Last summer, when I attended a performance at the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY, I saw that the opera's 2007 season featured four versions of the Orpheus myth: the greatest mortal musician who travels to the underworld to retrieve his beloved, Eurydice, only to make an error that banishes her from his side forever. The Glimmerglass selections come from four very different eras of music history: Monteverdi's L'Orfeo from the early 17th century, Gluck's 18th century Orfeo ed Euridice, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld from the 19th, and Philip Glass' Orphee from 1993. The NY Times' Anthony Tommasini's wrap-up review covers performances of all four operas very nicely.
Before the Glimmerglass season began, though, I took note of the operatic adaptation of Salman Rushdie's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," itself an adaptation of the Orpheus myth, at the Manchester Festival. The first review I read, by the LA Times' Mark Swed, was just short of scathing, but the idea of making Orpheus and Eurydice into international rock superstars fascinated me enough to find a copy of the novel—which I'd first encountered during a visit to a college to which I applied but did not attend—and promptly devour it. It's far-flung and perhaps over-long, but a colorful, elaborate work nonetheless. The operatic review wasn't the only thing that spurred me to read it; an article I discovered on ArtsJournal lamented the lack of a great rock-and-roll novel and brushed Rushdie off (rather unfairly, I thought) for failing to capture the spirit of the music in his book. His writing on concert performances seems a bit weak (where are the drum solos? the pyrotechnics?), but he captures the songwriting process especially well when Ormus Cama, the stand-in for Orpheus, must balance inspiration from beyond with the conventions of the verse-chorus-bridge formula.
Only weeks later, I discovered yet another Orpheus-themed operatic project, this one by one of my former teachers and musical mentors. William Duckworth, professor of music at Bucknell University and noted post-minimalist luminary, has created iOrpheus, a street opera to be performed in Brisbane, Australia using iPods, laptones, cell phones and other digital media. It's not clear to me how iOrpheus will tease out the myth, but the overall spirit of the performance seems to be one of collaboration, creativity, and seemingly boundless technological platforms (presences on MySpace, YouTube, Second Life, et al).
The continued attraction of this myth for composers and musicians both confuses and enthralls me, especially because the myth reinforces human fallibility and illustrates the ultimate failure of art, and specifically of music, to bring joy and happiness into its practitioners' lives. Perhaps the iOrpheus project might show that technology, advances devised by humans, are the way over the hump, the way of pushing music beyond our unenhanced, mortal offerings. In Duckworth's modern retelling, the outcome of the myth—Orpheus' fateful glance back and Eurydice's disappearance back into the void—might remain the same, but perhaps Orpheus might capture some essence of her on a camera phone before she departs from his side for good.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Awaking the slumbering blog
I recently had a very strange encounter with the works of an author whom I greatly respect. I didn't quite know what to do with this knowledge, so reactivating this long-dormant blog seemed the best course.
Alex Ross, the venerable music critic for the New Yorker, is releasing his first book, "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" in October. I await its arrival with bated breath. In the July 9 issue of the New Yorker, "Apparition in the Woods," his chapter on Jean Sibelius (and, more broadly, about the European "small-country" composers in the early 20th century), appeared. The following anecdote is the piece's final paragraph:
Below the link to this piece on the New Yorker's website (I confess that, unless I am at home, the Internet is the only format in which I read the magazine), a link to a piece from 1998 by Ross on the music of Sibelius was included. It's clear that some of the reporting for the earlier piece went into the book chapter -- no harm in that. But the same anecdote about Feldman's lecture appeared in the 1998 piece, with an unsettling discrepancy. The following quote comes from page 2 of the online version of "Prospero's Songs."
In the book chapter, Feldman hums Sibelius' Fifth. In the 1998 article, he sings the Fourth. I don't know whether the oversight is the fault of Ross or his editors. I respect Ross tremendously, read his blog semi-religiously, and even worked with him in a writing workshop this past January. He's been somewhat of an idol to me since I chose to pursue music writing and criticism several years ago. But this disparity between two different versions of the same event has unnerved me. Why would the New Yorker's editors place a link to a story with an error alongside a newer, more polished work and invite this kind of confusion? Is the source that Ross consulted regarding Feldman's lecture in 1984 reliable? Though I have Ross' e-mail address, I didn't feel comfortable approaching him with this discovery. It might all be a simple matter or nothing more than a careless error. All the same, I felt compelled to report it.
Alex Ross, the venerable music critic for the New Yorker, is releasing his first book, "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" in October. I await its arrival with bated breath. In the July 9 issue of the New Yorker, "Apparition in the Woods," his chapter on Jean Sibelius (and, more broadly, about the European "small-country" composers in the early 20th century), appeared. The following anecdote is the piece's final paragraph:
In 1984, the great American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman gave a lecture at the relentlessly up-to-date Summer Courses for New Music, in Darmstadt, Germany. “The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives,” Feldman said on that occasion. “The people who you think are conservative might really be radical.” And he began to hum the Sibelius Fifth.
Below the link to this piece on the New Yorker's website (I confess that, unless I am at home, the Internet is the only format in which I read the magazine), a link to a piece from 1998 by Ross on the music of Sibelius was included. It's clear that some of the reporting for the earlier piece went into the book chapter -- no harm in that. But the same anecdote about Feldman's lecture appeared in the 1998 piece, with an unsettling discrepancy. The following quote comes from page 2 of the online version of "Prospero's Songs."
Morton Feldman modelled certain aspects of his hazily beautiful work on Sibelian effects. In a lecture at Darmstadt, the capital of the postwar avant-garde, Feldman proclaimed, “The people who you think are radicals might really be conservatives. The people who you think are conservative might really be radical.” He then began to sing the Sibelius Fourth.
In the book chapter, Feldman hums Sibelius' Fifth. In the 1998 article, he sings the Fourth. I don't know whether the oversight is the fault of Ross or his editors. I respect Ross tremendously, read his blog semi-religiously, and even worked with him in a writing workshop this past January. He's been somewhat of an idol to me since I chose to pursue music writing and criticism several years ago. But this disparity between two different versions of the same event has unnerved me. Why would the New Yorker's editors place a link to a story with an error alongside a newer, more polished work and invite this kind of confusion? Is the source that Ross consulted regarding Feldman's lecture in 1984 reliable? Though I have Ross' e-mail address, I didn't feel comfortable approaching him with this discovery. It might all be a simple matter or nothing more than a careless error. All the same, I felt compelled to report it.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Some much-needed context for the art of quotation
Louis Menand in the New Yorker, reviewing and reflecting on the "Yale Book of Quotations." An interesting review, and he doesn't even name the subject of his review until several quote-loaded grafs in.
My interest in memorable quotes began with "They Said It: 200 of the Funniest Sports Quips and Quotes," a book of great sports quotations released by Sports Illustrated in 1990 (reissued in 2000). In this book, I first encountered many of Yogi Berra's odd, contradictory sayings, a few of which Menand references in his review.
The last graf of the review contains the punchline to a much-loved joke, one I had not heard until my junior year of college, I believe (thank you, Dallas Mellott, if you should read this):
A man, raving to his psychiatrist: "I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam! I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam!"
The psychiatrist: "Relax, man. You're two tents."
Menand does not credit its author. He merely mentions its place among his own personal pantheon of treasured quotes.
My interest in memorable quotes began with "They Said It: 200 of the Funniest Sports Quips and Quotes," a book of great sports quotations released by Sports Illustrated in 1990 (reissued in 2000). In this book, I first encountered many of Yogi Berra's odd, contradictory sayings, a few of which Menand references in his review.
The last graf of the review contains the punchline to a much-loved joke, one I had not heard until my junior year of college, I believe (thank you, Dallas Mellott, if you should read this):
A man, raving to his psychiatrist: "I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam! I'm a teepee! I'm a wigwam!"
The psychiatrist: "Relax, man. You're two tents."
Menand does not credit its author. He merely mentions its place among his own personal pantheon of treasured quotes.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Everything at once -- modern medleys
A string of popular Youtube offerings show performers poking fun at the facile, four-chord structure of popular music. The first video to catch my eye/ear featured a young Australian man stringing together more than twenty pop tunes to the chord progression of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" (I think I first saw the link on NewMusicBox's Friday Informer).
Another video, posted in November and now attracting the attention of amateur musicians via a Facebook group, features a rant about "one-hit wonder" Johann Pachelbel's ubiquitous Canon in D. Though it begins as a complaint about playing the eight-note cello part in a school orchestra, it turns into a recitation of tunes including Aerosmith's "Cryin'", the Beatles' "Let It Be" and Blues Traveler's "Hook" that loosely line up with the Canon's chord progression. The performer, comedian Rob Paravonian, goes off the deep end near the end, wildly heaping verses and choruses from Natalie Imbruglia (also featured in the "Don't Stop Believin'" medley), Bush and Green Day onto the Canon's chords.
As a fellow performer of an oft-neglected, bass-clef instrument, I can say I feel Paravonian's pain. But the way that his routine gives way to a pop music-pastiche speaks to the overall interchangeability of '90s pop music as a subject of humor --the message seems to be "Can you believe we listened to/bought this stuff?" These stitched-together medleys also reflect the musical and cultural phenomenon of the "mash-up," the combination of disparate tunes based on a shared musical feature (a rhythmic pattern or a melodic "hook"). The mash-up by DJ Danger Mouse that combined Jay-Z's "The Black Album" with the Beatles' "White Album" to form "The Grey Album" was one of the first entries of this venerated DJing trick into the musical mainstream. These two videos, and the imitators they will surely spawn, extend this fun-poking practice into a new medium.
Another video, posted in November and now attracting the attention of amateur musicians via a Facebook group, features a rant about "one-hit wonder" Johann Pachelbel's ubiquitous Canon in D. Though it begins as a complaint about playing the eight-note cello part in a school orchestra, it turns into a recitation of tunes including Aerosmith's "Cryin'", the Beatles' "Let It Be" and Blues Traveler's "Hook" that loosely line up with the Canon's chord progression. The performer, comedian Rob Paravonian, goes off the deep end near the end, wildly heaping verses and choruses from Natalie Imbruglia (also featured in the "Don't Stop Believin'" medley), Bush and Green Day onto the Canon's chords.
As a fellow performer of an oft-neglected, bass-clef instrument, I can say I feel Paravonian's pain. But the way that his routine gives way to a pop music-pastiche speaks to the overall interchangeability of '90s pop music as a subject of humor --the message seems to be "Can you believe we listened to/bought this stuff?" These stitched-together medleys also reflect the musical and cultural phenomenon of the "mash-up," the combination of disparate tunes based on a shared musical feature (a rhythmic pattern or a melodic "hook"). The mash-up by DJ Danger Mouse that combined Jay-Z's "The Black Album" with the Beatles' "White Album" to form "The Grey Album" was one of the first entries of this venerated DJing trick into the musical mainstream. These two videos, and the imitators they will surely spawn, extend this fun-poking practice into a new medium.
