I'll Never Be Art Garfunkel

I mentioned earlier this month that BAM celebrated Paul Simon during the month of April, and of all the living American songwriters, he certainly deserves it (up there with...Bob Dylan and Stephen Sondheim??? eh?). The final set of concerts featuring Paul Simon and his music was titled "American Tunes" and were essentially some of the great hits and hidden gems in Simon's vast collection.

It is something of a pity then for me to say that it wasn't the greatest show ever, and I mean it totally could have been. The curating of a "special guests" evening can be complicated and fraught with challenges, and this night showed how a grab bag of performers honoring someone else is almost always hit and miss (and this goes for cover albums too, always a few good artists picking some good songs, and then about 8 or 9 bands you have never heard of and/or don't care about reaching for their moment in the sun).

(tribute albums I should have been on)

I am not sure who picked the artists - Paul Simon himself, the programming powers at BAM or a combination? - but I do know that the line up was diverse to the point of diffuse...ambient mellow indie rock, straight up blues, and heart-on-the-sleeve male Celine Dion. The uniting element of the night was of course Paul Simon and his music, which luckily for everyone, could have made a great night of high school choirs showcasing his songs (or wait, is that a level of hell?).

The Roches started out the evening, a group of sisters who've known Paul for years. The highlight of their tiny set was "Cecelia," which Paul guested on. Frankly, I think it is next to impossible to f--- up"Cecilia," so of course everyone loved it. It also featured some of the most ridiculous, amazing dancing ever by the eldest sister.


The groups that followed - Gillian Welch, Grizzly Bear, Olu Dara, Josh Groban...(wait who? really? what? more on him in a second) - played two or three songs, usually a classic and a lesser known item, but with the exception of Grizzly Bear, the musicians stuck pretty closely to the original conception of the song. Grizzly Bear's "Mother and Child Reunion" was slowed, a bit melancholy, gauzy. Their "Graceland," a recent staple of their own shows before this, was incredibly wistful. I am a biased observer - Grizzly Bear is one of my favorite bands - but I couldn't help but feel that everyone else would have benefited from taking a few more chances musically, making their songs their own in a similar vein. Well, everyone else but Josh Groban.

Now, how Josh Groban, he of the ubiquitous Christmas album, and something of a BIG STAR, got on this program I will never know, though I imagine that he found out the shows were happening, and told his agent, "hey I REALLY want to do that! That sounds cool!" and because he has sold about 500 times more records than all of the other guest artists combined, BOOM he was on the list. Though...he was sort of perfectly placed in what we shall call the Art Garfunkel role, singing two of the more over the top songs, both requiring fairly large ranges - "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "America." And here is why he is the male Celine. He can sing! He can belt out those top notes! Boy is his voice full of emotion! But it was sort of shallow as all get out, though well sung, and even better, well-played (he accompanied himself on the piano). Still, in the context of a night where few musicians took artistic chances, he didn't stick out nearly as much as by all rights he should have.

Lest I be perceived as a nasty grouch, I should say that the musicianship all around was great, and Gillian Welch especially was just lovely...I wish she could have had a few more songs. Still, being a smorgasbord night, there was no room for any one star, so in a way everyone was slighted.

As with Songs From the Capeman, which I wrote about earlier this month, the best moments ultimately came whenever Paul was on stage - and he peppered his appearances through the night, singing with different acts and then coming out in the end for his own mini-set.

Despite my complaints about the selection of artists, or the interpretations from these artists, ultimately I enjoyed the show immensely. I soared high with Joshy when he counted the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike and I felt the warm fuzz of tenderness when Dan Rossen in Grizzly Bear told us that losing love is like a window in your heart.

Now if you will excuse me I am going to pound out Bridge Over Troubled Water" on the piano and pretend I have a very lovely A-flat for that last phrase.

Dangerous Linneyiasons

I find there is something a little tragic about realizing a truly talented actor has limitations, like when the world discovered that not even Meryl Streep could make something like She Devil funny, or that Cate Blanchett's Russian accent is shoddy at best (oh and poor Ewan Mcgregor and HIS attempts at an American accent...). This was my feeling while watching Laura Linney in Les Liaisons Dangereuses presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre.

In movies like You Can Count on Me and The Squid and the Whale, Laura Linney is fantastic, creating complex characters full of contradictions - loving traits mixed with selfishness, standing aloof to loved ones while seeking to do what is best for them. You like or hate these characters because they are real, they are your mother or your sister or your wife. But...Laura Linney as the Marquise de Merteuil? Surely not.

The Marquise de Merteuil was a great role for Glenn Close in the 1988 film (oh also Annette Bening in the 1989 film Valmont and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the Dangerous Liaisons-for-teens film Cruel Intentions). But whereas Glenn Close can cast a disturbing warm/cold radiation, like she is a minor god toying with her subjects, Laura Linney does not have the same armor - there is always some sort of vulnerability there. And the role, whether played in feminist revision (as in this production) or not, needs to come across as a woman who has learned very well how to play a manipulative game to not just succeed but win in a battle of sexes where women are viewed openly as the lesser sex.

Laura Linney comes from a theater background, and I would definitely be interested in seeing her on stage more often, but perhaps as characters who can express need a little more. She would have made a marvelous Joyce in Top Girls now that I think about it...

This however is not to say that she did not have moments or that there weren't other highlights to the show. The men in general were strong (and the show tipped its hat in other feminist directions by having male nudity but no female nudity), and several supporting female players made the production seem more alive while onstage - Sian Philips comes to mind. The set and direction were fine as well - mirrors and filigree that slowly decay as the spider web created by the Marquise becomes fragile and dirtied.

The show also marked the Broadway debut of Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter. Her role was too small to really be able to forecast her future, but again I look forward to seeing her on stage in the future. Maybe as the daughter in Sisters Rosensweig, with the sisters played by Meryl Streep, Laura Linney, and Glenn Close? Ha. Okay I'll leave casting to others.

Fuerzabruta!

Years ago a friend told me I needed to see De la Guarda, a show in what looks like an old bank (I'm guessing) on Union Square, which was "sexy, and fun." Alas, I never made it. So I was happy when the same people who created De la Guarda came back to the space with something new, hopefully equally sexy and fun, Fuerzabruta.

