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In case you're still flummoxed about what to wear to this weekend's festivities, here are some completely inappropriate suggestions from The Stranger:
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Via 1115.org.
UPDATE: As if that weren't scary enough...
Ligeti's Grand Macabre goes up at the Opera tomorrow night; I'll go later in the run. In preparation I read Richard Felciano's program notes today, and was overwhelmed with the realization that basically I know jack about Gyorgi, beyond a superficial acquaintance with some of the best-known choral and orchestral pieces. So naturally, off I went to Amoeba...
Somehow I always end up getting more than I mean to. Funny how that is. Today's draw includes two Ligeti discs, one with 75 minutes of a cappella choral music (overload, perhaps; we shall see), and the other with "mechanical" music, featuring the famous Poeme Symphonique for 100 Metronomes. (I put this disc on right away, so that I could listen to it before OMC got home.) Plus there was a used copy of the new Chanticleer album with Yvette Flunder in the new arrivals bin; how could I pass that up? And though I have had some definite reactions in the past to Burmese music (which I will explore at a later date), I put my faith in the gentle and tasteful folks at Cantaloupe and picked up a used copy of Bang on a Can meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing. When I got to the other side of the store, I spotted used copies of The Twelve Tribes by David Krakauer (an outrageously good klezmer clarinetist) and Hugh Masekela's grrr from 1965, two fun and unexpected finds!
Then I got hungry and had to leave.
In case you still haven't found enough reasons to vote on Tuesday, here are two more:
- Rock the Vote at Amoeba! Or Musical Theater the Vote, if you want. Just vote. As long as it's not for Nader... Please, Ralph. Please.
- But while you're voting, remember this:
If those scary Cheney pillows don't sway you, you're a heartless bastard.
It's been a Merrill-ful evening chez C-, starting with the recent Decca re-release of a 1963 arias disc, then the Barber from 1958 with Roberta Peters and Leinsdorf conducting, and now a bunch of duets with Jussi Bjorling (pictured to the right of Merrill) from 1950 and 1957. I'll take his Traviata with Anna Moffo and Richard Tucker to work with me tomorrow.
Robert Merrill, born Moishe Miller in Brooklyn, was one of the best-known American baritones in the middle of the 20th century; he passed away Saturday of natural causes while watching the World Series. Here are obits from the NY Times and Washington Post and today's NPR story.
What a vibrant, rich, focused, virile, ringing sound he had! Sad, isn't it, how often it takes someone's passing for you to pay attention to them? His recording of Iago's Credo certainly rocks harder than Carlo Guelfi's performance that I heard at the Met earlier this month. And while flipping through my CDs I realized I probably have recordings of him doing Largo al factotum on 4 different compilations -- and for good reason, it turns out.
Like seemingly everyone else writing about Robert Merrill this week, I too turned to Peter Davis's encyclopedic The American Opera Singer (somewhat unwieldily subtitled "The Lives and Adventures of America's Great Singers in Opera and Concert from 1825 to the Present"). If you're an American and at all interested in operatic history, there's really no excuse not to have a copy of this book around. Who knew that he and Roberta Peters were like the Britney and Jason Allen Alexander of their day?
His three-month marriage to twenty-two-year-old Roberta Peters in 1952, two years after her Met debut as Zerlina, was perhaps his last big mistake ("Roberta was a kid; that's her excuse. I was an idiot; that's mine"). Soon after that brief interlude, he settled into a happy second marriage.
Davis says he was "considered not much better than a stick onstage", but I've never seen any footage. Maybe it's time to place a Bel Canto Society order...
I certainly don't intend for TSR to become a concert review blog. I can hardly imagine anything more tedious. Yet it must be said that in the wake of Saturday's Symphony concert, I really feel that John Adams has been done a disservice. And it makes me angry.