Monday, January 22, 2007
On developing a critical eye
For my course in Arts Criticism, each student chose a single text of criticism in their field to present to the class. I selected a collection of essays by Edward Said called "On Late Style." I wasn't familiar with Said's work as a music critic, but I knew his name from his writings on Middle East affairs and on global politics in general. He was a music critic for The Nation and a professor at Columbia, and he was working on this book when he passed away from leukemia in 2003.
The essays, though not all of them address music, concern the element of "lateness" or "untimeliness" in works across many disciplines. He examines the sense of freedom and the breakdown of limitations that inhabit the works of composers, playwrights, artists and others as they near the end of their lives.
In last semester's class, we discussed the distinction between a "reviewer" and a "critic." A "reviewer," at the most basic level, merely evaluates a work (a movie, a play, a book, etc.) and states whether it's worth the price of admission. A "critic" places a work, or a series of works, within a larger context (the time of its creation, its subject matter or its historical setting) and makes statements that go beyond simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down. It's difficult to achieve in short-form writing, though the best writers today, e.g. many of the critics at The New Yorker, reach that level at less-than-book length.
In the essays in "On Late Style," Said seems as thorough a critic as I've ever read, informed by knowledge in philosophy, literature and the larger world of 20th century culture. The entirety of the book is grounded in the writings of Theodor Adorno, an influential critic and philosopher of an earlier era. When he discusses the late works of Beethoven or Strauss, he places them in history, in the space of the composer's career and in the realm of commentary by other critics. Though the passages from Adorno that he cites are often dense (I checked out a copy of Adorno's "Philosophy of New Music" as a companion piece), his own writing is graceful and sheds brilliant light on the words of Adorno and others.
I've been inspired by Said's authority as a critic to re-visit an analogy I first heard as a sophomore in college, regarding the two-fold analysis and explication of a single work of art (at the time, a poem). The work, the object, is a gem, and the critic holds a loupe, a jeweler's lens. First, hold the lens up to the gem and look through it. Note its internal structure, how it is organized, how many facets it has, how it compares to others like it you've seen. True criticism begins here, but some "reviewing" never reaches this level at all. The second step is the level at which Said writes: to hold the gem itself up to your eye and look at the world through it. How does it change or comment upon what you see? How do its facets line up with the elements of everyday life?
Said posits a model of this mode of analysis: "I think it is right... to see Adorno's extremely intense lifelong fixation on third-period Beethoven as the carefully maintained choice of a critical model, a construction made for the benefit of his own actuality as a philosopher and culture critic in an enforced exile from the society that made him possible. " - Said, pp. 21-22 (italics mine)
More tk on Said and "On Late Style." By the time my turn comes to present (two weeks from this Wednesday, I believe), I hope to be looking at things through the lens of this book.
The essays, though not all of them address music, concern the element of "lateness" or "untimeliness" in works across many disciplines. He examines the sense of freedom and the breakdown of limitations that inhabit the works of composers, playwrights, artists and others as they near the end of their lives.
In last semester's class, we discussed the distinction between a "reviewer" and a "critic." A "reviewer," at the most basic level, merely evaluates a work (a movie, a play, a book, etc.) and states whether it's worth the price of admission. A "critic" places a work, or a series of works, within a larger context (the time of its creation, its subject matter or its historical setting) and makes statements that go beyond simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down. It's difficult to achieve in short-form writing, though the best writers today, e.g. many of the critics at The New Yorker, reach that level at less-than-book length.
In the essays in "On Late Style," Said seems as thorough a critic as I've ever read, informed by knowledge in philosophy, literature and the larger world of 20th century culture. The entirety of the book is grounded in the writings of Theodor Adorno, an influential critic and philosopher of an earlier era. When he discusses the late works of Beethoven or Strauss, he places them in history, in the space of the composer's career and in the realm of commentary by other critics. Though the passages from Adorno that he cites are often dense (I checked out a copy of Adorno's "Philosophy of New Music" as a companion piece), his own writing is graceful and sheds brilliant light on the words of Adorno and others.
I've been inspired by Said's authority as a critic to re-visit an analogy I first heard as a sophomore in college, regarding the two-fold analysis and explication of a single work of art (at the time, a poem). The work, the object, is a gem, and the critic holds a loupe, a jeweler's lens. First, hold the lens up to the gem and look through it. Note its internal structure, how it is organized, how many facets it has, how it compares to others like it you've seen. True criticism begins here, but some "reviewing" never reaches this level at all. The second step is the level at which Said writes: to hold the gem itself up to your eye and look at the world through it. How does it change or comment upon what you see? How do its facets line up with the elements of everyday life?
Said posits a model of this mode of analysis: "I think it is right... to see Adorno's extremely intense lifelong fixation on third-period Beethoven as the carefully maintained choice of a critical model, a construction made for the benefit of his own actuality as a philosopher and culture critic in an enforced exile from the society that made him possible. " - Said, pp. 21-22 (italics mine)
More tk on Said and "On Late Style." By the time my turn comes to present (two weeks from this Wednesday, I believe), I hope to be looking at things through the lens of this book.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Indie-rock: As advertised?
While watching the college football National Championship last week (a sad affair for my family -- my dad was born in Cleveland and grew up near Columbus), I was stunned to hear the outro from "The Bleeding-Heart Show" by the New Pornographers in a television ad. The advertisement was for the University of Phoenix, the online purveyor of higher education that bought the naming rights to the stadium in Arizona that hosted the championship game. This song is one I truly love by a band I've enjoyed since 2003, when I first heard the ebullient, gleefully-incomprehensible single "The Electric Version" on my college radio station. I was so surprised to hear it on television because the band has avoided much of the sources of mainstream exposure: no contributions to movie soundtracks, no performances on late-night TV (at least none that I'd seen or heard of), and staying on Matador, a respected independent label.
Another ad that debuted during bowl season featured the intro to "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service. This ad was for UPS, and the backing track fades out before Ben Gibbard's vocals come in. But I wasn't at shocked to hear this song in this setting. A version by Iron and Wine on the soundtrack for "Garden State" moved the song from 'sweet indie sleeper' to 'ubiquitous quote in away messages and Myspace profiles.' It's still a good song, but one already widely recognized.
So the UPS ad has warranted the attention of Pitchfork, complete with added link from the UPS site. But I haven't been able to track down any comments on the University of Phoenix ad. I can't say I'm utterly disgusted or shocked by it, but I think it speaks to the gradual de-indie-fication of 'indie-rock.' So many bands that are defined as 'indie' are getting more and more press attention or are signing to bigger record labels. At this point, 'indie' is pegged more as a sound than as an approach to recording and distributing music: rough, unpolished vocals; lo-fi production; poetic, often introspective lyrics (when they're intelligible).
None of the Pornographers' great lyrics appear in the ad; only the sung "hey-na, hey-na-na" of the outro. I was surprised to read on the band's site that the song is influenced by South Africa isicathamiya singing, the style of groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo that I studied in my "Music and Politics" class last semester. So what we have here is a Canadian band with African influences lending their music to an American pseudo-college. Pretty wild.
Another ad that debuted during bowl season featured the intro to "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service. This ad was for UPS, and the backing track fades out before Ben Gibbard's vocals come in. But I wasn't at shocked to hear this song in this setting. A version by Iron and Wine on the soundtrack for "Garden State" moved the song from 'sweet indie sleeper' to 'ubiquitous quote in away messages and Myspace profiles.' It's still a good song, but one already widely recognized.
So the UPS ad has warranted the attention of Pitchfork, complete with added link from the UPS site. But I haven't been able to track down any comments on the University of Phoenix ad. I can't say I'm utterly disgusted or shocked by it, but I think it speaks to the gradual de-indie-fication of 'indie-rock.' So many bands that are defined as 'indie' are getting more and more press attention or are signing to bigger record labels. At this point, 'indie' is pegged more as a sound than as an approach to recording and distributing music: rough, unpolished vocals; lo-fi production; poetic, often introspective lyrics (when they're intelligible).
None of the Pornographers' great lyrics appear in the ad; only the sung "hey-na, hey-na-na" of the outro. I was surprised to read on the band's site that the song is influenced by South Africa isicathamiya singing, the style of groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo that I studied in my "Music and Politics" class last semester. So what we have here is a Canadian band with African influences lending their music to an American pseudo-college. Pretty wild.
Starstruck syndrome
I visited New York City for the first time during my freshman year in college. My classmates who had grown up going there all the time couldn't believe it. What could I say? Central Pennsylvania was the closest I'd ever lived to it, having grown up in Maryland, Virginia and South Korea.
The first visit or two were based largely in Times Square, and with each successive visit I've tried to expand my experience of the city into new neighborhoods and different concert/theatre venues. I've been there enough times now that I don't look like a greenhorn trying to navigate the subways and streets, but there's still the Broadway glint and this feeling of centrality (being at the heart of America's, and perhaps the world's, cultural and arts scene) that threatens to widen my eyes a little every time I go back.
I'll be there a lot this semester -- interning for NewMusicBox, a webzine associated with American Music Center. Several days every week. I'll chase away that wide-eyed feeling yet.
The same feeling can often accompany meeting celebrities, or seeing them in unexpected places. Several of my friends saw Dr. Ruth Westheimer in NYC; all of us had a close encounter of the comedic kind with Jon Stewart (he was in the room and addressed everyone in our group, but no one "met" him or shook his hand or anything); we all saw actor Ethan Hawke on stage in Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia." What follows is the review I wrote of "Voyage," the first play in Stoppard's trilogy, for the third workshop of the immersion.
NOTE: Review edited, in light of anonymous comment. The female *roles* in "Voyage" are not reprised in the second play, but all of the actresses will appear in different roles in "Shipwreck."
History doesn’t move to a martial drumbeat in “Voyage,” the first play in Tom Stoppard’s trilogy “The Coast of Utopia,” currently playing at Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center. Instead, the tale of 19th-century Russian thinkers bubbles with humor and energy that outweigh some uneven acting.
These real-life historical figures, led by Vissarion Belinsky and Michael Bakunin, lament the provinciality of their homeland, and they counter this isolation by reading philosophy and blithely questioning reality. Stoppard imparts a light touch to cerebral matters, and Jack O’Brien’s direction steers the actors through breezy discussions of heavy topics.