And yay! It was sexy and fun! It was also like a short, expensive rave with acrobatics, where all the performers were WAY TOO HAPPY. I have no idea if there was any meaning to be inferred in the dancing and running through cardboard and getting spayed with water, but something about it suggested I should break out of my office-life rut and live life to the fullest (and be sexy and fun and smile a lot).

Essentially a series of scenes set around and above the audience, which is jammed together as a big sweaty mass, Fuerzabruta combines aerial acrobatics with a thumpin' generic soundtrack, and plenty or scantily clad attractive people, leading to the highlight - a huge transparent sheet of plastic pooling with water which descends to just above the audience's heads, where the cast slips and slides around, wet and pretty, and interacts with the audience in an, "what are these mortals below us, how curious, i love them" sort of way. I would be lying if I didn't say there was something erotic about this, or that I was not jealous of the cast to get to throw themselves around in the water above an enamored audience

There were parts of unexplainable silliness as well, as when the perky dj took out a huge squirt gun and started spraying the audience while throwing her hair around, or when a number of the actors did a choreographed hoe down-type dance and then tore apart the walls around them (live life to the fullest, break down barriers, etc. etc. etc. ?).

The result of all the water and sweatiness and cardboard being ripped up is this: I have recommended Fuerzabruta to people on several occasions, saying "it's a lot of fun. You'll get wet."

You know there is something about perky sexy wet people sliding around just out of arms length that gets me every time.

Un Ballo in Maschera

I Love Stephanie Blythe

Every now and then it is great to see a big Italian opera, full of big tunes, a few deaths, and, when the production is right at the Met, incredible sets. Thus I treated myself on April 19 to 286th Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera.

I don't really think this is one of Verdi's masterpieces. It lacks any truly great showstopping tune, and the plot is fairly rudimentary - boy loves girl who is married to boy's best friend, that's all you need to know - and come to think of it the characterization is fairly rudimentary as well. You don't really feel for any of the characters. Yet when performed by a first-rate cast, it is a satisfying night at the opera.

And the cast was suberb. Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the heartthrob Siberian Husky, played Captain Anckarstrom (okay wait, a digression. So this production put the opera back in Swedish with royal Swedish characters, as Verdi and his librettist Antonio Somma had originally intended before censors got a hold of it and forced it to be relocated to colonial Boston of all places. However Hvorostovsky's character is more famously known as Renato , and calling him Captain Anckarstrom seems silly. Though I suppose on some levels many operas are silly in this respect. It doesn't really matter that Norma is a Druid, or that Lucia is in Scotland...), Angela Brown played Amelia, Captain Anckarstrom's wife, and Salvatore Licitra was Gustavo III, King of Sweden (ho hum the King of Sweden singing Italian arias, ho hum), all strong singers with good stage presence.

But of course I was really there to see Stephanie Blythe, who has it, whatever it is that makes a performer that much more special. She played Ulrica, the fortune-teller who is only in one scene (but what a scene!), and she was a captivating presence. Her voice is a rich, deeply nuanced thing of beauty, and in my world she is cast in just about every opera (though come to think of it, she has recently been at the Met in Handel AND Wagner, so it is conceivable she could actually be in every opera if she chose to).

The singers had a grand time galavanting through Piero Faggioni's grand production. While not quite on the amazingly gaudy level of Zefferelli, these sets were still stunners. Ulrica's warehouse was like the port scene in Pirates of the Caribbean, with pyrotechnics, and flag-waving, and the final Masked Ball made the Met stage seem about a gazillion feet deep, with roughly 400 people on stage - who cares if these things are accomplished with smoke and mirrors, they are great sets which lend a true sense of grandeur to accompany the music.

Of course people die in the end, but only after proclamations of love and fidelity all around. How can you not love it?

The Walworth Farce and Other Irish Tales

Ah, the Irish.
I can think of no other culture, and certainly none in the English-speaking countries, which has captured its own complex condition in written words so well. Reading the great Irish writers, from Yeats to Joyce to Synge to Roddy Doyle to Frank McCourt, you are drawn into a world in which moments of lyrical beauty transcend a tragic mundane sadness, an inability to escape a past which weighs on the shoulders of the present.


This is not to say that the Irish are fundamentally an unhappy people (or is it?) or that these works of literature are not capable of being incredibly humorous - in fact many of them are quite humorous while pointing out everything I have just written. Martin McDonagh's plays, including The Beauty Queen of Leenane and the great, bloody The Lieutenant of Inishmore are deeply dark comedies which explore contemporary Irish society in ways that are hilarious but are ultimately deeply unsettling.



Enda Walsh's Walworth Farce, playing at St. Ann's Warehouse, is quite similar, commenting on the relationship between men and women, and the inability of the Irish to escape their pasts, however dysfunctional. I felt the serious moments of the play were vastly superior to the farce, which often felt rushed or too broadly captured, but overall the play came across as meticulously put together so that the climax, grim and bloody, made disturbingly logical sense.


While the bulk of the story deals with three men - a father and his two sons, whom he has coerced into joining him in playing out, literally, the tragic events of his past over and over - the most human moments come from a woman. Hayley, a grocery store clerk, stops by the apartment of this family, checking in on one of the sons whom she clearly shares some chemistry with, and is inadvertanly drawn into the family drama. The actress Mercy Ojelade is suberb in eliciting the audience sympathies - we want her to save the son from this family tragedy, or to at least get out of the apartment alive. One of the best attributes of the play is allowing us to see through Hayley's eyes how dysfunctional the family drama we have been witnessing actually is, and as tragic as it sounds, we realize she might not be able to save any of them, and it might be better for them to play out their grim fates alone.

Easy Breezy Beautiful Cover Girl

The Gossip's show at Webster Hall on April 15 was a rally in disguise, a battle cry to be strong in opposition in society if it opposes you, if you are a minority, if you are a woman, or fat, or gay, that there are a lot of sad, mean, people in the world tryin' to get you down, but you are important. I'm a little too old to think of the world as quite that divided, but I got the point, and it was pretty cool.

