For the past two nights I have been backstage at BAM during the sold out Joanna Newsom shows. Watching shows from the wings is of course not really they way you are supposed to see a show - concerts are designed to be viewed from certain directions. The lighting, the sound design, all created for the 2,000 fans in front of Joanna. I instead opted for the sidelines, where I could watch the musicians' faces as well as those of the audience.
I took a couple of fuzzy pictures with my camera phone but otherwise I behaved myself. For some curious reason I didn't bother to introduce myself to her, and actually only smiled and clapped at her and her band as they wondered on and off the stage.
There can be something oddly sad about being backstage after a concert. The excitement to put everything together is done, the music has been played. Now musicians are packing up their instruments, putting on their coats, going home. Backstages aren't really glamorous places - they save that for the public facade. The most beautiful concert halls I can think of in New York - the Met, for example, or more immediately, BAM - have backstages full of long corridors that always need to be repainted and a bulletin board telling musicians or the stage crew when the next call or rehearsal is. The ceiling is too low and have pipes running just below it. There are newspapers strewn about and empty water bottles. The furntiture doesn't match. Being backstage at a performing venue is like being in your grandma's basement.
So in grandma's basement at BAM, there was Joanna Newsom, a defier of categories who falls into some group of folk-something-something but is really a singer/songwriter with a harp, who seems to inspire all sorts of misled fan-love. It is fairly easy to think of the tiny blond woman plucking those strings and singing about water (always water!) and meteorites as elven. An elf. Though alas, she is not. She lives in the 21st century and doesn't retire to her stone cottage wearing a velvet cape, to pet her horse and spin gold. In fact rumours were abounding that she was dating someone from Saturday Night Live, which is decidely un-dainty princess.
Also in the mix in these concerts was the Brooklyn Philharmonic, an organization I suspect is taken for granted, led by their Music Director Michael Christie. Michael seemed genuinely into the music he conducted, which is pretty awesome. On February 2 he is leading the Philharmonic in a concert of John Corigliano and Hector Berlioz...I wonder how much overlap there will be between the Newsom crowd and the pure orchestra concert crowd...Berlioz' music isn't elven necessarily, but it is a nice 19th century equivalent of water and meteorites, and there is little doubt in my mind that Berlioz wore velvet capes.
I took a couple of fuzzy pictures with my camera phone but otherwise I behaved myself. For some curious reason I didn't bother to introduce myself to her, and actually only smiled and clapped at her and her band as they wondered on and off the stage.
There can be something oddly sad about being backstage after a concert. The excitement to put everything together is done, the music has been played. Now musicians are packing up their instruments, putting on their coats, going home. Backstages aren't really glamorous places - they save that for the public facade. The most beautiful concert halls I can think of in New York - the Met, for example, or more immediately, BAM - have backstages full of long corridors that always need to be repainted and a bulletin board telling musicians or the stage crew when the next call or rehearsal is. The ceiling is too low and have pipes running just below it. There are newspapers strewn about and empty water bottles. The furntiture doesn't match. Being backstage at a performing venue is like being in your grandma's basement.
So in grandma's basement at BAM, there was Joanna Newsom, a defier of categories who falls into some group of folk-something-something but is really a singer/songwriter with a harp, who seems to inspire all sorts of misled fan-love. It is fairly easy to think of the tiny blond woman plucking those strings and singing about water (always water!) and meteorites as elven. An elf. Though alas, she is not. She lives in the 21st century and doesn't retire to her stone cottage wearing a velvet cape, to pet her horse and spin gold. In fact rumours were abounding that she was dating someone from Saturday Night Live, which is decidely un-dainty princess.
Also in the mix in these concerts was the Brooklyn Philharmonic, an organization I suspect is taken for granted, led by their Music Director Michael Christie. Michael seemed genuinely into the music he conducted, which is pretty awesome. On February 2 he is leading the Philharmonic in a concert of John Corigliano and Hector Berlioz...I wonder how much overlap there will be between the Newsom crowd and the pure orchestra concert crowd...Berlioz' music isn't elven necessarily, but it is a nice 19th century equivalent of water and meteorites, and there is little doubt in my mind that Berlioz wore velvet capes.
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