacific Crockery and Tinware Company. Before the day ended, he stabbed a shipping clerk to death in a violent skuffle. He lived in this odd Queen Anne style house, which is now simply known as Historical Monument 157 in Los Angeles.
Join chanteuse, pianist and storyteller Jill Tracy and violinist Paul Mercer for a very rare evening inside the Dibble House, with a full concert, tales of ghosts, and their acclaimed Musical Seance.
Hailed by LA Weekly as “the cult darling of the Underworld,” Jill Tracy’s dark cinematic elegance pairs with Mercer’s eerie improvisational style which summons the aid of various centuries-old violins and violas. Since joining forces on Halloween 2007, the duo have become widely known for their astonishing channeled duets on piano and violin. The pair affectionately refer to their collaborations as “spontaneous musical combustion.” Their uncanny ability to conjure unsettlingly lavish compositions has led to spellbinding results, transporting the room into “a musical seance.”
Audience members are asked to bring small objects of special significance, such as a photo, talisman, jewelry, toy, token. This is a very crucial part of manifesting the music. Every object holds its story, its spirit. Energy, resonance, impressions from anyone who has ever held the object, to the experiences and emotions passed through it.
The duo have conjured music in such unusual locales as abandoned asylums, caves, haunted castles, decrepit gardens, and were special guests at Anne Rice’s famed Halloween Ball in New Orleans in addition to working on film scores and touring internationally.
V. Vale of RE/Search publications hailed a Jill Tracy/Paul Mercer Seance as “Sheer magic! Perfection. Improvised… If you’re lucky enough to be there, you realize you’ve just had a hint of something extra-mortal, uber-human, transcendent – maybe the concentrated ghosts of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater or the Commedia Dell’arte of the past are swirling around the room . . .and you think that THIS is the new avant-garde: live, un-censored, living theater.”
Special guest author Colin Dickey (Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius, and Afterlives of the Saints) will discuss murderous LA tales, and the strange history of the Dibble House.
ONE NIGHT ONLY! Be part of a rare conjuring of music, magic, history, and madness.
(from the 2013 News Archives)