It wasn't hard to get the point though when it came from the mouth of Beth Ditto, the famously large and in charge leader of The Gossip. Beth is outspoken about everything, and what I appreciate about her is that while her wildly "I Love You and Fuck You" personality might have started as a defense mechanism, it certainly seems like the real thing now.

While I think Christina Aguilera's claim that "you're beautiful, no matter what they say..." is all very well, it is a little hard to swallow coming from a thin Mickey Mouse Club beauty. Now, when Beth Ditto says this (in not so many words, maybe a little garbled, and maybe slurring a little from being drunk), moving around with her fat rolls giggling, it sinks a lot deeper.

Beth's voice is a full throated meshing of Stevie Nicks and Janis Joplin, lacking the tender beauty capable in either voice, but capturing the primal quality that makes both voices vital. She is capable of a full roar, and turning just about any word, any line, any sound into this roar, and she also profits from a pounding backing band. I am not sure the last time I heard someone sing so well with a band behind them and so poorly without one - Beth felt compelled to sing at almost all times. She sang several covers which revealed I'm not sure what - Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" came out of nowhere, but of course fit in the overall theme of acceptance, and in a moment of odd counterirony, Beth encouraged a sing-along of the theme from Friends.

At the end of the show, Beth lept off stage (actually I have no idea who she got down; I doubt she leaps) and walked through the crowd singing, "You are important," and then "We are important" over and over again, without going into exactly how or why or when, but just repeating a mantra of positivity to everyone around her (there was also some political tie-in somehow, but it was unfocused and confused).

And looking around, there were a lot of women and a lot of queers in the audience, which is understandable (the evening was hosted by Murray Hill, as if to cement the Gay Deal), and I think awesome. Many of Beth's non-sung monologues were drunken ramblings about women in rock and about standing up to people who say no. Much of it was vague and generalized, and you would need to be pretty aware of the music scene to fully appreciate what she was attempting to verbalize. But it roughly translated as, "when I was growing up, there was like one ONE woman rocker on the cover of Rolling Stone, now what kind of image is that sending to young girls? And pitchfork says really incredibly mean things about me, and I can't even figure out why, but whatever they are nasty cruel people and I don't need to listen to them, and you don't either."

It reminded me of the rock 'n' roll camp for girls, which was founded to give girls self-esteem and confidence by finding their inner...well, I suppose once I think about it, their inner Beth Ditto.

Bitch, you're beautiful, no matter what they say.

Brahms and the Babe

Brahms' chamber sonatas, 3 for violin and piano, 2 to cello and piano, and 2 for clarinet and piano, are great works. They tend to be lyrical, slightly introspective, and while quite difficult, lack any sort of showing brilliance.

The 3 sonatas for violin and piano make about 80 minutes of music, and are programmed not infrequently by violinists as a complete recital - I've heard Christian Tetzlaff perform them, and on Monday, I heard Anne-Sophie Mutter perform them at Carnegie Hall (ahem, Stern Auditorium is just TOO BIG for these kinds of things. I know she can sell the place out, but it is ridiculous to hear intimate chamber works with 2600 of your closest friends). Mutter is of course a justly famous violinist, but I wondered how she would fare with these pieces. She is a passionate performer, and I wasn't sure if these pieces were well suited to her temperament.

Things didn't begin auspiciously. She began with the second sonata, and the notes weren't connecting. She also seemed to be adjusting to the size of the space with people in it - her pianos came across as thin rather than quiet. Her accompanist, Lambert Orkis, played well, but there didn't seem to be a connection. The music was being played well enough, but the true beauty of the piece, and the skills of the performers weren't coming across.

Thankfully, things changed with the first sonata, full of profoundly beautiful moments. The third sonata was equally well done, Mutter's tone and dynamic contrast fully meshing with the needs of the space.

And then came the encores. Four of them (the encores and applause added about 30 minutes to the show). And here Mutter's extroverted side came out in flashy Hungarian Dances - great fun, and after the beautiful restraint of the sonatas, a great change of pace for the performer and the audience. Her final encore I predicted before a note was played - "Wiegenlied" Op. 49, No. 4, more famously known as the "Brahms Lullaby." Nice touch.

One more thing: Mutter looked AMAZING in her strapless skintight dress. The woman appears ageless, and she has an incredible, captivating stage presence. Meaning, she's hot.

A Quick Note on Petrushka

I have heard a lot of great things about puppeteer Basil Twist's art - his Symphonie Fantastique, performed in a pool, sounds amazing and a little incomprehensible to me. His Petrushka, however, makes sense. A great ballet by Stravinsky, with an accessible narrative with easily identified characters, Petrushka lends itself to different treatments.

Lincoln Center brought Basil Twist's Petrushka back as part of a larger Stravinsky focus, and its long run sold out quickly - it is in a space which seats less then 200 people. I feel lucky and blessed to have seen this production, which was warm, fun, and beautiful.

Joan Acocella wrote about the production beautifully here, and I am not sure there is much more I could add, except I hope for everyone it comes back again and again, and I look forward to seeing what the heck the Berlioz in the water is all about.

Noel Coward searchs Craigslist

There is something cool about watching artists develop.

It was been particularly interesting watching how the pianist/composer/songwriter Gabriel Kahane has grown. His first songs were in the vaguely confessional/intelligent singer at a piano mode, but there was too much of a sense of wit to stay there...Noel Coward meet Jim Croce. His piano writing was more early 20th century lieder than Billy Joel...what the heck do you do with a pop song sung over Alban Berg?

That has been Gabriel's predicament, and his show at Joe's Pub on April 9 offered some answers. First, you don't try to remedy it. You accept it and revel in it. The crowd, which included a lot of music undustry types, could appreciate the piano skills and the piano writing skills, and also appreciate Gabe's ability to sing over difficult piano lines (I mean seriously Gabe, stop showing off).

Second, you add some talented band members for a couple songs, to take the limelight away from the piano for a while (some of the band members appear with EVERYONE. Rob Moose, looking your way), allowing the actually songwriting and singing to be focused on.

