Allen Peterson, Matt Toole, and Pyrophonic Sound started Iron Opera as a project to write songs about casting iron and the community of cast iron artists. These collaborators announced the Iron Opera project at the National Conference on Contemporary Cast Iron Art and Practices, on April 4, 2025, at Sloss Furnaces. On that day, “Iron Opera 1 - Overture” was also released as a five-song EP available for listening and/or download on most platforms.
The five songs on this EP are in a wide variety of styles/genres. The songs are not really an opera, or connected with characters and a plot the way that a piece of musical theatre such as an opera would be. It's possible that the project could grow into that sort of thing eventually, or it might become a series of separate albums, an ever-growing collection of songs about casting iron and making iron art. We named the project "Iron Opera" in part because we enjoy the silliness of pairing the cast iron process with a musical art form. It’s in part an homage to the late, great iron caster Andy “Griff” Griffiths of Camarthen College, Wales – along with others, he enjoyed laughing about the idea of a musical version of our cast iron practice. We finally decided on the title “Iron Opera” because the word “opera” is originally an Italian word that means “work” as in a work of art, but also to build, to make, to create – and this lines up really well with the spirit of our Iron Communitas.
"Overture” is only the first chapter of the Iron Opera project. Now that these songs are released, we are working to expand the project so that the next phase will involve a much wider group of collaborators.
We are interested in working with anyone who wants to tell the stories of the cast iron community through music. We suggest that potential collaborators listen to "Iron Opera 1 - Overture", to get an idea of what we have already. So far we are just getting geared up for this next, expanded phase of collaboration -- but we have spoken with interested iron casters with a wide variety of talents, and even some accomplished musicians who don't cast iron (yet). People can let us know what talents they might like to share, and what level of involvement they envision. For example we have room for people who would like to write lyrics for other people to sing, and people who would like to sing other people's lyrics; those who might like to write instrumental works to go with lyrics, people who play an instrument and could contribute to a song once it is started, or people who may prefer to contribute a completed iron-themed song to the group project. Or even people who may just want to shout along with a chorus or two.
If you are interested in contributing musically to the Iron Opera project, please reach out to us by email at:
allen.APfinearts(at)gmail.com
Matt Toole on Iron Opera’s start as “Iron… The Musical!”
I met Andy “Griff” Griffiths at Ironbridge/Coalbrookdale, England, in 2006. We were having laughs about performance iron, which somehow led to the concept of performing iron as musical theatre. It became a running joke that came up whenever we got together on that trip.
This idea got funnier while I was on sabbatical in Cork, Ireland, doing a project called “Iron R1” with artist James Hayes. When Andy brought his crew over to be a part of it, we once again spent time together, both onsite and in the pub. We howled at the idea that two completely dissimilar art forms such as cast iron and musicals could exist together, and we titled the running joke “Iron… The Musical!”, which had to be uttered with a flourish of jazz hands. As it turns out, that year we were on the cusp of a batch of musicals with unlikely themes, such as “Book of Mormon” and “Spiderman”, while years later “Hamilton” and “Waitress: the Musical!” continued to push that envelope.
I tend to run with a joke until it either turns into something or people tell me "that's enough". So I am jazzed to see that real musicians could manifest this vision, and actually make something that becomes bigger than the sum of the parts. We wish that Andy, with his background as a professional musician, could see what is happening with this idea that we enjoyed together years ago. Iron Opera is a lighthearted take on presenting our cast iron art community as song, our history in the oral tradition. Life is to be sung aloud to preserve our stories. Everything is a song!