Alan Gilbert was guest conducting and opened the program with John's Naive and Sentimental Music, a mammoth 50-minute 3-movement symphony from 1999, which John himself describes as the "most ambitious" work that he'd written up to that point, aside from the operas. And it really is huge, in terms of forces, scope, dynamics, architecture.... basically on all fronts. John took the stage with Alan at the start of the concert, and introduced the work in his usual charming, folksy way, describing the melody of the first movement as being like Pip going out into the world and having all sorts of adventures befall him. He talked about the tremendous influence of the Western landscape on his writing, and how the second movement recalls a desert panorama. And then he let the musicians have at it.
First I should say, I think John's written a powerful piece here. The first movement is, like he said, an exploration of a marvelously extended spinning melody, which moves in all sorts of unexpected directions, reminding me at times of both Klinghoffer and the Violin Concerto in texture and line. The second movement is mesmerizing, with a simple, repeating ostinato in the strings and snatches of melody from the guitar and occasional splashes of color from chimes and bowed vibraphone and the like. The desert analogy was apt -- tumbleweed here, cactus there, mountains in the distance, and all the while you keep rolling down that flat, dusty road. The third movement is one of those massive Adams wheels that takes some serious effort to build up momentum, but then once it gets spinning the force becomes totally overwheming as the waves just keep coming.
Or, at least I think it has the potential to sound like that. What Alan Gilbert presented was a total mess. I have no idea if he just didn't learn the piece, or if it was too big for his abilities, or if the orchestra didn't have enough rehearsal time. Basically he conducted mirrored beat patterns for 50 minutes, and gave a smattering of cues. I don't think he tried to conduct a single melody. The whole thing felt disjointed and lacked all forward motion. The second movement ground to a halt. The various cogs of the third movement never came together to create that wondrous Adams machine. And that poor first movement melody was shapeless and flaccid, because everyone seemed so concerned about counting. Frankly, I don't think he got the piece at all.
I mean, it's certainly not as if this orchestra isn't used to playing John's music. Listen to either of their recordings of Harmonium, under two different conductors, for proof that they knew how the third movement should go. And the concert I heard them do last month with MTT conducting Firebird and Sacre showed conclusively that they can still play balls to the wall. In fact, I'd even venture to say that that sort of ebullient, virtuosic, off-the-leash playing is what they do most convincingly.
Anyway, I was pretty pissed off during halftime, and couldn't even eat the brownie that OMC offered me. But at that point I just thought, well, he's not a good conductor. Maybe he always just stands there and beats time. But then he came out with Midori in the second half to do the Beethoven Violin Concerto, and I was like, who the fuck's this guy? Because suddenly he was hopping up and down and showing some, you know, interpretive ideas and conviction, and conducting expressively with his left arm, and generally leading the thing like he knew what was going on. Like he knew what he wanted the piece to say. And that's when I got really resentful -- because half-baked performances always result in people saying stupid shit like "oh, I don't like modern music."
(While I'm on the topic of stupid shit that people say, can the world wake up once and for all and stop calling John Adams a minimalist? OMC came away hearing Prokofiev and Scriabin, for fuck's sake. Case in point, more from Robert Commanday in 9/14/04's SFCV:
... The price is a minimalist "gimme," Steve Reich's Strings, with winds and brass, the kind of fluff that Tilson Thomas' inflated reputation as a contemporary-music advocate is based upon. ... Later in the season, Tilson Thomas has a guest conductor, Alan Gilbert, whom he could easily have asked to perform some worthy contemporary piece in one of the many interesting styles that don't appeal to him, but no. It's yet another piece by John Adams, Naïve and Sentimental Music, more from the minimalist orbit.
Another of the newer pieces is Mark-Anthony Turnage's Three Screaming Popes. Turnage is a well-regarded British composer of music that is primarily harmonic in style, animated and influenced by jazz, with a rather direct and simple rhythmic impetus and texture. He studied with the important British composer and conductor Oliver Knussen... That is likely to be the most interesting and stimulating of the new-music offerings.