As the youths make strides toward self-discovery, the old guard, represented by Michael’s father Alexander and his rural estate Premukhino, are forced to make way. Richard Easton plays Alexander with graceful wisdom, as he slowly realizes how the world has passed him by while he was tsar over his own small domain.
As Michael, Ethan Hawke is too loud and harsh, and his wide, over-broad performance diminished the puerile joy of Michael’s discovery of new worldviews. With each new philosophical breakthrough, Michael remarks, “Now I know where I was going wrong.” Hawke stands in need of a similar revelation.
Billy Crudup’s performance as Vissarion, though, redeems the notion of Hollywood actors on the dramatic stage. Crudup doesn’t mistake lungpower for expressiveness. At first awkwardly mousy, he shows Vissarion’s passion for writing and dissatisfaction with the Tsarist regime in short, believable bursts.
The play feels male-dominated, despite the multiplicity of female roles. Alexander’s four daughters seem to serve only as plot devices, as sources of distraction to the men’s high-minded pursuits. Among the women in “Voyage,” the mother Varvara, played with poise with Amy Irving, has the greatest presence.
Visible through scrims behind the beautifully spare Victorian-era sets, shabby crowds of serfs (some of them mannequins) represent the revolution to come. In a play driven by words and by characters discovering their power, the on-looking laborers stand out by their silence.
The first visit or two were based largely in Times Square, and with each successive visit I've tried to expand my experience of the city into new neighborhoods and different concert/theatre venues. I've been there enough times now that I don't look like a greenhorn trying to navigate the subways and streets, but there's still the Broadway glint and this feeling of centrality (being at the heart of America's, and perhaps the world's, cultural and arts scene) that threatens to widen my eyes a little every time I go back.
I'll be there a lot this semester -- interning for NewMusicBox, a webzine associated with American Music Center. Several days every week. I'll chase away that wide-eyed feeling yet.
The same feeling can often accompany meeting celebrities, or seeing them in unexpected places. Several of my friends saw Dr. Ruth Westheimer in NYC; all of us had a close encounter of the comedic kind with Jon Stewart (he was in the room and addressed everyone in our group, but no one "met" him or shook his hand or anything); we all saw actor Ethan Hawke on stage in Tom Stoppard's "The Coast of Utopia." What follows is the review I wrote of "Voyage," the first play in Stoppard's trilogy, for the third workshop of the immersion.
NOTE: Review edited, in light of anonymous comment. The female *roles* in "Voyage" are not reprised in the second play, but all of the actresses will appear in different roles in "Shipwreck."
History doesn’t move to a martial drumbeat in “Voyage,” the first play in Tom Stoppard’s trilogy “The Coast of Utopia,” currently playing at Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center. Instead, the tale of 19th-century Russian thinkers bubbles with humor and energy that outweigh some uneven acting.
These real-life historical figures, led by Vissarion Belinsky and Michael Bakunin, lament the provinciality of their homeland, and they counter this isolation by reading philosophy and blithely questioning reality. Stoppard imparts a light touch to cerebral matters, and Jack O’Brien’s direction steers the actors through breezy discussions of heavy topics.
As the youths make strides toward self-discovery, the old guard, represented by Michael’s father Alexander and his rural estate Premukhino, are forced to make way. Richard Easton plays Alexander with graceful wisdom, as he slowly realizes how the world has passed him by while he was tsar over his own small domain.
As Michael, Ethan Hawke is too loud and harsh, and his wide, over-broad performance diminished the puerile joy of Michael’s discovery of new worldviews. With each new philosophical breakthrough, Michael remarks, “Now I know where I was going wrong.” Hawke stands in need of a similar revelation.
Billy Crudup’s performance as Vissarion, though, redeems the notion of Hollywood actors on the dramatic stage. Crudup doesn’t mistake lungpower for expressiveness. At first awkwardly mousy, he shows Vissarion’s passion for writing and dissatisfaction with the Tsarist regime in short, believable bursts.
The play feels male-dominated, despite the multiplicity of female roles. Alexander’s four daughters seem to serve only as plot devices, as sources of distraction to the men’s high-minded pursuits. Among the women in “Voyage,” the mother Varvara, played with poise with Amy Irving, has the greatest presence.
Visible through scrims behind the beautifully spare Victorian-era sets, shabby crowds of serfs (some of them mannequins) represent the revolution to come. In a play driven by words and by characters discovering their power, the on-looking laborers stand out by their silence.
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Hold Steady's stellar storyteller
I had a Barnes and Noble gift card burning a hole in my wallet while I was in NYC, so I decided to pick up a CD to review for one of my workshops. I picked out "Boys and Girls in America" by The Hold Steady, a record I'd heard good things about but had never actually heard. Word count kept me from saying more about the instrumentals (they're not *really* that boring, just less impressive than the lyrics and the singing), but here's a brushed-off version of the review I turned in for workshop.
Two literary allusions in the span of one song might peg a band as bookish. But on “Stuck Between Stations,” the lead track to The Hold Steady’s album “Boys and Girls in America,” lines about novelist Jack Kerouac and poet John Berryman set the stage for an artful, intriguing album. It makes many references to the depressants that fueled those writers’ lives and works, but the record, the third from this Brooklyn-based, Minneapolis-bred quintet, is far from a downer.
The band’s high-volume mix of guitars, keyboards and drums grinds away steadily, but the frantic mix of punk and blues that won raves for “Separation Sunday” (2005) sounds duller and less forceful. Neat piano flourishes, played by Franz Nicolay, occasionally emerge, but other added instruments – a horn section, a few string players – feel gimmicky, and the acoustic songs sacrifice punch for twang.
Singer Craig Finn’s lyrics, though, stand out above the unremarkable instrumentals. He grounds his songwriting in a lament from Kerouac’s “On the Road” that “boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.” Though Finn’s delivery works best at high speed, the grit he imparts to his stories of losing inhibition and ending up heartsick or hospitalized sounds great throughout. In his hearty croak, a dead-ringer for Bruce Springsteen, Finn fully inhabits every giddy youngster and sorrowful drunk. Even his sermonizing sounds like “The Boss,” cleverly mixing the language of faith and doubt with the fast cars and loose women of Kerouac: “It’s hard to feel holy when you can’t get clean…it’s hard to slow down when you’re picking up speed.”
The reference to Berryman adds doomed gravity to the excess. Berryman killed himself in Minneapolis in 1972, a victim of “all the drawn-out winters,” as Finn says. The shifting identities, sharp wit and unrequited love of Berryman’s poems “The Dream Songs” color the album’s lyrics.
After so many songs devoted to self-deception and self-medication, the album closes brilliantly with a final twist of perspective. Finn, a remarkably flexible raconteur, sticks up for fidelity: “Southtown girls may not knock you out / but you know they’ll stay.”
Two literary allusions in the span of one song might peg a band as bookish. But on “Stuck Between Stations,” the lead track to The Hold Steady’s album “Boys and Girls in America,” lines about novelist Jack Kerouac and poet John Berryman set the stage for an artful, intriguing album. It makes many references to the depressants that fueled those writers’ lives and works, but the record, the third from this Brooklyn-based, Minneapolis-bred quintet, is far from a downer.
The band’s high-volume mix of guitars, keyboards and drums grinds away steadily, but the frantic mix of punk and blues that won raves for “Separation Sunday” (2005) sounds duller and less forceful. Neat piano flourishes, played by Franz Nicolay, occasionally emerge, but other added instruments – a horn section, a few string players – feel gimmicky, and the acoustic songs sacrifice punch for twang.
Singer Craig Finn’s lyrics, though, stand out above the unremarkable instrumentals. He grounds his songwriting in a lament from Kerouac’s “On the Road” that “boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.” Though Finn’s delivery works best at high speed, the grit he imparts to his stories of losing inhibition and ending up heartsick or hospitalized sounds great throughout. In his hearty croak, a dead-ringer for Bruce Springsteen, Finn fully inhabits every giddy youngster and sorrowful drunk. Even his sermonizing sounds like “The Boss,” cleverly mixing the language of faith and doubt with the fast cars and loose women of Kerouac: “It’s hard to feel holy when you can’t get clean…it’s hard to slow down when you’re picking up speed.”
The reference to Berryman adds doomed gravity to the excess. Berryman killed himself in Minneapolis in 1972, a victim of “all the drawn-out winters,” as Finn says. The shifting identities, sharp wit and unrequited love of Berryman’s poems “The Dream Songs” color the album’s lyrics.
After so many songs devoted to self-deception and self-medication, the album closes brilliantly with a final twist of perspective. Finn, a remarkably flexible raconteur, sticks up for fidelity: “Southtown girls may not knock you out / but you know they’ll stay.”
NYC immersion, pt. 1
Goldring NYC Immersion was an arts-and-culture-laden whirlwind. I was busy most nights, mostly writing reviews for morning workshops with professional critics, so the blogging fell by the wayside. Highlights of the trip that I didn't review:
-Museum of Modern Art (esp. the Brice Marden exhibit)
-Bobby Watson and Horizon @ Jazz at Lincoln Center
-NY Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta conducting, performing "The Rite of Spring" and the Beethoven Violin Concerto
-attending a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, followed by...
-dinner at Taboon (773 10th Ave. in Hell's Kitchen)
Here is the first of the reviews I wrote during the Immersion. I've tweaked it slightly from the version that I workshopped with Eric Grode (SU alum and theatre critic for the NY Sun).
For many Broadway fans, adoration and obsession go hand in hand. Theater nuts study scripts, hound stars for autographs and hoard original cast recordings. This lifestyle may seem unhealthy, but in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” writer Bob Martin celebrates the obsessive fan with the character Man in Chair. The role and the book won Tonys for Martin, but in the Jan. 2 performance at the Marquis Theatre, understudy Jay Douglas capably filled the nerdy theaterphile’s slippers.
Douglas was a wide-eyed, believably obsessed fanboy. As the recording of a “forgotten treasure” from the 1920’s, also called “The Drowsy Chaperone,” plays, the characters come to life inside his apartment, and Man in Chair retreats into giddy reverie, giving up the despair and distraction of the present day for the romantic, predictable past.
Frequent pauses in the meta-musical allow him to show off the strange depths of his knowledge, and Douglas gleams as he rattles off names of cast members and their other “famous” roles. All of the stock characters – the slick agent, the ditzy chorus girl, even Sutton Foster’s high-kicking, attention-seeking starlet – take a back seat to Douglas’ dumpy loner.