Finally, you accept who are you and what you can do. Gabriel set a number of Craigslist ads to music, and the cycle, Craigslistlieder, is a witty, dirty, slightly poignant parody of art songs meeting pop songs, and how tongue in cheek it is is a little hard to read. I've heard Gabriel perform it before, but in Joe's Pub, as part of a larger set which included a band, it felt fresh and different, and less "showy."

I believe that other people have started performing Criagslistlieder, which suggests that it is moving into the realm of art songs which are intepretted rather than a pop song which is identified with one person. This is in interesting development, and may allow Gabriel, whose music sits merrily on the fence, to continue playing in both pastures.

The Capeman Cometh

The first week of Paul Simon's month-long residency at BAM, Songs from The Capeman, was disappointing in one respect but incredibly rewarding in another.

Disappointing because even though it was clear that this would not be Paul Simon singing the songs he wrote from his failed Broadway show, you couldn't help but want him there, onstage, singing in the light knowing voice, strumming the guitar. Rewarding because instead of Paul Simon, we got the Spanish Harlem Orchestra and some of the best singers from Puerto Rico and of Puerto Rican descent - including the great Danny Rivera, whose soaring voice is considered the "national voice of Puerto Rico," and who could incite a salsa riot by stamping his feet (this is essentally what happened at the end of the night, actually), and these performers proved far better suited to the material, regardless who wrote it.

It has long been said of The Capeman, which has gone down in history as one of the more famous flops on Broadway, that there was great music trapped in something of an unstageble narrative, and BAM and Paul Simon have done this music a great service by freeing it from staging. While adhering loosely to the contours of a narrative about a troubled immigrant who is tried and imprisoned for cold-blooded murders (a story BAM didn't feel the need to include in the program notes), most of the songs stand on their own, in their own categories - pride, love, loss. There were sections, most notably in the second act, when lyrics became too concrete, too bound in the story of the Capeman and his rehabilitation, and the performance struggled to remain simply "songs," but in general this was a night of unflagging energy and extremely extroverted performances, showcasing the songwriting talents of one of America's greats.

Paul Simon did appear to perform one song from the show - the introspective "Trailways Bus," which was like a revisitation of "America" or "The Boxer," and he joined the Orchestra and singers in the end for the necessary encores (including "Late in the Evening").

I was left with the sense that Oscar Hernandez and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra were just getting started (after 2-and-a-half hours) and were willing to come back onstage for another set, and that the singers, which included in addition to Danny Rivera standouts Ray De la Paz and Frankie Negron, would join them as well.

I do wonder if Paul Simon, a Jewish man from Queens, writing songs called "Born in Puerto Rico" is well-intentioned but missing the mark, or if it is a testament of his collaborative and song-writing skills that there was no pandering - one criticism I have heard recently is that he (and artists like him) take popular regional music and water it down just enough for the average white masses - think Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints in addition to The Capeman. Personally, I feel that act of collaborating with musicians from these different genres renders the point somewhat moot. I might have felt uncomfortable if Paul Simon and a backing band performed these songs, but they didn't. Paul Simon may have written the songs; they were given life by others.

There is also, finally, the capeman himself, Salvador Agron. During a few brief clips of archival footage, we were able to see a mere boy, standing defiant against the world, whose story of loneliness and the conflicting emotions he inspired are part of the day-to-day fabric of American Legend. The story might be unstageable, but it is certainly familiar, and Paul Simon's songs in the hands of capable singers (who it should be noted, for the most part avoided Broadway belting) lend humanity to a story that could have been marginalized as yet another curious New York footnote.

[The evening began with Little Anthony and the Imperials, and is was beyond wonderful to hear these older men in great voice, singing "Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko Pop" and "Tears on My Pillow."]

Of Fisherspooner and Fishing Nets

I feel a fair amount of modern dance is fairly serious - high minded. Aspiring to combine music, the gorgeously abstract unknowable artform, with the highest achievements of the human body (this side of Champ Bailey)...Stephen Petronio is a horse of a different color. Sure, his dancers are stunning, one of the most solid ensembles I've seen, but when even the greatest dancers are dancing to...well, Fisherspooner, rather than say, Mozart or the blips and squeaks that accompany William Forsythe, you are inviting a rather blunt question: What was the point?

Asking what the point of a piece of art is is sort of a nasty, cheating question. Must art defend itself? And is one piece of art better than another because it has loftier intentions..? Are Schubert's songs better than Bob Dylan's or Paul Simon's because he used trickier harmonic motion and better lyrics? Ah! Trick question. The melodies of Paul Simon are as well-crafted as any of Schubert's, and Schubert frequently set truly terrible poems to music. His songs are memorable despite the setting of poems that would be forgotten otherwise.

But back to Stephen Petronio and his troupe of awesome dancers, whose show I saw at the Joyce on April 3rd. The music choices were unconventional and somewhat daring - Fisherspooner, Rufus Wainwright, various Antony Hegerty songs and collaborations. This is music that could be criticized as a little too hip, or trendy. An intelligent artist getting a hold of a hipster's ipod. But as it happens, this is music that mines a different, darker material than Mozart or bips and squeaks, no matter the fashionable reputation.

Highlights of the evening included Davalois Fearon dancing to Antony's "For Today I am a Boy," (which is one of the most emotionally exposed songs I know of). As part of This is the Story of a Girl in the World, Fearon danced with a (and I venture into the land of Platitudia here) vulnerable strength that was heart-breaking. The first piece, the world premiere Beauty and the Brut, was to music by Fisherspooner, a slowly emerging tale of a woman who discovers she is not alone on a beach. Here the dancers were at their best and the interplay of the dancers was beautiul AND eeire...proof that exactly what the source material is doesn't matter, if it inspires something worthwhile from someone else. Also the costumes, which made all the dancers look like gym ad models caught in fishing nets, rocked.

Gym Ad Model + Fishing Net = Beauty and the Brut!

Sappho, er Sympho

I have this thing about the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who invented a rather overly rigid system of composition in an attempt to re-think how music was created after tonality ate itself. Here is my issue - so he wanted to create a new way to compose as tonality was dead...yet his solution used the pitches and intervals of the old system, a system which had been created over time because of tendencies understood as natural in the relation of those old pitches and intervals. I just feel like, if you are going to re-invent something, start from scratch. Blow up the old model. It is like, to me, he just didn't think BIG ENOUGH. He still used the white notes and black notes on the piano...but tried to say that you should play them in certain orders, not like in the old way but in his new, regimented way.

