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.

State Ballet of Georgia

Dear Diary,

Just saw State Ballet of Georgia with ballet superstar Nina Ananiashvili. She was pretty. Everyone else on stage was 19. Why do men in ballet wear such tight tights? And white ones at that? They seemed under-rehearsed in the space and the women kept leaping right on top of the men. Everyone looked roughly the same. Made me love Mark Morris' diversity that much more.

I like the name Tbilisi, but I thought the capital of Georgia was Atlanta?