These breaks also reveal the wit of Martin’s book. Commenting on the obvious racism of the stereotypical Latin lover Adolpho, Man in Chair quips, “Leave that to Disney.” In reading the phrase “gay wedding” on the album liner, he says that it “meant something else back then.” Douglas delivers these lines, and the rest of his comic interjections, with a self-aware smirk.
The show’s songs don’t have the same pop as Martin’s book, though. Man in Chair longs for a time when theatergoers left the theatre humming tunes, but the musical that he celebrates lacks memorable melodies. The spoken dialogue, filled with idol worship and self-deprecating humor, makes the musical work. Though Douglas dances around the edges in the first act as the record plays, his immersion in the musical’s fantasy world is complete by the second act, when he sings a duet with Foster. The tune might be forgettable, but Douglas’ adoration is naively note-perfect.
-Museum of Modern Art (esp. the Brice Marden exhibit)
-Bobby Watson and Horizon @ Jazz at Lincoln Center
-NY Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta conducting, performing "The Rite of Spring" and the Beethoven Violin Concerto
-attending a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, followed by...
-dinner at Taboon (773 10th Ave. in Hell's Kitchen)
Here is the first of the reviews I wrote during the Immersion. I've tweaked it slightly from the version that I workshopped with Eric Grode (SU alum and theatre critic for the NY Sun).
For many Broadway fans, adoration and obsession go hand in hand. Theater nuts study scripts, hound stars for autographs and hoard original cast recordings. This lifestyle may seem unhealthy, but in “The Drowsy Chaperone,” writer Bob Martin celebrates the obsessive fan with the character Man in Chair. The role and the book won Tonys for Martin, but in the Jan. 2 performance at the Marquis Theatre, understudy Jay Douglas capably filled the nerdy theaterphile’s slippers.
Douglas was a wide-eyed, believably obsessed fanboy. As the recording of a “forgotten treasure” from the 1920’s, also called “The Drowsy Chaperone,” plays, the characters come to life inside his apartment, and Man in Chair retreats into giddy reverie, giving up the despair and distraction of the present day for the romantic, predictable past.
Frequent pauses in the meta-musical allow him to show off the strange depths of his knowledge, and Douglas gleams as he rattles off names of cast members and their other “famous” roles. All of the stock characters – the slick agent, the ditzy chorus girl, even Sutton Foster’s high-kicking, attention-seeking starlet – take a back seat to Douglas’ dumpy loner.
These breaks also reveal the wit of Martin’s book. Commenting on the obvious racism of the stereotypical Latin lover Adolpho, Man in Chair quips, “Leave that to Disney.” In reading the phrase “gay wedding” on the album liner, he says that it “meant something else back then.” Douglas delivers these lines, and the rest of his comic interjections, with a self-aware smirk.
The show’s songs don’t have the same pop as Martin’s book, though. Man in Chair longs for a time when theatergoers left the theatre humming tunes, but the musical that he celebrates lacks memorable melodies. The spoken dialogue, filled with idol worship and self-deprecating humor, makes the musical work. Though Douglas dances around the edges in the first act as the record plays, his immersion in the musical’s fantasy world is complete by the second act, when he sings a duet with Foster. The tune might be forgettable, but Douglas’ adoration is naively note-perfect.
Monday, January 01, 2007
fall semester wrap-up and the Baltimore alt-press
After immersing myself in the life and works of Gyorgy Ligeti all semester, I was delighted to read this tribute to him in the Baltimore City Paper. With the title "People Who Died" and a faux-cherubic cartoon cover, I thought the Paper's year-end obits and tributes would be catty or tongue-in-cheek, but this write-up for Ligeti is one of the better ones I've read. I was also surprised to see that Naim June Paik also died this year; his name came up during my Ligeti seminar as a member of the Fluxus "art happening" group, with whom Ligeti had a brief affiliation. I can't recall if Prof. Waggoner mentioned that Paik, too, had died in 2006.
I actually double-dipped in Ligeti in my final papers. For a class in Music and Politics, I did a kind of political analysis of his opera Le grand macabre and examined how it reflected and satirized the affairs of Cold War politics (big comet coming to bring an end to the world seems like dropping the Big One, doesn't it?). This music-in-social-context paper was a good companion to and welcome distraction from my paper for the actual Ligeti seminar: a complete (or as complete as I could muster) tonal analysis of the choral piece Lux aeterna, made famous (entirely without Ligeti's permission, as you can read in the City Paper's tribute) in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Also, over my holiday break at home in Maryland, I picked up a copy of Urbanite magazine, another Baltimore City publication. The December issue had some truly admirable features: eye-catching layout, some interesting story topics and submissions by readers reflecting on life in Charm City. Those last writing were sort of reminiscent of Life as Haiku, a feature run in the Washington Post Sunday Style that I've greatly enjoyed reading for the last few years.
Finally, happy 2007! I kicked off the New Year with a six-hour drive from home in Maryland to Syracuse. Tomorrow I embark upon the "NYC Immersion" with the other Goldring-ers. Lots of shows and concerts, writing reviews, workshopping with professional critics (including Alex Ross of the New Yorker!) and, if I'm really on the ball, copious blogging about the whole lot.
I actually double-dipped in Ligeti in my final papers. For a class in Music and Politics, I did a kind of political analysis of his opera Le grand macabre and examined how it reflected and satirized the affairs of Cold War politics (big comet coming to bring an end to the world seems like dropping the Big One, doesn't it?). This music-in-social-context paper was a good companion to and welcome distraction from my paper for the actual Ligeti seminar: a complete (or as complete as I could muster) tonal analysis of the choral piece Lux aeterna, made famous (entirely without Ligeti's permission, as you can read in the City Paper's tribute) in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Also, over my holiday break at home in Maryland, I picked up a copy of Urbanite magazine, another Baltimore City publication. The December issue had some truly admirable features: eye-catching layout, some interesting story topics and submissions by readers reflecting on life in Charm City. Those last writing were sort of reminiscent of Life as Haiku, a feature run in the Washington Post Sunday Style that I've greatly enjoyed reading for the last few years.
Finally, happy 2007! I kicked off the New Year with a six-hour drive from home in Maryland to Syracuse. Tomorrow I embark upon the "NYC Immersion" with the other Goldring-ers. Lots of shows and concerts, writing reviews, workshopping with professional critics (including Alex Ross of the New Yorker!) and, if I'm really on the ball, copious blogging about the whole lot.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
'Running with Scissors' strays too far from original story
This is a revised version of the 700-word I wrote for Reviewing the Arts, and the only movie review I did for the class (I might gone a word or two over in my revision, but hey, it's a blog. More importantly, it's better). I read Burroughs' memoir almost two years ago, and I was completely engrossed, transfixed enough to stay focused as I read it on a Greyhound bus to and from New York City. But that's another story. That experience, unfortunately, set me up for big-time disappointment with the movie.
Augusten Burroughs broke into the literary mainstream with his 2003 memoir "Running with Scissors." The book’s appeal was its sheer strangeness: bizarre parenting practices, under-age love affairs, scatology as science and religion. Burroughs’ acerbic commentary on these unsettling stories continually reinforced the truth in his accounts, no matter how unbelievable.
From the outset, director Ryan Murphy’s cinematic adapation of "Running with Scissors," released October 27, lacks that biting character. The choice of music for the movie’s closing credits – Crosby, Stills and Nash’s "Teach Your Children" – has more of a sarcastic edge than much of Murphy’s adapted screenplay. The hardened, jabbing voice of Burrough’s book is undercut from the very beginning, when Joseph Cross, the young actor who plays Burroughs as a teenager and narrates the story, says "Nobody’s gonna believe me anyway."
The emotional thrust of the movie – the damage that parents unwittingly do to their children – comes from the dynamics and dissolution of two marriages. Deirdre and Norman Burroughs (Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin) booze and bicker rather than tend to their fussy, obsessive-compulsive son Augusten, while Marion and Agnes Finch (Brian Cox and Jill Clayburgh) throw up their hands at the tumult and tantrums of their two daughters and brood of adopted children. Marion, a psychiatrist, follows an unorthodox philosophy that a child becomes an adult at 13 and should be beholden to no adult’s orders thereafter. After Deirdre enters treatment under Dr. Finch and stumbles into an antidepressant-induced haze, she signs over custody of Augusten to the mellow, messianic doctor.
In the book, the reader is jolted by a barrage of oddities, but Murphy shies away from the stories’ jaw-droppingly unbelievable moments. As Dr. Finch, Cox is just too normal. His laissez-faire parenting seems merely neglectful rather than criminally insane, and his belief in divine messages shown through his bathroom leavings comes so late in the movie as to seem misplaced.
Murphy doesn’t play up young Augusten’s quirks enough, either. His childhood neuroses don’t go much beyond fascination with shiny objects, manifested by boiling and polishing his allowance money and wrapping the dog in tin foil. In the book, he obsessively shampoos and gels his hair and demands to give his mom a perm. This gender-inappropriate behavior, along with his refusal to go to school, is supposed to drive a wedge between his parents, but the gulf is already there between Norman and Deirdre at the film’s start. Murphy’s adaptation doesn’t give them time to develop or to drift apart.
The Finch children also barely register: the nutty, devoutly religious Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow), foul-mouthed misfit Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) and the angry, schizophrenic adoptee Neil Bookman (Joseph Fiennes). Bookman generates the most interest as he angrily throws the Doctor’s bland paternalism back at him, but he becomes sedate and much less interesting after he and Augusten start a relationship.
Though Augusten's neuroses seem underdeveloped (and thus even more out of place in the Finch household), Cross’ performance brings out the young man's shock and disbelief. When Cross glances into Dr. Finch’s toilet bowl or outside to see that his mother has spread all the dishes and kitchen appliances on the lawn, the camera lingers on his wide eyes and slightly-agape mouth. He appears genuinely disturbed, while everyone around him seems merely dazed.
The final and most disappointing departure from the book is how serene the supposedly-nuts Finch household seems. The Finch house in the movie is cluttered, but there are no objects being hurled, no needles falling from the two-year-old, dilapidated Christmas tree. Actual moments of peace and reflection become possible: Augusten can sit and have a conversation with Natalie at the breakfast table, or watch TV in silence with Agnes. These elements of normal family life seem out of place in what is supposed to be a bizarre, utterly backward household.
Ultimately, the movie seems more informed by "Garden State," another film that chronicles the dissolution of the "American family," than by Burrough’s madcap memoir. Murphy even borrows a scene of "primal scream" therapy from Zach Braff’s film. Unfortunately, instead of merely screaming into the abyss like the disaffected twenty-somethings in that movie, "Running With Scissors" throws all the energy and honesty of Burroughs’ book into the hole.