Eh.

I was reminded of this on March 26 during "Sympho," which brands itself as "orchestra.circa.now." No actually I was reminded of this during "TRACES," performed by Sympho, no wait, performed by symphoNYC...? Anyway, Sympho is the brainchild of conductor Paul Haas, as a way of re-inventing the orchestral concert, which I'll admit could use come tinkering. Instead of overture, concerto, symphony (which only the most conservative of orchestras follow with any regularity these days) , TRACES presented us with one continuous concert of many, many short works held together with connective tissue written by Judd Greenstein, which contained traces (get it? get it?) of the pieces programmed on the concert. The effect was a little like Berio's Sinfonia mixed with a lot of lesser orchestral pieces.

If it seems like I am being harsh, it is perhaps because Sympho (man I hate that name) set the bar rather high for itself: "In June 2006, we debuted our first concert, REWIND, because we felt that the classical music concert experience desperately needed an overhaul..its presentation had become positively archaic. Musicians dressed like cruise-ship waiters...Awkward cough-filled pauses [clearly thinking about Avery Fisher]....Classical music concerts, through their inability (or refusal) to adapt to changing times, were slowly losing their grip on the American cultural imagination. Something had to be done. Thus, Sympho was born....Our REWIND concert...[sent] tremors throughout the industry..."

At any rate, the concert was in the Angel Orensanz Center, which is a cool space. I sat in a folding chair in a darkened corner. The lighting design was incredibly dark, but shifted colors enough so I could read the program about half the time, though the program had full pages that were sort of indecipherable. There was a cheat sheet telling how to know when you were hearing a new piece, though it used terms like harmonics to guide the listener, so so much for aiding the musically unwashed.

The pieces themselves were often esoteric and I think not coincidentally, relatively easy. Arvo Part, Biagio Marini (who?), Gluck. The relative ease of the program was probably a pragmatic decision - the orchestra (SymphoNYC) was essentially a talented post-youth orchestra, and I am guessing they had limited rehearsal time. The big piece of the evening was Copland's Appalachian Spring, which was accompanied by some unusual lighting choices. As the Shaker melody began to play, the altar area of the space was bathed in deep red, taking on a sacrificial look. Appalachian Rite of Spring!

At several points, musicians moved around the halls, and a couple of the pieces were fairly light, though on the whole the evening came across as a little self-serious. If you were going to change one thing about classical music, I would think it would be that.

So back to Schoenberg. I'm not saying classical music couldn't use a shake up. But I don't think that playing obscure pieces with some dark lighting is going to do the trick. I look more towards the Wordless Music model as a possibility...taking the classical out of the situation entirely, so that it's JUST music. Good music, classical or pop, R&B or jazz or Midwestern hilly billy stomp, doesn't need a gimmick.

Still, kudos to Paul Haas and is group for trying. There are far worse composers you could be compared to than Schoenberg.

More Dance

I used to hate modern dance. Well, dislike it. And ballet. There seemed to be a lot of pretense and silliness associated with it. An over-seriousness. I remember seeing a movie, or more accurately a part of a movie, Indian Summer, which I had to stop watching simply because I couldn't deal with what I felt was ridiculous whining -- oh my lithe body's breaking down!!! (In retrospect, my assessment seems very harsh and a bit disrespectful towards a film that came at the tail end of the AIDS crisis.)

The costumes didn't help, either:

Then a friend told me she was going to Mark Morris, and I said, "oh I don't like modern dance," and she said, "no, you just haven't seen good modern dance." And she was right.

Years later, I can reflect on this, and be amazed how my perspective has changed. During the opening night performance of Emanuel Gat's performance of K626 at the Joyce, there was a moment of such immense beauty, as 8 dancers transitioned from chaotic individualistic movements into synchronicity just as the chorus of Mozart's Requiem began intoning the mournful first words "Requiem..." that I spontaneously started to cry.

There is still bad dance out there, I am now just able to differentiate. Or a least I have an opinion. Not all of Emanuel Gat's K626 was successful - at one point it meandered and lost my attention - but overall I was impressed by the choreography and the dancing and I would see the company again.

I, ahem, even liked the costumes.

Thy Hand, Britney

There is something about ephemeral one-time-only cultural events which make me a little sad. Artists, musicians, dancers...whomever...put an exceptional amount of work that will be heard by as many people as the publicity allows for...sure when it is a surprise performance of U2 it is huge and an event and sold out, but when it is a smaller dance company performing at a random auditorium, you feel like a lot of people have missed out.

Such was the case on March 19 when Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects presented Dido & Aeneas with members of the Orchestra of St. Luke's at LaGuardia High School near Lincoln Center. Sure, this is the FAME high school, and Mostly Mozart and Lincoln Center Festival have programmed events there, but it is still your standard ugly cinder block high school, and the pall of grumpy pubescence lingers.

Jody Oberfelder's up-to-the-minute retelling of the classic tale of doomed lovers Dido and Aeneas was entertaining, and short to boot. I have issues with artists who are too topical, unless that is the way they roll - Banksy can be a topical artist because that is what he (she?) is. A choreographer should be more careful. This version of Dido & Aeneas took place in the present day, with the two leads celebrities hounded by paparazzi, witty magazine headlines projected above them as they danced.

However, the media's destruction of celebrity couples, or at least their relentless pursuit of the perfect picture of them, has a slightly dull quality to it. The novelty of seeing the ups and downs of Brangelina or K-Fedney or that gay Scientologist and his brain-washed wife has become part of our pop culture consciousness, and the role the media, and in turn the public, play in their demise, has been dissected and implicitly accepted - the only recent example of the public tsk-tsking itself came after Heath Ledger died, when after a week of lurid headlines, we collectively said, "Wait this is a little gross. Let's find out what Britney's doing."