Turnage?!? Ok, if you're going to make that statement, 1) you should have gone down yourself to the Cabrillo Festival this summer to hear 3 Screaming Popes, because it is neither all that nor even a bag of chips... I dunno about you, but I prefer to be stimulated in other ways; 2) you should listen to Salonen's recording of Naive & Sentimental to determine for real whether it's a good piece and not just go on prejudice, and 3) if you've listened to anything that Adams has written since, like, 1987, how ludicrous is it to relegate him to 'the minimalist orbit'? Anyway, enough ranting; back to our regularly scheduled programming.)
There are caveats, of course. Never sit in the rear boxes in the back of the hall under the overhang; they are terrible seats! The audience seemed to respond positively, despite my grumpiness. And I heard through the grapevine that Adams himself seemed pleased. So maybe I'm off-base here. All I can say is, this concert didn't make me anxious to hear more from Alan Gilbert.
As for the Beethoven, I think if Bjork played the violin she would move just like Midori. (New Bjork video just released, btw, for Who Is It.) As Joshua Kosman says delicately, a 'restrained' performance. But the credenzas were marvelously played; she used Kreisler's, full of double-stop goodness.
And to close, thanks to Paul Bailey for writing about the premiere of Steve Reich's You Are (Variations). That Grant Gershon, he sure sounds like one hep cat.
Unlike some folks, I make a conscious choice to go into concerts with open ears and excited anticipation. I'm on the performers' side: I want to fall in love, to mourn, to pray, to despair, to laugh, to become infuriated... to let the artists lead me into whatever they're exploring. I want to be wowed. But I've also heard enough performances by now to recognize when someone really is directly communicating something to me, and when I'm being forced to make their case for them. Of course the latter is more often the case than the former, but nonetheless I'm disappointed every time it happens.
And so it was with last night's Chanticleer concert, I'm sorry to say. I really like these guys, and have for a long time. It's always a joy when I have a chance to sing with past Chanticleerians at gigs here and there because, well, they just Do It Right: I usually know in the first couple of seconds of singing with someone whether they have an innate sense of musicality and the chops to back it up, and singing with these folks is always like butta. But last night wasn't butter, and I couldn't believe it. There were consistent, glaring technical problems, from high-range tuning issues to ensemble messes to false-start entrances. There were points when I found myself worrying on their behalf about potential train-wrecks. And even worse, I wasn't moved by their delivery of most of the pieces... not even the Monteverdi*! I mean, if you can't get me with those long Monteverdian descending suspension sequences, something's seriously amiss.
Of course there are positive things to be said. I'm liking the sound of their current | bass | line-up, with interesting voices all and a good sense of how to work together. (Here I should just like to say that Eric Alatorre, their longtime low bass, has like the bestest job in the world: All he has to do is whip out anything lower than an F and everyone gets that funny feeling in their pants and he's a superstar for the rest of the night. I mean, was that a B pedal at the end of Blues in the Night? Damn you, Eric!) I thoroughly enjoyed the Gustav Holst folksong settings; he uses those same tunes in his Suites for Military Band, and they brought me right back to my woodwind player days. The effect of the Tavener was strong, and though I personally find that piece boring as all get-out to sing, from the audience's perspective it's pretty stunning.
But even so, the only head-shakingly, jaw-droppingly good moments happened in the encores when they brought out Bishop Yvette Flunder, who is a guest artist on the album of spirituals and gospel music they released last month, How Sweet the Sound. She opened her mouth and sang the words, "There is a balm in Gilead," and I just about lost bowel control. When you hear a performer express herself utterly without artifice and with true conviction, you just know it: no analysis is necessary. It doesn't matter what "genre" they're working in; when someone is willing and able to share something so personal and heartfelt and warm with me, I'm more than happy to partake. The last 10 minutes or so of the concert were beautiful, compelling, and humbling. Amen, Bishop Flunder! (Now I just have to figure out whom I can hit up for a copy of that album.)
And now for another opportunity to get my hopes up: OMC and I will go to the Symphony tonight to hear Midori do the Beethoven violin concerto and John Adams's Naive and Sentimental Music. I've never heard Alan Gilbert conduct, and am looking forward to it. Thanks for the tix, Sr. K-!