Augusten Burroughs broke into the literary mainstream with his 2003 memoir "Running with Scissors." The book’s appeal was its sheer strangeness: bizarre parenting practices, under-age love affairs, scatology as science and religion. Burroughs’ acerbic commentary on these unsettling stories continually reinforced the truth in his accounts, no matter how unbelievable.
From the outset, director Ryan Murphy’s cinematic adapation of "Running with Scissors," released October 27, lacks that biting character. The choice of music for the movie’s closing credits – Crosby, Stills and Nash’s "Teach Your Children" – has more of a sarcastic edge than much of Murphy’s adapted screenplay. The hardened, jabbing voice of Burrough’s book is undercut from the very beginning, when Joseph Cross, the young actor who plays Burroughs as a teenager and narrates the story, says "Nobody’s gonna believe me anyway."
The emotional thrust of the movie – the damage that parents unwittingly do to their children – comes from the dynamics and dissolution of two marriages. Deirdre and Norman Burroughs (Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin) booze and bicker rather than tend to their fussy, obsessive-compulsive son Augusten, while Marion and Agnes Finch (Brian Cox and Jill Clayburgh) throw up their hands at the tumult and tantrums of their two daughters and brood of adopted children. Marion, a psychiatrist, follows an unorthodox philosophy that a child becomes an adult at 13 and should be beholden to no adult’s orders thereafter. After Deirdre enters treatment under Dr. Finch and stumbles into an antidepressant-induced haze, she signs over custody of Augusten to the mellow, messianic doctor.
In the book, the reader is jolted by a barrage of oddities, but Murphy shies away from the stories’ jaw-droppingly unbelievable moments. As Dr. Finch, Cox is just too normal. His laissez-faire parenting seems merely neglectful rather than criminally insane, and his belief in divine messages shown through his bathroom leavings comes so late in the movie as to seem misplaced.
Murphy doesn’t play up young Augusten’s quirks enough, either. His childhood neuroses don’t go much beyond fascination with shiny objects, manifested by boiling and polishing his allowance money and wrapping the dog in tin foil. In the book, he obsessively shampoos and gels his hair and demands to give his mom a perm. This gender-inappropriate behavior, along with his refusal to go to school, is supposed to drive a wedge between his parents, but the gulf is already there between Norman and Deirdre at the film’s start. Murphy’s adaptation doesn’t give them time to develop or to drift apart.
The Finch children also barely register: the nutty, devoutly religious Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow), foul-mouthed misfit Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood) and the angry, schizophrenic adoptee Neil Bookman (Joseph Fiennes). Bookman generates the most interest as he angrily throws the Doctor’s bland paternalism back at him, but he becomes sedate and much less interesting after he and Augusten start a relationship.
Though Augusten's neuroses seem underdeveloped (and thus even more out of place in the Finch household), Cross’ performance brings out the young man's shock and disbelief. When Cross glances into Dr. Finch’s toilet bowl or outside to see that his mother has spread all the dishes and kitchen appliances on the lawn, the camera lingers on his wide eyes and slightly-agape mouth. He appears genuinely disturbed, while everyone around him seems merely dazed.
The final and most disappointing departure from the book is how serene the supposedly-nuts Finch household seems. The Finch house in the movie is cluttered, but there are no objects being hurled, no needles falling from the two-year-old, dilapidated Christmas tree. Actual moments of peace and reflection become possible: Augusten can sit and have a conversation with Natalie at the breakfast table, or watch TV in silence with Agnes. These elements of normal family life seem out of place in what is supposed to be a bizarre, utterly backward household.
Ultimately, the movie seems more informed by "Garden State," another film that chronicles the dissolution of the "American family," than by Burrough’s madcap memoir. Murphy even borrows a scene of "primal scream" therapy from Zach Braff’s film. Unfortunately, instead of merely screaming into the abyss like the disaffected twenty-somethings in that movie, "Running With Scissors" throws all the energy and honesty of Burroughs’ book into the hole.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Page turners and multiple platforms
When I heard about Dave Eggers' newest book, "What is the What," on NPR, I knew I wanted to read it and write of a review of it for my Reviewing the Arts class. I won't reprint my 600-word review on here, but I'll summarize: it's good, it's very different from "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," it's a product of remarkable investigative journalism, it marks a great step forward in Eggers' writing.
That last bit of my summary turned out to be the most important. To accompany our 600-word reviews, everyone in my class had to devise a "multi-platform" element as a supplement. After our initial bewilderment at that line in our syllabus, we found that we could record audio podcast commentaries, design slideshows or compile video montages. Some students did just one of these; others combined two of them. One person designed an intricate, interactive website for the art exhibit she reviewed -- kudoes, Susie!
Since I had identified this development in Eggers' work, I decided to do a podcast taking a look at the development of his writing with a slideshow of book covers, pictures, etc. I looked at how he's expanded his literary focus from being very self-oriented to being very global and other-centered. I also integrated his work with the band Thrice in designing the artwork for their album and the residual influence of their themes and lyrics on his writing of "What is the What."
I had to re-read parts of "A Heartbreaking Work" and "You Shall Know Our Velocity!" and read, for the first time, Eggers' 2005 short story collection "How We Are Hungry." As a whole, the stories echo "A Heartbreaking Work" a little bit -- wide shifts in emotion, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes both moods smooshed right up against each other. But the settings and landscapes are so distinct and so well-drawn that they sometimes overshadow the characters. And none of the characters hang their heads or bemoan their situations; they move forward. They persevere. This seems to be the best model for the writing that Eggers taps into in "What is the What" -- intimate, personal, aware of the tragedies of the past, but not weighed down or consumed by them.
I was really happy with how the multi-platform supplement turned out. If I can figure out how to post it on here, I will.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Cinematic rundown
"The Departed" - Totally engrossing, much easier to follow than I thought it would be. Incredibly violent (apparently that's a Scorsese hallmark...what I don't know about his movies could probably fill a warehouse) and profane, but also filled with so many good one-liners I lost count. Outstanding performances by all the principals. Went to a 10 p.m. screening; so good I didn't care that it let out at almost 1 a.m.
"The Queen" - Good movie. Great sense of the frosty, stuffy air that surrounds the royal family in England. I didn't know that anti-royalist sentiments ran so high during the aftermath of Princess Di's death. Great performances by Helen Mirren as QEII and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair (talk about a dead ringer!). Also, the addition and editing of news broadcasts from the time (was it really nine years ago?) really add a lot, though I must say, the Brits could teach our newscasters a lot about enunciation and convincing delivery.
"Borat" - Funny and shocking at times, but slightly underwhelming. I get that Kazakhstan is supposed to be a third-world backwater and that Borat has no sense of the outside world, but the idea that he's not housebroken, that he would defecate in a bag and present it to his hosts? It's neither funny nor believable. And the political points that the movie makes - how Americans tacitly go along with anti-Semitism and homophobia - get drowned out by all the naked wrestling and Pamela Anderson-worshipping.
"Marie Antoinette" - Visually stunning and well-paced. I didn't mind the long periods without dialogue; Sofia Coppola is skilled enough to let the sets and camerawork tell the story. Kirsten Dunst has the right poise and expression for the regal part, but her delivery seems too willowy and too casual (almost Valley Girl-ish) at times. I expected to be jarred by the anachronistic music (Gang of Four, Bow Wow Wow), but the tunes were chosen artfully and to great effect. I loved "Lost in Translation" and some of the long, lingering shots in "Marie Antoinette" - especially Dunst's face at the end, as the queen makes her last trip to Paris - reminded me of the cinematography. I'm excited to see what Coppola does next.
To come - recent readings, latest listenings, some ponderings on my performances.
"The Queen" - Good movie. Great sense of the frosty, stuffy air that surrounds the royal family in England. I didn't know that anti-royalist sentiments ran so high during the aftermath of Princess Di's death. Great performances by Helen Mirren as QEII and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair (talk about a dead ringer!). Also, the addition and editing of news broadcasts from the time (was it really nine years ago?) really add a lot, though I must say, the Brits could teach our newscasters a lot about enunciation and convincing delivery.
"Borat" - Funny and shocking at times, but slightly underwhelming. I get that Kazakhstan is supposed to be a third-world backwater and that Borat has no sense of the outside world, but the idea that he's not housebroken, that he would defecate in a bag and present it to his hosts? It's neither funny nor believable. And the political points that the movie makes - how Americans tacitly go along with anti-Semitism and homophobia - get drowned out by all the naked wrestling and Pamela Anderson-worshipping.
"Marie Antoinette" - Visually stunning and well-paced. I didn't mind the long periods without dialogue; Sofia Coppola is skilled enough to let the sets and camerawork tell the story. Kirsten Dunst has the right poise and expression for the regal part, but her delivery seems too willowy and too casual (almost Valley Girl-ish) at times. I expected to be jarred by the anachronistic music (Gang of Four, Bow Wow Wow), but the tunes were chosen artfully and to great effect. I loved "Lost in Translation" and some of the long, lingering shots in "Marie Antoinette" - especially Dunst's face at the end, as the queen makes her last trip to Paris - reminded me of the cinematography. I'm excited to see what Coppola does next.
To come - recent readings, latest listenings, some ponderings on my performances.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
I would have written a shorter review, but I didn't have time
I feel like I've been neglecting this blog. I've been to a few concerts and other arts events but I've been busy studying for exams and writing short "journal" responses for various classes, so I haven't had the spare time (usually spent on the ground floor of Bird Library) to write anything up. Plus I had to revise the previous review of the TV on the Radio album -- it's much better now; I might put it up.
And so on the same day that the revised 400-word review was due, I also had a 300-word review due. I felt like the premiere piece, with all of its backstory and the program notes that Waggoner wrote, deserved an expanded story, but it's a unique challenge trying to capture a single concert (or a single art exhibit, or any of the other things my classmates wrote about) in 300 words.
Degas Quartet gives weight to Waggoner's world premiere
The Degas Quartet is gaining a reputation as one of the best young string quartets in the United States, and the group’s list of tutors – the Takacs, Emerson and Julliard Quartets – is a "who’s who" of the best international chamber players.
Small wonder that composer Andrew Waggoner chose the Degas to premiere his new "My Penelope" (String Quartet No. 4). Waggoner wrote the piece to touch upon the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and homesickness of his native New Orleans’ displaced people. The formal premiere will take place in November in New Orleans, but the Degas revealed the piece’s profound anguish and tremulous grief at an impressive preview performance October 10th in Syracuse, N.Y.
"My Penelope" immediately jabs for the heart as all four players play with double-stops, grinding out and repeating dense, dissonant chords. This stark opening statement brushed away the memory of the concert’s opening treat, a breezy rundown of Stefan Freund’s "Dance on Hot Coals."