It is probable that I had an issue with this re-telling also because I am familiar with Mark Morris' version of Dido & Aeneas, a version which is far more traditional (despite Mark himself originating the role of Dido and The Sorceress!). I think Mark Morris is one of the most exceptional artists working today, and I will probably want L'Allegro performed at my death bed (note to self - die in exceptionally large room), so it is difficult for me to summon an image of Dido & and Aeneas that doesn't have Craig Biesecker looking like a god:

The questionable inspiration of the piece itself aside, the execution was great fun. Jody Oberfelder's choreography is a mixture of classical movement here, the Mashed Potato there, and the skills of individual performers are thrown into the mix - one dancer flipped and tumbled around on stage like a Russian gymnast, and another - the charismatic Carlton Ward (looking dashing in picture to the right) - danced impressively on stilts. The piece never took itself too seriously.

The musicians from St Luke's were good, and the singing was fine, though the music is so strong it is relatively difficult to ruin it. I'm not sure anyone has come up with a better final 8 minutes of music for an opera, and I'm including Tristan and Wozzeck in that.

I am hoping that this was a "special event" as advertised, perhaps something of a workshop performance, and that it will get a more proper run in a space that doesn't make me start humming The Wiz.

The Train Wreck at Big Sur

It should be noted that there was actually no train wreck. However the avoidance of one was one of the cooler things I have witnessed at a classical music concert.

The scene was set on March 8 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music - Michael Christie led the group through Takemitsu - Three Film Scores, played well by the strings, and Signals from Heaven, played not so well by the brass - and Bartok's Divertimento, which showed how much improved the orchestra has become in the past few years. There was a nice rich string sound, and real artistry in the piece.

The second half of the program was John Adam's rhapsodic Dharma at Big Sur, which is in essence a concerto for electric violin. I heard the NY Premiere of the piece a few years ago when Tracy Silverman and the LA Phil performed it under Esa Pekka Salonen at Avery Fisher Hall. My reaction to it at that time was ambivalence. Tracy Silverman wandered around the stage, bending with each phrase (one of the few times I would agree with this curmudgeon that movement can be distracting), and Fisher isn't the right hall for floating electronic quasi-raga music (I am not as down on Fisher as other people in NYC are; I have heard plenty of truly great concerts there).

Maestro Christie and the BP were performing the piece with Leila Josefowicz, who has become one of the leading interpreters of John Adams, and who can rock out on a standard acoustic violin as well as anyone....surely she would take well to the electric violin.

And she did, when it finally worked. One of the benefits (if that is the right term) of classical music is that it dates from a pre-technical time. Most instruments haven't changed much in the last 100 years and once you have an instrument in your hands it doesn't take anything but training to play it. You don't need an amp or a mixer or your laptop...this is likely why marching bands and the like aren't going to go anywhere any time soon...

Anyway, enough of the digressions. Leila's electric violin mysteriously wouldn't work, and it took about 10 minutes for the sound designer and technicians to unravel what was wrong. During this time, Leila and the conductor stayed on stage and tried to be helpful to the technicians, and made some light banter with the audience. It was cool to see two younger classical musicians deal with this - the generation above them would likely have been extremely nervous about correct concert protocol. Instead the audience was relaxed and patient while a new amp was brought out and the first casual strums of the electric violin filled the hall.

The Dharma at Big Sur is a grand piece in two connected movements, the first being an extended meditative crescendo which builds in layers and recalls the waves and shoreline of Northern California. The second movement is more active and rhythmic - it is the type of movement where you feel the soloist is really getting a workout.

Which is why, when Leila leaned into Michael while playing, and whispered something to him, it was startling. When was the last time a soloist had a chat with the conductor in the middle of a piece, while sawing away at their instrument...oh my. For one brief moment my breathing stopped as I thought the concert was going to come to a screeching halt.

But they kept playing, and the violin soared higher, over the orchestra, and the piece came to a beautiful rousing conclusion. The audience leapt to its feet and a room full of Leila Josefowicz fans (if they weren't already) were born.

In the discussion held onstage immediately after the concert, a curious audience member asked Leila about this soloist/conductor conversation, which she responded to honestly: "I said, 'I think we have to stop.'" Several of the strings on her instrument had gone wildly out of tune, like WILDLY, and she felt she needed to re-tune. The conductor however felt differently, and said his response was "We're going to be fine." He then added with a laugh that he just didn't want another interruption in the concert.

Leila then went on to explain that she took a moment during a break in her playing to get a sense of where her violin was now tuned, and modified the fingering for the rest of the piece to the new tuning of the strings...with this announcement, a room full of devoted Leila Josefowicz fans were born.

It is difficult to fully grasp what she did and how she did it in real time, but it demonstrates the abilities of an exceptional musician. It also demonstrates what can be accomplished when a soloist and conductor have a strong relationship and trust each other. Michael Christie and Leila Josefowicz have been working together for years, and he kept conducting not merely to avoid another interruption. He kept conducting because he knew they were in the middle of a huge climax of a great new piece, and they were going to be fine.

Shoplifters of the World Unite and Take Nico

Hrafnhilder Arnarddóttir is an Icelandic artist of uncertain age who goes by "Shoplifter" because somehow that is what her name sounds like to Americans. Nico Muhly is an American composer of unflagging energy who is everywhere at the moment and whose greatest work tends to come when he is collaborating. On March 7 & 8 they put together a show at The Kitchen which suggested how much fun classical music can be when people stop treating it like a non-living art form.

Nico released an album in 2006, Speaks Volumes, which was packaged like a pop music album but happened to be filled with chamber music. The feel of the music is intimate and not all that different from a singer-songwriter of the same age and locale (20s, New York) - my favorite piece on it, clear music, would be right at home on a mix CD between Vespertine-era Björk and something by Iron & Wine. The simple fact the Nico doesn't create a distinction between his own music and that of his friends who are in bands means his audience doesn't either - he's one of a few writers of classical music I can think of who could become a bona fide celebrity, and if being profiled in the New Yorker is any indication, he is already well on his way.

Nico has worked with a diverse group of artists - most famously Björk(who I imagine he is tired of people associating him with. More on Björk in a moment), but also Antony Hegarty and the choreographer Benjamin Millepied, as well as a close circle of musicians who are all extremely talented performers, chiefly the fearless violist Nadia Sirota and the bad-ass that is Sam Solomon. You get the sense from these collaborations, which I call collaborations for lack of a better term as the arrangement differs in each case, that Nico's incredible talent is highlighted best when harnessed with someone else's, like Lennon/McCartney except Muhly/Whomever he happens to be working with.

