A row of instruments, stretching from a toy piano to a concert grand, became the starting point for Room of Keys, a new hybrid recital play written by David James Brock and directed by Tom Diamond.
A librettist and playwright whose work often bridges music and theatre, Brock brings a particular sensitivity to how story can be carried through sound as well as text. Room of Keys is an unusual play-then-recital which draws on the solo piano works of Béla Bartók and original compositions by pianist-performer Adam Sherkin. It is presented by Piano Lunaire in conjunction with the Canadian Opera Company’s (COC) presentation of Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung.
For Brock, the project began as a collaborative opportunity. “The impulse to write it was the chance to work with Adam Sherkin again,” he explains, recalling how Sherkin first proposed “a twenty-minute monodrama for an acting pianist (himself) in conversation with COC’s April production of Bartok’s symbolist opera Bluebeard’s Castle.” With director Tom Diamond also attached, Brock’s immediate response was an enthusiastic “Sounds good to me!”
Room of Keys follows Greenie (Sherkin), a man returning to his father’s abandoned music shop, where each instrument unlocks a memory and music shaped by the recollection. Drawing loosely on the seven-door structure of Bluebeard’s Castle, the work moves through seven “rooms” of sound and experience, pairing Brock’s script with Bartók’s piano works from the period of the opera’s composition. Performed by Sherkin, the piece combines spoken storytelling and live piano performance, with the character’s emotional journey unfolding in tandem with the music. And alongside the monodrama, Sherkin also premieres his own Allegro gentile as a companion to Bartók’s Allegro barbaro.
Brock’s libretto takes the form of a condensed contemporary psychodrama which reframes Bluebeard and Judith through a 21st-century lens. Brock’s initial thinking was wordless – purely visual. The first image he sketched and showed Sherkin was a lineup of instruments in a column of light…”sort of an ‘evolution of man’ type thing, where instruments would become progressively more complex”. It began with “a Fisher Price toy piano” and culminated in “the Bösendorfer Grand”. This concept anchored the work’s structure: “What Adam (as our main character Greenie) would play preceded the reason why he would.”
But where to set this drama? “Adam was open to the idea of playing seven instruments, so I wanted a setting where those instruments would realistically be in the same space and not just a convenience,” Brock explains. An initial draft placed the action in a storage locker, but “the old music shop felt more meaningful—the kind that used to be much more prevalent.” In a wistful note, he adds “Steve’s Music closed just a couple weeks ago in Toronto, so we really are running out of places like it.”
Within this backdrop, the design deepened: “Adam and I landed on the idea of keyed instruments—keys open doors—and an increasing complexity as Adam’s character Greenie relives his past through the lens of music.” The memories begin with childhood: “He’s three in his first memory of a Fisher Price piano as a Christmas gift.” As Greenie ages, they grow in intensity. But his relationship with music is fraught: “Greenie never plays for joy; he plays because his father makes him play, and so he ‘hates it.’”
At its core, the piece explores familial pressure and the complicated ways identity is formed. “Greenie’s dad shapes his son in some image of musical excellence,” Brock reflects. “I think a lot of people have familial pressure or expectations like this that they might be able to relate to: music lessons, sports, grades, jobs, choice of partners—take your pick.”
And the work reimagines the recital form itself. “I’m excited by the idea of the recital that’s motivated by some need beyond ‘watch me play’,” Brock enthuses. What emerges is a “hybrid version of performance and character, which might be new for some audiences.”
While Room of Keys stands independently, it is also in deliberate dialogue with Bluebeard’s Castle. “There are some structural echoes: Bluebeard’s Castle has seven doors, and Room of Keys has seven keyed instruments in seven scenes,” Brock notes. He notes shared thematic threads, including “Greenie charging into difficult truths, just as Judith keeps asking Bluebeard to reveal the next room,” plus a general “sense of being trapped in relationships.” That said, the piece is eminently accessible: “I don’t think anyone needs to be familiar with Bluebeard’s Castle to understand what’s going on in Room of Keys…but I imagine it might add depth.”
As for why Bluebeard’s Castle continues to resonate 115 years after its composition, Brock points immediately to its openness: “I think one of the enduring things about it is that it means different things to different people. It’s not a huge leap for me to think of it resonating today as warning…about political power, or toxic masculinity, or the perils of the misinformation age…. Maybe ten years ago, I’d have thought differently. And maybe ten years from now, it’ll mean something else.”
Tickets to Room of Keys at the nanoSTAGE on April 9, 10 and 11, 2026, 8:00 pm are available here. Tickets to Canadian Opera Company’s companion recital of Room of Keys at the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre on April 16, 2026, 12:00 noon are available at coc.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