The Degas brought intensity to all of Waggoner’s gestural demands: jarring jete ricochet articulations, high harmonics, flurries of sixteenth notes. A recurring pizzicato figure played by cello and viola recalled a Greek lyre in a strong evocation of the piece’s roots in the story of Homer’s Odyssey. The piece’s ending was a subtle dissolving, a sigh after three movements of storm and stress.
The quartet was clearly drained after Waggoner’s piece, and the first two movements of Schubert’s Quintet in C Major suffered as a result. The group, joined by cellist Caroline Stinson, lacked energy during the opening allegro, playing with too much light and not enough heat. The quintet rebounded, though, and dug into the Scherzo with fervor. The Allegretto finale, with its rich chords enhanced by the two cellists, ended the performance with a perfectly soothing compliment to Waggoner’s seething premiere.
And so on the same day that the revised 400-word review was due, I also had a 300-word review due. I felt like the premiere piece, with all of its backstory and the program notes that Waggoner wrote, deserved an expanded story, but it's a unique challenge trying to capture a single concert (or a single art exhibit, or any of the other things my classmates wrote about) in 300 words.
Degas Quartet gives weight to Waggoner's world premiere
The Degas Quartet is gaining a reputation as one of the best young string quartets in the United States, and the group’s list of tutors – the Takacs, Emerson and Julliard Quartets – is a "who’s who" of the best international chamber players.
Small wonder that composer Andrew Waggoner chose the Degas to premiere his new "My Penelope" (String Quartet No. 4). Waggoner wrote the piece to touch upon the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and homesickness of his native New Orleans’ displaced people. The formal premiere will take place in November in New Orleans, but the Degas revealed the piece’s profound anguish and tremulous grief at an impressive preview performance October 10th in Syracuse, N.Y.
"My Penelope" immediately jabs for the heart as all four players play with double-stops, grinding out and repeating dense, dissonant chords. This stark opening statement brushed away the memory of the concert’s opening treat, a breezy rundown of Stefan Freund’s "Dance on Hot Coals."
The Degas brought intensity to all of Waggoner’s gestural demands: jarring jete ricochet articulations, high harmonics, flurries of sixteenth notes. A recurring pizzicato figure played by cello and viola recalled a Greek lyre in a strong evocation of the piece’s roots in the story of Homer’s Odyssey. The piece’s ending was a subtle dissolving, a sigh after three movements of storm and stress.
The quartet was clearly drained after Waggoner’s piece, and the first two movements of Schubert’s Quintet in C Major suffered as a result. The group, joined by cellist Caroline Stinson, lacked energy during the opening allegro, playing with too much light and not enough heat. The quintet rebounded, though, and dug into the Scherzo with fervor. The Allegretto finale, with its rich chords enhanced by the two cellists, ended the performance with a perfectly soothing compliment to Waggoner’s seething premiere.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
TV on the Radio makes waves
This is my second review for my Critical Writing class - a 400-word review. Two small things I didn't include: "Province" features guest vocals by David Bowie, which should get hardcore Bowie-philes to pick up the album; also, the album came with a poster designed by singer Tunde Adebimpe. It's currently on the wall in my room.
On any recording today, the term "funk" has come to mean the sound of thumb-slapped electric bass playing some syncopated rhythm. George Clinton, who invented the genre with the bands Parliament and Funkadelic, would be appalled. Without any instance of that "characteristic" sound, the newest album by New York-based group TV on the Radio takes the word back to the way Clinton defined it: strange, irregular and off-beat.
On "Return to Cookie Mountain," TVOTR reintroduces the spacey, uncategorizable elements that made Clinton into the pioneer of "intergalactic funk." Singers Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe show great flexibility in switching from shrill falsetto to throaty baritone. Their vocals are the most important ingredient in the album’s soundscape, floating over the haze of buzzing guitars and droning samples.
The group’s multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek (he is credited with guitar, bass, keys and sampler) also produced the album, and his production features a careful balance of static drones and bustling energy. The drone comes from guitars, synthesizers and sitar, and it creates a uniform sound world for the whole album, stretching out underneath every track from the opening "I Was a Lover" to the last, "Wash the Day."
The energy churning beneath the mellow surface comes from drummer Jaleel Bunton’s light-handed, complex playing. He drives the fast songs with nimble stickwork and adds emphatic bass drum thumps and cymbal crashes to the slowly unwinding numbers.
Bunton is the key to the album’s best track, "Wolf Like Me," driving the bass groove snare and tom-tom. During the bridge, the guitars drop out to reveal the sampled sound of a tinkling music box and a chorus singing "oohs" and "ahs," and Bunton dials back his playing. He then leads the charge back in, pounding away underneath the layers of voices and synthesizers.
Similarly chorus-like vocals also stand out on "Province" and "Let the Devil In." Sitek’s production presents this singing in a very sensitive fashion, preserving the lyrics as well as the grunts and groans. These utterances recall another dominant but lesser-known frontman: H.R., from the Washington, D.C. reggae-punk outfit Bad Brains.
The lyrics, penned by Malone, Adebimpe and Sitek, sometimes seem like more of an afterthought. The characters in the songs drink too much and mourn squandered opportunities. But even if their boredom and sadness is less than profound, the talent backing them up is off the charts.
On any recording today, the term "funk" has come to mean the sound of thumb-slapped electric bass playing some syncopated rhythm. George Clinton, who invented the genre with the bands Parliament and Funkadelic, would be appalled. Without any instance of that "characteristic" sound, the newest album by New York-based group TV on the Radio takes the word back to the way Clinton defined it: strange, irregular and off-beat.
On "Return to Cookie Mountain," TVOTR reintroduces the spacey, uncategorizable elements that made Clinton into the pioneer of "intergalactic funk." Singers Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe show great flexibility in switching from shrill falsetto to throaty baritone. Their vocals are the most important ingredient in the album’s soundscape, floating over the haze of buzzing guitars and droning samples.
The group’s multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek (he is credited with guitar, bass, keys and sampler) also produced the album, and his production features a careful balance of static drones and bustling energy. The drone comes from guitars, synthesizers and sitar, and it creates a uniform sound world for the whole album, stretching out underneath every track from the opening "I Was a Lover" to the last, "Wash the Day."
The energy churning beneath the mellow surface comes from drummer Jaleel Bunton’s light-handed, complex playing. He drives the fast songs with nimble stickwork and adds emphatic bass drum thumps and cymbal crashes to the slowly unwinding numbers.
Bunton is the key to the album’s best track, "Wolf Like Me," driving the bass groove snare and tom-tom. During the bridge, the guitars drop out to reveal the sampled sound of a tinkling music box and a chorus singing "oohs" and "ahs," and Bunton dials back his playing. He then leads the charge back in, pounding away underneath the layers of voices and synthesizers.
Similarly chorus-like vocals also stand out on "Province" and "Let the Devil In." Sitek’s production presents this singing in a very sensitive fashion, preserving the lyrics as well as the grunts and groans. These utterances recall another dominant but lesser-known frontman: H.R., from the Washington, D.C. reggae-punk outfit Bad Brains.
The lyrics, penned by Malone, Adebimpe and Sitek, sometimes seem like more of an afterthought. The characters in the songs drink too much and mourn squandered opportunities. But even if their boredom and sadness is less than profound, the talent backing them up is off the charts.
Captivating and confusing - Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep"
After seeing "The Science of Sleep," I emerged from the theater feeling as though I might be in a dream, whether mine or someone else's. For all its twists, turns and seeming non-sequiturs, "The Science of Sleep" is an arresting, kaleidoscopic trip of a movie.
With its brilliant color palette and its overlapping layers of dreams and "reality," the action of the film is seen through a series of monochrome cels moving back in forth in space like a series of "Pong" paddles. Sometimes we see through just one color, just one perspectives; at other times, we see through several cels at once, with multiple levels of "dreams" superimposed over the action. We venture into the staging area of dreams, complete with cameras, monitors and incidental music by a backing band, all operated by one man - Stephane, a half-French/half-Mexican aspiring artist who presents his dreams as "télévision éducative." Stephane's eyes, opened and shut with venetian blinds controlled by the "ringmaster" Stephane in his mind - are our windows into his life in Paris and the levels of "dream-life" laid over it.
But with the knowledge, imparted by Stephane's mother, that he has always confused dreams for reality, we see the feints and distortions of his dream-life in a different light. These diversions - the large hands, the assemblage of co-workers all speaking in Stephane's own voice, the landscapes constructed from toilet paper tubes and cardboard - are all the products of the mind of a troubled young man. Even at the film's baseline "reality," elements of fantasy, like the "one-second time travel machine" or the mechanical animation of Stephanie's pony, are present.
But even with these elements of - for lack of a less-loaded term, "magical realism" - the characters at the heart of the film's "reality" are utterly believable. Stephane is a young man, unhappy with his job and struggling to adapt to living in a new city and to speaking a new language. Stephanie is a lovely, slightly insecure artist, easily wounded by dishonesty. Stephane's mother is well-intentioned but slightly domineering. Strangely absent are reflections on Stephane's dead father, but better that his character be absent than thrusted into Freudian-Oedipal interpretations of Stephane's dream-life.
The film doesn't present sleep or dreams in an exactly scientific fashion; it doesn't break down their elements, doesn't discuss the influence of brain chemistry or delve into psychoanalytic interpretation. The opening scene, in the "Stephane TV" studio inside the protagonist's head, seems a more apt description of the formulation of dreams: many different ingredients, thrown together haphazardly, stirred or otherwise agitated. What results seems the product of chance, the bubbling of different elements to the surface. Through all the convolution, the film retains an important level of consistency: everything is filtered through the lens of Stephane, who with his believable, trying past and his yearnings for the future, is an Everyman, both due to and inspite of his delusions.
With its brilliant color palette and its overlapping layers of dreams and "reality," the action of the film is seen through a series of monochrome cels moving back in forth in space like a series of "Pong" paddles. Sometimes we see through just one color, just one perspectives; at other times, we see through several cels at once, with multiple levels of "dreams" superimposed over the action. We venture into the staging area of dreams, complete with cameras, monitors and incidental music by a backing band, all operated by one man - Stephane, a half-French/half-Mexican aspiring artist who presents his dreams as "télévision éducative." Stephane's eyes, opened and shut with venetian blinds controlled by the "ringmaster" Stephane in his mind - are our windows into his life in Paris and the levels of "dream-life" laid over it.