Such was the case with this evening with Shoplifter, whose contribution included a life size white horse with an intricate hair saddle, a net-web thing over the entire percussion battery, a vaguely humanoid-shaped sculpture made of hair and/or fur and/or yarn, and three lovely women lying down so that their hair cascaded freely to become a "human hair harp, " upon which Nico performed. Oh there was also a bunch of human skulls and some latex material. It was like looking at an altar for some unknown ancient ritualistic religion, but also not the least bit threatening or creepy. How does one pull that off I wonder?

The highlight of the evening was for me the performance of "The Only Tune," an epic extension of the ballad "Two Sisters," which is also known as "The Wind and Rain," which I think in Nico's arrangement is one of the most beautiful pieces written in the past 10 years, though I say written loosely as I don't think the singer Sam Amidon reads music, and I am pretty sure that when I heard the piece last year in Zankel Hall it featured different instrumentation....the piece haunted me after that hearing and I was excited at the chance to hear it again.

In the surroundings of the hair and the horse and the skulls and the latex, the piece took on an even more haunting quality - Sam Amidon's voice is truly that of a folkster, and works perfectly with the banjo he plays. He slowly begins piecing together the words of the ballad...there...there were...there were two...there were two sisters....the tune finally comes together, but remains prone to the slight hiccup until the end. There is an extended portion in the middle of the piece where the melody and the accompaniment become two different beasts - Sam's voice soaring, wailing about the the dreadful wind and rain, the sounds around him buzzing and whirling. It is a great visceral moment.

At The Kitchen, the piece ended with Sam getting on top the horse, beating a hidden drum, and plaintively singing, so lightly,

And the only tune that the fiddle would play

Was oh the wind and rain

The only tune that the fiddle would play

Was oh the dreadful wind and rain.

I believe "The Only Tune" will be on Nico's new CD which comes out soon, and I am eager to hear if it maintains its powerful beauty when recorded.

Shoplifter's art worked with Nico's music because it was carefully considered and was not an afterthought. I am aware of organizations that try to dress up classical music with images or lighting as if making something "multimedia" automatically makes it better.

It also worked because the art was not secondary to the music, and Shoplifter's art is arresting. It made me think that (and Nico would probably correct me on this, or at least modify the statement) Icelandic culture is, to Americans at least, an eccentric distillation of everything that is already a bit eccentric and quirky about Scandinavians, and what we think is so much fun about Björk is really just a giddy enjoyment of a specific culture that is a little unfamiliar to us. This is not a dis on Björk, who is a ground-breaking artist who has ventured into territory we'll probably understand better in 10 years, but a commentary on how we perceive her personality - the infamous swan dress, for example, or her coy interviews.

Anyway, it was a cool evening, and stood as an incredible affirmation that interesting and wonderful things can happen and are happening in the world of classical music, though what that term is supposed to mean gets harder to define with each new composer who doesn't think of music in genres and thinks of it simply as art.

Other People's Living Rooms

Sometimes you have to give something points for being a good idea, even it it doesn't...quite...work...

Foundry Theatre is currently presenting the play Open House, by Aaron Landsman, in various living rooms throughout all 5 boroughs. It is a cool idea because the play is all about living in New York, and New Yorkers have a perverse desire to see how other New Yorkers live. We look into the windows of brownstones as we pass (nice kitchen! great paint job!) or we look up at the new luxury apartments on the UES and curse (you and your yuppy scum gentrifying ways! and your central air!). We even look at the homeless people we pass and think, man you have a really nice piece of cardboard, AND the church steps are great real estate! So going into other people's homes to see a play is like killing two New York birds with one stone.


The play is quite simple in construction. A young couple Rick and Jane sit on a couch and have a fairly generic couple "should we move? can we afford this place? quit eating at the expensive salad place" conversation. This conversation evolves as the couple, staying on the couch, show laminated cards to demonstrate they are now in different neighborhoods. They are in Williamsburg. In Bushwick. In Flushing. In Astoria. In Chelsea. No, wait they didn't go into Chelsea. They barely touched Manhattan at all, hitting only the northern most neighborhoods like Inwood, which people who ridiculously need to say they live IN MANHATTAN but really live close to nothing worthwhile besides the Bronx Zoo tend to gravitate towards (oh and immigrants).

Staging this simple play in an actual living room, on an actual lived-in couch is a great touch (I saw it in Long Island City). It lends immediate warmth and intimacy to the characters, and helps disguise the fact that the play doesn't really explain who they are or why the keep moving. Are they the same couple who keeps moving from neighborhood to neighborhood in hopes of finding a deal? Or are they the same couple, and this is how they would act in X neighborhood, and Y neighborhood, or are they a more blankly universal couple living in each of the neighborhoods, who all happen to know someone named Olga?

In some ways the play felt like a workshop, like the playwright is going to notice in one of the performances, maybe St. George, that he needs to add a little more meat the their bones. So Rick may or may not have slept with or maybe just flirted with or maybe dated at one point this Olga character, but whatever it is, why do they keep talking about it? What does it have to do with the neighborhoods? And more importantly what does it have to do with the end of civilization?

Oh yeah you heard me. See, this couple is preceded by a prologue of sorts, a real estate agent asking us what we want in a city. The real estate agent returns in the end for an extremely long monologue which reveals that New York has crumbled, and is lawless, and he is promising protection AND solar-generating electricity for one low price. It could have been cool? Maybe? But it wasn't. I wanted the couple to argue a little more.

Still, the conceit of the play is interesting. The right neighborhood is important to any good New Yorker. Ask ten people what they think about Park Slope and you will get answers like, "It is so great, and I love how beautiful it is" to "Um, I couldn't live that far out in Brooklyn for like, anything" to "Lesbians with baby carriages. My idea of hell." And hearing a playwright give voice to struggling New Yorkers who would love to own in the right neighborhood, but who can't stop eating at the expensive salad place is great, but he falls short. I felt like the characters, a personal trainer and a carpenter (I might be making that up a bit, but you get the general idea) were a little too close to puppets for a gripe session disguised as your generic struggling couple. Ones who would just give up and move to Jersey.