~~~~~~
* The evening's program was:
Josquin, Gaude virgo
Ave maria chant
Victoria, Ave maria
Titov, The Angel Cried Out (even taking into accout the weird voicing at the beginning, eek)
Weelkes, As Vesta was
Lassus, Matona mia cara
Poulenc, Margoto va t'a l'iau
Monteverdi, 4 of the Sestina
Pearsall, Lay a Garden
Tavener, Song for Athene
Cary John Franklin, The Uncertainty of the Poet (Bananas! Funny.)
Augusta Read Thomas, 3 from Purple Syllables
Eric William Barnum, She Walks in Beauty (This was really the best piece in that competition?)
3 Korean folksongs (please don't say you're "going East" when you do these...)
2 Holst folksong settings
Ballad of Frankie & Johnny
Blues in the Night
Hold On (Keep Your Hand on-a That Plow)
Balm in Gilead
Imagine (surprisingly good, thanks to Bishop Flunder)
After a week's worth of wrangling with tech support at both GoDaddy and TypePad, I am pleased to declare: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
The Standing Room has officially changed its URL to www.thestandingroom.com.
Easier to remember, and a simpler address to pass on to your friends. But if you happen to have things bookmarked or linked to the old address, no worries; all the old links still work.
Shortly after the new address went live, I got a nice message from M. W- at SFist (or, as I call it affectionately, the 'Fist) informing me that TSR would be featured today in his weekly Bay Bloggers Thursday column! So pay SFist a visit if you want to see the first links to the new but completely unchanged TSR. SFist is part of the -ist family of blogs, including Gothamist (for New Yorkers), Chicagoist (for Chicagoans), and LAist (for the laity).
OMC and I are both home from our peregrinations now, so I'll finally have a chance to get my life in order (read: blog some more).
The dynasty of great Texan pianists dating back to Van Cliburn has entered its Golden Age with the emergence of Cindy Elizondo, fourth runner-up in the 2000 Miss Texas Pageant! Mlle Elizondo, who was named Miss Teen Texas in 1997, Miss Gulf Coast in 2000 and Miss White Settlement (!) in 2001, gives us an utterly breathtaking, unforgettable performance in this recording (1.8MB, right-click if you want to download to your hard drive). The announcer astutely points out that "music is the universal language, and Chopin was the greatest composer of this language." Mmm, I guess I never thought of it that way. But I assure you, you have never heard showPAN's Sharezo No. 1 in b min, op. 20 played like this.
After listening, it is interesting to reflect on the fact that Mlle Elizondo was subsequently awarded the $1,000 William R. Morris Memorial Talent Award and the $200 Rick Stitzel Most Talented Musician Award.
As a bonus, I stwongly encouwage you to pwease, pwease awso go wisit Wing. She twuly is a wonder!
Heartfelt thanks go out to M. L- and M. S- for bringing these joyous performances to my ears.
Some views of the Quadracci Pavilion, designed by Santiago Calatrava, at the Milwaukee Art Museum:
A ship in full sail... just like Joan Sutherland. (Does anyone remember who described her that way?) Photos are from my Device, so sorry for the poor resolution.
Like both presidential candidates, I arrived in Wisconsin yesterday, America's Dairyland, for an OMC family wedding. I was hoping for a Friday Fish Fry at the rehearsal dinner, but had to settle for some walleye instead. I will keep my hopes up for some Usinger's brats boiled in beer at the wedding reception.
Amazingly, I had barely set foot in Packers territory (Go Cheeseheads!) when I encountered one of those mysterious Undecided Voters I keep hearing about. OMC and I had a pleasant, polite discussion with him, and I believe he may have been swung. We feel emboldened and will go hunting for some more of these UVs while we're out here.
For some unpleasant, unpolite, but utterly entertaining discussion, check out Jon Stewart from The Daily Show laying into the jackass pundit spinmasters on Crossfire. My second favorite part (after Jon calling Tucker Carlson a dick) is where the transcriber lists Regis and Kelly as "Unidentified Man" and "Unidentified Woman." (Video links courtesy of Wonkette.)
Thanks to Mme H-, as always, for keeping me in the loop.
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