But with the knowledge, imparted by Stephane's mother, that he has always confused dreams for reality, we see the feints and distortions of his dream-life in a different light. These diversions - the large hands, the assemblage of co-workers all speaking in Stephane's own voice, the landscapes constructed from toilet paper tubes and cardboard - are all the products of the mind of a troubled young man. Even at the film's baseline "reality," elements of fantasy, like the "one-second time travel machine" or the mechanical animation of Stephanie's pony, are present.
But even with these elements of - for lack of a less-loaded term, "magical realism" - the characters at the heart of the film's "reality" are utterly believable. Stephane is a young man, unhappy with his job and struggling to adapt to living in a new city and to speaking a new language. Stephanie is a lovely, slightly insecure artist, easily wounded by dishonesty. Stephane's mother is well-intentioned but slightly domineering. Strangely absent are reflections on Stephane's dead father, but better that his character be absent than thrusted into Freudian-Oedipal interpretations of Stephane's dream-life.
The film doesn't present sleep or dreams in an exactly scientific fashion; it doesn't break down their elements, doesn't discuss the influence of brain chemistry or delve into psychoanalytic interpretation. The opening scene, in the "Stephane TV" studio inside the protagonist's head, seems a more apt description of the formulation of dreams: many different ingredients, thrown together haphazardly, stirred or otherwise agitated. What results seems the product of chance, the bubbling of different elements to the surface. Through all the convolution, the film retains an important level of consistency: everything is filtered through the lens of Stephane, who with his believable, trying past and his yearnings for the future, is an Everyman, both due to and inspite of his delusions.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Soloists star in Skaneateles finale
To continue the trend in this blog of vacillating between pop and classical music, here's a review I wrote for my AJP 600 (Critical Writing) class. It's not especially timely (concert happened Sept. 2), but many elements of the performance, especially the soloist/ensemble dynamic, stuck with me. I think I have some readers who aren't in my class - Dad? Rebecca? Krystal? - and thus weren't handed a copy of this on Monday. So here it is.
Two world-class soloists turned an average chamber concert into a grand finale for the 2006 Skaneateles Festival.
On another Saturday night concert moved indoors from Brook Farm due to inclement weather, flutist Marina Piccinini and violinist Ilya Kaler rescued a slightly soggy performance by the Festival Chamber Orchestra. Despite the change in venue, the auditorium at Skaneateles High School was nearly full with audience members eagerly awaiting works by three of the most famous names in classical music.
The concert began with J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048. In both movements, the violinist and violists failed to match articulations clearly, playing more as disjointed soloists than as uniform sections.
The too-fast tempo of the second Allegro movement exaggerated the problem of mismatching rhythms and attacks. The orchestra sounded sloppy in playing triple-meter at such a rapid pace, leading to a disappointing performance of a familiar classic.
The chamber group added oboes, horns and additional string players for Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D major, K. 314. Piccinini’s energetic presence added an immediate boost to the group’s playing. She moved and swayed as she played, and punctuated several sixteenth-note runs with an upward flourish of the barrel end of her flute.
Though the writing for the concerto’s orchestral accompaniment is less colorful than the accompanying music for many of his operas, concertmaster Steven Copes ably led the string players and provided several graceful solo interjections.
Piccinini’s cadenzas highlighted all three movements; she showed great control with regard to tempo, neatly speeding up and slowing down amid the rapid scalar passages. She made octave leaps with ease and played with a crystalline tone in all registers.
The concert closed with another well-known piece: Vivaldi’s "The Four Seasons." The orchestra turned to another outstanding soloist; it’s easy to forget that in addition to the piece’s place among the "greatest hits" of chamber music, it’s also a violin concerto. Ilya Kaler, professor of violin at DePaul University and formerly of the Eastman School of Music, bowed nimbly through some very flashy solo writing, and the orchestra frequently faded into the background as Kaler asserted his control over the music.
His playing was nearly flawless throughout all four sections, but some of the concerto’s less frequently-played movements could have used more care from the orchestra. The ensemble played too heavily throughout the last movement, "Winter." Heavy, clunking pizzicato from the string players failed to capture the lightly falling rain and snow described in the lines of verse that accompany the score.
Kaler was truly the star of the evening. He dominated the stage as he drew broad strokes over open strings to play chords and worked his fingers from top to bottom of the fingerboard. His physical presence – tall and imposing, with long arms and fingers often moved rapidly – transfixed the audience throughout the 45 minute-long concerto.
Two world-class soloists turned an average chamber concert into a grand finale for the 2006 Skaneateles Festival.
On another Saturday night concert moved indoors from Brook Farm due to inclement weather, flutist Marina Piccinini and violinist Ilya Kaler rescued a slightly soggy performance by the Festival Chamber Orchestra. Despite the change in venue, the auditorium at Skaneateles High School was nearly full with audience members eagerly awaiting works by three of the most famous names in classical music.
The concert began with J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048. In both movements, the violinist and violists failed to match articulations clearly, playing more as disjointed soloists than as uniform sections.
The too-fast tempo of the second Allegro movement exaggerated the problem of mismatching rhythms and attacks. The orchestra sounded sloppy in playing triple-meter at such a rapid pace, leading to a disappointing performance of a familiar classic.
The chamber group added oboes, horns and additional string players for Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D major, K. 314. Piccinini’s energetic presence added an immediate boost to the group’s playing. She moved and swayed as she played, and punctuated several sixteenth-note runs with an upward flourish of the barrel end of her flute.
Though the writing for the concerto’s orchestral accompaniment is less colorful than the accompanying music for many of his operas, concertmaster Steven Copes ably led the string players and provided several graceful solo interjections.
Piccinini’s cadenzas highlighted all three movements; she showed great control with regard to tempo, neatly speeding up and slowing down amid the rapid scalar passages. She made octave leaps with ease and played with a crystalline tone in all registers.
The concert closed with another well-known piece: Vivaldi’s "The Four Seasons." The orchestra turned to another outstanding soloist; it’s easy to forget that in addition to the piece’s place among the "greatest hits" of chamber music, it’s also a violin concerto. Ilya Kaler, professor of violin at DePaul University and formerly of the Eastman School of Music, bowed nimbly through some very flashy solo writing, and the orchestra frequently faded into the background as Kaler asserted his control over the music.
His playing was nearly flawless throughout all four sections, but some of the concerto’s less frequently-played movements could have used more care from the orchestra. The ensemble played too heavily throughout the last movement, "Winter." Heavy, clunking pizzicato from the string players failed to capture the lightly falling rain and snow described in the lines of verse that accompany the score.
Kaler was truly the star of the evening. He dominated the stage as he drew broad strokes over open strings to play chords and worked his fingers from top to bottom of the fingerboard. His physical presence – tall and imposing, with long arms and fingers often moved rapidly – transfixed the audience throughout the 45 minute-long concerto.
Sentimentality and the singer/songwriter
The singer/singwriter has a certain archetype in today's pop music - one person with a guitar, singing personal, confessional-sounding songs, sometimes with a back-up band, sometimes not. Between songs, the singer often tells a story that explains where he (or she) was when he wrote the song, or what inspired its writing. Often before kicking off each new song, he says "This next one's called..." And he counts to 4, starts to strum, or fumbles with a harmonica in its frame.
At a show in the SU Underground on Monday night, two artists presented variations on this form. Matt Pond, lead singer and songwriter for the band Matt Pond PA, told no stories and only provided the name to one or two of his songs. He appeared ill at ease between songs, berating an audience member not to call him "Matty" (apparently his mother calls him that) and turning down requests to play certain songs. A lyric from Pond's song "kc" perfectly encapsulate his stage presence: "There’s no way to the heart better than awkwardly." He repeatedly said "Hold please," as he and his bandmates tuned up or switched instruments, and even prefaced several tunes by saying "This is a song."
I expected a set of acoustic guitar-based tunes (based on a cover of the Pixies song "Winterlong" I heard on my undergrad college radio station), but was suprised to hear a group with two electric guitars, bass, drums, cello (!) and occasional electric keyboard. The music surged forward with a bright, pop energy akin to the Police, "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me"-era Cure or Elvis Costello.
Only after someone requested "Since U Been Gone" and lead guitarist Brian Pearl cranked out the power-pop ballad's guitar part did Pond loosen up to take a more free-wheeling approach. He even agreed to play a few extra songs after his band members took a bathroom break. Though he seemed daunted at first by the crowd's lack of movement during songs and utter silence between, he warmed to the students as they nodded heads, shuffled feet and slowly crept closer to the stage throughout his set.
Opening act Ian Love delivered the archetypal singer/songwriter performance to a tee. "I wrote this song when I was driving across Iceland." "This is a song about my daughter." "While I'm being sentimental, this song is for my wife." Love, accompanied by another guitarist, opened the songwriter's book of his soul. Where Pond pulled away from his audience, Love was conversational. Where Pond tried to mask his imperfections ("This is a new song, so we don't really know it yet"), Love reveled in them. He frequently lifted his voice into a lilting falsetto, not afraid of cracks between registers or of landing on a slightly out-of-tune note. With his voice, swimming in reverb, over top above slowly-arcing songs based in acoustic and pedal-steel guitars, Love's recalled two artists in mainstream "alt-country" - Wilco and My Morning Jacket.
These two bands each feature a prominent frontman (Jeff Tweedy in Wilco, Jim James in MMJ) in the singer/songwriter tradition. Each band draws from country music, both the sad ballad a la "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and the knee-slapping hoedown, and inject it with more modern approaches. Tweedy adds bugs-beneath-the-skin paranoia and anomie, and James blasts the forms into orbit with unearthly falsetto, bizarre lyrics and electric guitar hystrionics. In his opening set, Love took a step toward bringing these forms back to earth.
At a show in the SU Underground on Monday night, two artists presented variations on this form. Matt Pond, lead singer and songwriter for the band Matt Pond PA, told no stories and only provided the name to one or two of his songs. He appeared ill at ease between songs, berating an audience member not to call him "Matty" (apparently his mother calls him that) and turning down requests to play certain songs. A lyric from Pond's song "kc" perfectly encapsulate his stage presence: "There’s no way to the heart better than awkwardly." He repeatedly said "Hold please," as he and his bandmates tuned up or switched instruments, and even prefaced several tunes by saying "This is a song."
I expected a set of acoustic guitar-based tunes (based on a cover of the Pixies song "Winterlong" I heard on my undergrad college radio station), but was suprised to hear a group with two electric guitars, bass, drums, cello (!) and occasional electric keyboard. The music surged forward with a bright, pop energy akin to the Police, "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me"-era Cure or Elvis Costello.
