Like a lot of fans, Eleanor Ramsay was knocked for a loop when David Bowie died in January.  “I thought, Isn’t he going to live forever?” she recalled during a recent interview. “I couldn’t imagine a world without David Bowie.”  Now she’s doing her part to keep the singer’s enigmatic spirit alive, with the help of three dozen or so of her closest friends from the Boston music scene. On Saturday and Sunday, the long-dormant Boston Rock Opera will be revived for an ambitious three-set tribute to the rock ’n’ roll changeling.  Ramsay, who launched the BRO in 1993, already had been thinking about Bowie, intrigued by the December debut of his musical, “Lazarus.” His death prompted her to approach local jazz linchpin Russ Gershon about assembling a band to perform the complete “Blackstar,” the Bowie album that came out just two days before his death.  “He was the first person I thought of,” Ramsay said of Gershon, founder of the long-running Either/Orchestra.  But the BRO didn’t stop there. Cofounder Mick Maldonado, a.k.a. Mick Mondo (who is Ramsay’s husband), will lead a second band covering the classic album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.” And guitarist Matt Sullivan will front a third group, set to play hits spanning Bowie’s half-century career.  When he died, Bowie was memorialized as a consummate performer whose many stylistic pivots encouraged his fans with a simple message: Be who you want to be.  “He was a huge influence on me, and all of us who started the BRO originally,” Ramsay said while awaiting the start of a rehearsal at Gershon’s Somerville warehouse space. “There wasn’t anybody in my sphere who didn’t have strong feelings about Bowie.”  It’s safe to say the BRO musicians re-creating “Ziggy Stardust” and the greatest hits playlist are Bowie fanatics. Gene Dante, who leads the glam band the Future Starlets, is doing double duty with the Bowie “hits” band and as one of the featured vocalists in the “Blackstar” set. When he climbed inside the tight ring of musicians to croon “ ’Tis Pity She Was a Whore,” Gershon joked that Dante was entering “the torture chamber.”  As they finished a near-flawless take, Gershon looked pleased. “That was pretty damn good,” he said. “Feel good?”  “I feel sexy!” Dante replied, grinning.  But at least a few of the performers taking on “Blackstar” — an experimental work of avant-jazz art-rock — are coming to Bowie with fresh ears. The jazz and blues singer Ron Murphy, for instance, initially agreed to sing lead on the prescient postmortem “Lazarus.” Once hooked, however, he threw himself into learning parts for the gospel chorus that helps bring the entire album to life.  “I’m not sure how much of Bowie’s music he’d heard,” said Gershon. “But he’s become really quite entranced.”  Gershon had to be convinced to take on the project himself: first because he couldn’t shake his sadness about Bowie’s passing, and then because he wasn’t sure he could do the task justice.  But after listening to “Blackstar” enough times, he said, “I got past the crushing weight of it, and into the reverse-engineering of the music. Bowie gave us something great to work with. The boldness of that record is really astonishing.”  Gershon estimates he spent 60 hours learning and transcribing the music before the rehearsals began. As a reward, he’s assigned himself the lead vocal role on two “bonus” tracks the “Blackstar” band will perform, including the dark, dreamy 1976 ballad “Stay.” He’ll also jump in to play the instantly familiar alto saxophone part on “Young Americans” when the “hits” band plays that song.  “We had all this creative energy,” Ramsay said about the show’s sheer scale. “We figured we’d throw caution to the wind.”  In its initial decade-long run the BRO made a name for itself with big-scale theatrical adaptations including “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Ray Davies’s “Preservation.” After a 13-year hiatus — the company’s last shows were in 2003 — the reunion will continue with a three-night run of “Hair” in October, for which they’re holding auditions now.  Ramsay credits Erica Mantone, a classically trained singer who grew up in Walpole, with encouraging her to get the BRO band(s) back together.  “She brought me a big box of croissants,” Ramsay explained.  “My mom’s a hippie,” Mantone said as the band took a break from rehearsing. “I grew up on ‘Hair’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar.’ ” Through her friendship with BRO veteran C. Moon Mullins, she met Ramsay and offered to help resurrect the company.  In some ways, honoring Bowie brings things full circle for the BRO’s cofounders. Ramsay and Maldonado were friends in the ’80s with Reeves Gabrels, the Berklee College of Music guitarist who played alongside Bowie through most of the following decade. When the couple got married, Gabrels had Bowie send them a photo inscribed with his best wishes.  Bowie’s death at age 69 from liver cancer, which he’d managed to keep a secret, was a personal blow, said Ramsay. “It felt like we lost a member of the family.”  Something happened on the day he died, as Bowie sang so memorably on the title track to his last album. His passing certainly brought a lot of people together.  Boston Rock Opera: “Stardust to Blackstar: The Lives of David Bowie”  At ONCE Lounge & Ballroom, Somerville, Aug. 6 and 7, 8 p.m. Tickets: $20, advance $18. 617-285-0167, www.oncesomerville.com
Inspired by David Bowie’s final album and enduring influence, the Boston Rock Opera pays tribute with a three-part show featuring dozens of performers.