His Mystery Not of High Heels

Seeing Jonathan Richman in concert on Tuesday March 4 was pretty cool. He's a musician along the lines of Jon Brion, just someone who thinks very naturally and comfortably in song. I am apparently not the only person who thinks so. Among the many vocal fans at the Music Hall of Williamsburg (a venue I am still getting used to, as I saw many, many shows in the wonderfully DIY NorthSix and I can't help thinking that the Music Hall is a weird metal lattice facsimile of Bowery Ballroom) was a woman who screamed "Jonathan! Jonathan! I love you!" which all things considered isn't so weird at a show. But she was screaming it during applause, during banter, during the songs...it was a little tiring. She also sort of tried to sneak on stage...you know, anything to get next to the heartbreaker that is Jonathan Richman. This woman was annoying everyone around her (which included me) and probably most of the other patrons. She also was clearly annoying Jonathan, as about 5 or 6 songs in he casually walked over to the sound engineer while shaking some sleigh bells (it was a drum solo moment) and shortly after the woman was escorted out. As she passed me I noted that, well, she didn't look crazy.


Jonathan has been around seemingly forever and has recorded too many albums to keep track of, first with his band the Modern Lovers and later on his own. I think he alone can claim the title of "American Troubador" though one day someone like Ryan Adams may join him. He sang several songs in foreign languages, usually with some translation rolled in between lines, and when approached as a whole, his songs are about beauty, natural beauty, untainted beauty, and have a certain wonderful knowingly naive character.


Like Jon Brion mentioned above he is well-respected and has a fairly strong cult following (or in the case of "Jonathan I love you!" a little-bit-too-strong following) but he will never break into the ranks of big names (this despite his appearance in Something About Mary). It is fine by me if Jonathan Richman never plays anything larger than the Music Hall of Williamburg; it was like having a longtime friend come back from a trip abroad and recount stories of loves found and lost in the museums and cafes of...well, yes you get the idea. I would hate to cross over into the "Jonathan! I love you!" land.

Peter Grimes! Peter Grimes!

Benjamin Britten's masterpiece Peter Grimes is one of the few 20th century pieces that is pretty much universally adored (check out Nico Muhly's rapturous thoughts on the opera as an example), and the Met premiered a highly anticipated new production of the opera on February 28.


The singing was quite good across the board, not normally something I think even about the best Met productions. The diction was just suberb. Anthony Dean Griffey ( who looks in the marketing shots like the love child of Stephin Merrit and Byrn Terfel) did a fine job as the title character in a role that can be tiring, and the women were all excellent - Patricia Racette sang as well as I have ever heard her sing and was a hugely sympathetic Ellen, Jill Grove did a great job as Auntie, and there was a moment in the Third Act where Felicity Palmer nearly stole the show as Mrs. Sedley - in fact I came away from the production thinking someone should write a spin-off of Peter Grimes with that character, written for her. Now, that would be fun.

Of course, the opera itself is not exactly fun. There are light moments, but we are talking about a social misfit who mishandles situations right and left and is a complicated-not-exactly-sympathetic character, but at the same time who is unfairly and cruelly judged and tormented by his peers. This is a far cry from the injustice of La Traviata.

So, the music is great, the singing was great, the conducting was fine (Donald Runnicles brought nothing new to the score but he didn't detract from it either). The production itself isn't quite as easy to rate.

The production, by John Doyle with sets by Scott Pask, is dominated by an oppressive wall which looks like it was made of discarded weathered planks, perhaps remnants of the sea town's buildings and ships. There is enough shape and design in the wall to suggest buildings, and there are doors and windows scattered up the entire heighth of the wall, which practically hits the top of the proscenium. The doors swing open to reveal characters at various points - never Peter Grimes - and at many times, from the opening trial scene on - character are looking down on Peter Grimes as they sing.


This massive wall moves upstage and downstage often, like the waves described at the end of the opera, and is at times so far downstage as to be oppressive. At these times the singers, often large crowds of them, are forced together on the apron of the stage, and the uncomfortable and unnatural closeness of the bodies creates a sense of claustrophobia.

There are also two wing towers which move in at several points to create a semblance of a smaller space - the inside of Grimes' hut for example - and these scenes are every bit as claustrophic as when the great wall is about to push the chorus into the audience. The entire production is oppressive to the characters and the audience. And it's awesome.
During the First Act, I was a bit underwelmed with the production. It wasn't fancy enough for me. I wanted a fishing town, I wanted a good fog, and maybe some sea mist spraying into the audience. Also, I was thinking that Peter was a big jerk, unable to get over himself and accept that Ellen wanted to care for him, and unable to control his temper. Ugh, what a bore.

My feelings changed during the Second Act. I began to notice how crowded Peter was, how judged. Everyone was looking down on him, Ellen alone couldn't change the man and the society. The wall wasn't an abstraction of a fishing village, it was a physical manifestation of one. The great chorus' howls of "Peter Grimes! Peter Grimes!" created the single most powerful moment I have ever experienced in an opera - the entire chorus standing as close to the edge of the stage as possible, with no movement, shouting their harsh appraisal of the man.

The Third Act was devastating. Wasn't there a way to prevent the town from turning on Grimes? A way to prevent Peter from hitting Ellen in that moment of frustration, or preventing him from forcing the boy out in the storm? Yet the wall, the wave, was ceaseless. These things were all inevitable, like the waves that created the sea-worn wood. During the last scene of the play, the wall finally disappeared to reveal metal scaffolding and a group of people in modern dress looking down on the townspeople as they went about their small-town ways. I have no idea what this vaguely-meta moment meant, but I loved it. However I seem to be one of the few.

People I have talked to since have thought that the production rendered the plot incoherent, that the characters appearing in the doors and windows of the giant wall was too Laugh In, that the directing was far too stiff (most of the opera was in essence semi-staged). Everyone has praised the singing but not the production. I applaud the risk it took, and I have no idea if John Doyle intended the wave analogy, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. What a show.