Only after someone requested "Since U Been Gone" and lead guitarist Brian Pearl cranked out the power-pop ballad's guitar part did Pond loosen up to take a more free-wheeling approach. He even agreed to play a few extra songs after his band members took a bathroom break. Though he seemed daunted at first by the crowd's lack of movement during songs and utter silence between, he warmed to the students as they nodded heads, shuffled feet and slowly crept closer to the stage throughout his set.
Opening act Ian Love delivered the archetypal singer/songwriter performance to a tee. "I wrote this song when I was driving across Iceland." "This is a song about my daughter." "While I'm being sentimental, this song is for my wife." Love, accompanied by another guitarist, opened the songwriter's book of his soul. Where Pond pulled away from his audience, Love was conversational. Where Pond tried to mask his imperfections ("This is a new song, so we don't really know it yet"), Love reveled in them. He frequently lifted his voice into a lilting falsetto, not afraid of cracks between registers or of landing on a slightly out-of-tune note. With his voice, swimming in reverb, over top above slowly-arcing songs based in acoustic and pedal-steel guitars, Love's recalled two artists in mainstream "alt-country" - Wilco and My Morning Jacket.
These two bands each feature a prominent frontman (Jeff Tweedy in Wilco, Jim James in MMJ) in the singer/songwriter tradition. Each band draws from country music, both the sad ballad a la "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and the knee-slapping hoedown, and inject it with more modern approaches. Tweedy adds bugs-beneath-the-skin paranoia and anomie, and James blasts the forms into orbit with unearthly falsetto, bizarre lyrics and electric guitar hystrionics. In his opening set, Love took a step toward bringing these forms back to earth.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
In praise of music that breaks a sweat
I suffered a bout of musical whiplash yesterday evening. From 5 to 6:45, I attended the first class meeting of a music history seminar. In this course, I will be studying the works of Gyorgy Ligeti, a contemporary composer who just passed away this summer. Then, at 8, I went to the New York State Fair and caught a performance by punk-rocker Joan Jett, who played for free on the Chevrolet Court stage.
Some of Ligeti's music was featured (albeit without his permission) in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Many of his other compositions have this same ethereal, formless feeling, filled with clustered chords and lacking the normal musical guideposts of rhythm, meter and conventional harmony. In the first class yesterday, though, we listened to a few examples of Ligeti's piano music and heard its complex rhythms and jumpy syncopations. The professor led us through discussion of Eastern European music and the rhythm of the Hungarian language itself, and the few piano pieces we heard are loaded with forward-surging, heavily-accented rhythms.
The professor described some of Ligeti's music as incredibly, sometimes willfully, difficult, especially in terms of the independence of individual parts and the layering of complex rhythms over one another. But part of the value, I'm beginning to see, in new music is the *effort* it requires of both the performer and the listener. Much of the enjoyment comes from the challenge - both the discipline of one's hands to play the right notes at the right time, and discipline of the ears to find something to grab onto in the music. The sung folk music we heard in class contained, in addition to unconventional tonalities and unfamiliar language, shouts, grunts and other uncategorizable sounds. Those elements show that the performers are working hard and exerting themselves, conveying intensity that comes through entirely apart from the language in which the song is sung.
Compare that with an hour-long set of roaring, brawny rock-and-roll, with guitars in place of pianos, English in place of Hungarian, and an up-tempo 4/4 grind in place of complicated isorhythms. The common ingredient in both musical experiences, though, was intensity. Jett and her lead guitarist hurled themselves around the stage, manhandling their guitars as they churned out steady, three-chord progressions (If the formula for country music is "three chords and the truth," the one for punk-rock from the '70s and '80s might be "three chords and a snarl"). When the guitarist and bassist came to the mike to deliver backing vocals, they seemed locked in place - eyes forward, mouths in position to sing, even on the relatively docile refrain of "Crimson and Clover." Jett encouraged the audience to do likewise, calling for more volume from the shouting chorus at the foot of the stage. She and her bandmates doubtlessly exerted themselves just playing simple, propulsive American rock music, stomping around the stage and brandishing electric guitars. I didn't know all the songs in the set, particularly the ones from the band's new album "Sinner," but they were delivered with the same weight and aggressive posture as the more familiar ones.
So here's to music that takes effort to play and to enjoy. Though you may never see a roadie drape a concert pianist in a cape after a performance a la James Brown, exertion and effort are a vital part of performance, whether it's "post-modern" or punk-rock.
Some of Ligeti's music was featured (albeit without his permission) in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." Many of his other compositions have this same ethereal, formless feeling, filled with clustered chords and lacking the normal musical guideposts of rhythm, meter and conventional harmony. In the first class yesterday, though, we listened to a few examples of Ligeti's piano music and heard its complex rhythms and jumpy syncopations. The professor led us through discussion of Eastern European music and the rhythm of the Hungarian language itself, and the few piano pieces we heard are loaded with forward-surging, heavily-accented rhythms.
The professor described some of Ligeti's music as incredibly, sometimes willfully, difficult, especially in terms of the independence of individual parts and the layering of complex rhythms over one another. But part of the value, I'm beginning to see, in new music is the *effort* it requires of both the performer and the listener. Much of the enjoyment comes from the challenge - both the discipline of one's hands to play the right notes at the right time, and discipline of the ears to find something to grab onto in the music. The sung folk music we heard in class contained, in addition to unconventional tonalities and unfamiliar language, shouts, grunts and other uncategorizable sounds. Those elements show that the performers are working hard and exerting themselves, conveying intensity that comes through entirely apart from the language in which the song is sung.
Compare that with an hour-long set of roaring, brawny rock-and-roll, with guitars in place of pianos, English in place of Hungarian, and an up-tempo 4/4 grind in place of complicated isorhythms. The common ingredient in both musical experiences, though, was intensity. Jett and her lead guitarist hurled themselves around the stage, manhandling their guitars as they churned out steady, three-chord progressions (If the formula for country music is "three chords and the truth," the one for punk-rock from the '70s and '80s might be "three chords and a snarl"). When the guitarist and bassist came to the mike to deliver backing vocals, they seemed locked in place - eyes forward, mouths in position to sing, even on the relatively docile refrain of "Crimson and Clover." Jett encouraged the audience to do likewise, calling for more volume from the shouting chorus at the foot of the stage. She and her bandmates doubtlessly exerted themselves just playing simple, propulsive American rock music, stomping around the stage and brandishing electric guitars. I didn't know all the songs in the set, particularly the ones from the band's new album "Sinner," but they were delivered with the same weight and aggressive posture as the more familiar ones.
So here's to music that takes effort to play and to enjoy. Though you may never see a roadie drape a concert pianist in a cape after a performance a la James Brown, exertion and effort are a vital part of performance, whether it's "post-modern" or punk-rock.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Silly jokes, serious skills
Peter De Sotto, violinist/vocalist for the Quartetto Gelato, cracked quite a few jokes between numbers in his group's performance last night at the Skaneateles Festival. Some fell flat; others generated a lot of laughs. But De Sotto's silly on-stage demeanor took nothing away from an outstanding, wide-ranging set of songs.
Due to illness, the group had to perform without its oboe/English horn player and had to alter its printed program. Clarinetist Shalom Berg added a great deal of flourish to the group's unique combination of violin, cello and accordian. This exotic blend was showcased on many numbers not listed on the program, including "Meditango," "Rondo alla Zigeuner," "Sous Le Ciel De Paris" and "Besamo Mucho" (reclaiming the song forever from Leslie Nielsen's rendition in "The Naked Gun"). The group ably shifted from propulsive dance rhythms to smooth legato playing, moving and swaying and interacting with one another.
I don't know when clarinetist Bard joined the group -- his bio, inserted into the program, showed that he is an established musician in Toronto like the other three -- but his chemistry with the other players was even more impressive than his obvious technical skill.
Accordianist Alexander Sevastian was, without question, the finest accordian player I have ever seen or heard. Before performing the Finale from von Weber's "Konzertstuck Opus 79," Sevastian took the microphone and said, "Since English is not my first language, I don't usually like to talk. But I do like to play fast notes." He then launched into the piece, which he adpated from a piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. Sevastian also provided the highlight of the first half of the concert, playing Bach's famous "Tocatta and Fugue" while De Sotto, Berg and cellist Elinor Frey took five. After he played the familiar opening passage, I said to myself, "I don't know how he's going to pull this off." But he did, tackling the piece's technical demands with furious fingerwork over the instrument's manuals.
The four musicians formed dynamic pairs throughout the evening - cello and accordian as a kind of basso continuo, violin and cello as smooth, evocative string section, violin and clarinet as nimble duettists egging each another one.
Their great skill and strong chemistry provided a greater connection to the audience than De Sotto's jokes and foot-stamping. His last comment, though, regarding the group's traditional closer "Danny Boy," hit home. He said that though the traditiona Irish song is widely performed in many different settings, "the piece always wins." But last night, it was just one in an entire set of winners.
Due to illness, the group had to perform without its oboe/English horn player and had to alter its printed program. Clarinetist Shalom Berg added a great deal of flourish to the group's unique combination of violin, cello and accordian. This exotic blend was showcased on many numbers not listed on the program, including "Meditango," "Rondo alla Zigeuner," "Sous Le Ciel De Paris" and "Besamo Mucho" (reclaiming the song forever from Leslie Nielsen's rendition in "The Naked Gun"). The group ably shifted from propulsive dance rhythms to smooth legato playing, moving and swaying and interacting with one another.
I don't know when clarinetist Bard joined the group -- his bio, inserted into the program, showed that he is an established musician in Toronto like the other three -- but his chemistry with the other players was even more impressive than his obvious technical skill.
Accordianist Alexander Sevastian was, without question, the finest accordian player I have ever seen or heard. Before performing the Finale from von Weber's "Konzertstuck Opus 79," Sevastian took the microphone and said, "Since English is not my first language, I don't usually like to talk. But I do like to play fast notes." He then launched into the piece, which he adpated from a piano solo with orchestral accompaniment. Sevastian also provided the highlight of the first half of the concert, playing Bach's famous "Tocatta and Fugue" while De Sotto, Berg and cellist Elinor Frey took five. After he played the familiar opening passage, I said to myself, "I don't know how he's going to pull this off." But he did, tackling the piece's technical demands with furious fingerwork over the instrument's manuals.
The four musicians formed dynamic pairs throughout the evening - cello and accordian as a kind of basso continuo, violin and cello as smooth, evocative string section, violin and clarinet as nimble duettists egging each another one.
Their great skill and strong chemistry provided a greater connection to the audience than De Sotto's jokes and foot-stamping. His last comment, though, regarding the group's traditional closer "Danny Boy," hit home. He said that though the traditiona Irish song is widely performed in many different settings, "the piece always wins." But last night, it was just one in an entire set of winners.
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