A Beast in a Jungle

Humor Abuse

2012-01-29T16:44:00.000-08:00

Lorenzo Pisoni's one-man show Humor Abuse attempts to juggle some pretty complex subjects under the guise of light-hearted clowning, but in the end the show feels more like a self-indulgent exorcism of Pisoni's conflicted feelings about his father. How else should the audience interpret this true story about a son who assumes his father's act after the father abandons him, and as an adult turns the experience into a staged memoir built on the resulting identity-conflict issues (albeit one with some very well-executed gags and stunts)? That's going a bit fast- the first part of the story (all true, by the way) concerns Pisoni's growing up inside the one-ring Pickle Family Circus, a legendary Bay Area commedia dell'arte troupe started by his parents Larry Pisoni and Peggy Snider.

The adult Lorenzo's anecdotes of his childhood are amusing, endearing and make for a fascinating subject. Already mimicking his father's act at the age of two, with extremely poignant photographs the two of them (alone and together) projected on the same backdrop used by the Pickles to illustrate the events described, it's the real-life version of a fantasy most of us had as a child performed by a guy who actually lived it out.

But as both Pisonis grow older, and the son adopts the stage identity of the father who's left his family and the circus they founded behind, the play becomes a kind of chalk circle with the character of the clown performed by both men in the center. If younger the Pisoni and director/co-creator Erica Schmidt weren't so intent on making this tale of conflicted identity stemming from a broken father-son relationship so funny, it might be painful to watch. Instead, it's a thinly-veiled reproach disguised as homage, which is just uncomfortable to watch, especially coming from such an obviously talented performer as Pisoni.

The bitterness and sense of accusation could be alleviated if we knew more about Pisoni the father, instead of just Pisoni the Pickle, but the audience is only told what he did, not why. We also never learn much about the mother and sister. Omitting the rest of the family's story from the play constricts it to the point where at the end it's just the son juggling his own paternal issues- emulating the man without celebrating him. Too bad, because there's probably a damn good play lurking somewhere under the reciprocal abuse.

James Brown Olympia shows online

2012-01-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

Recently there have been some lengthy clips posted on YouTube featuring James Brown's legendary performance at the Olympia in 1971. The quality is still pretty terrible, but this link is the first I've seen which seems to have the entire show. You don't want to miss "Give it Up or Turnit A Loose" at 43:43 and the closing medley of "Sex Machine/ Super Bad/ Get Up, Get Into It and Get Involved/ Soul Power" - the apex of Brown's melding of soul and funk. Bobby Byrd, Fred Wesley, Bootsy and Catfish Collins are all on the stage as the core of the JBs- one of the greatest bands ever assembled.

Though I don't think they're actually from the same show, the clips Olympia 1967 (part 1) and Olympia 1967 (part 2) feature some fantastic material with the Famous Flames, especially the 2nd link, which has decent sound and ends with a great version of "Please, Please, Please" and a riff of "Cold Sweat."

The entire show of the historic concert from the Boston Garden in 1968 (the night after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.) is also online, but the quality is pretty poor.

Still, as nice as it is find this footage online, so far nothing beats the quality of the performance found on the T.A.M.I. Show dvd, so if you've never seen it, there it is.

Philharmonia Baroque: Masters of English

2012-01-28T00:26:00.000-08:00

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Photo by Randi Beach

Conductor and harpsichordist Richard Egarr, Music Director of England's Academy of Ancient Music, is making his debut with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in their first concert series of the year with a program called "English Masters of the Baroque." Egarr, introduced each piece with a humor-tinged anecdote, and though I sometimes didn't hear what he said we would, I nevertheless found him to be a warm, engaging presence and a thoughtful conductor.

The first half of the program began with a brisk, lively performance of Handel's Symphony from Saul, with especially fine playing from concertmaster Lisa Weiss and principal oboist Marc Shachman during the fourth movement. This set the tone for the remainder of the concert, which seemed to fly by despite having seven pieces on the program. Matthew Locke's Music From the Tempest began with a storm and ended in a round and was followed by Purcell's suite from The Fairy Queen. Both pieces were played with the same vigor as the Handel and I was particularly entranced by David Tayler's theobro- an instrument I've never seen before which is kind of like a lute version of Jimmy Page's double-neck guitar.

The second half of the program began with Thomas Arne's Concerto for Harpsichord No. 5 in G minor featuring Egarr as soloist and conductor. There was a roughness in the rhythm of Egarr's playing, but having never heard the work before, I can't say if that was the design of the composer or the result of some very tricky passages requiring cross-hand playing. William Lawes' brief Consort Sett in Six Parts No. VII in C major followed, featuring paired violins, violas and cellos in two movements- a Fantasy and an Aire. It was the only work on the program I really couldn't find a way into, perhaps due to its brevity and my own inexperience with the form.

Two marvelously played pieces by Handel closed the program. The first was the Concerto Gross in D minor, which featured brilliant turns by each section of the orchestra, with many of its members visibly enjoying themselves. The concert concluded with the "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba" from Solomon.

There are two more performances this weekend at First Congregational Church in Berkeley. Philharmonia Baroque's next series of concerts will be in March and feature Steven Isserlis in works by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.

San Francisco Opera: the 2012-13 season

2012-01-25T22:14:00.000-08:00

Interior of the War Memorial Opera House. Photo by David Wakely

San Francisco Opera's General Director David Gockley has done the improbable and created an upcoming season I'm actually excited about for the first time during his tenure. Eight operas are scheduled for 2012-13 (I'm not including the world premiere co-production with Cal Performances of The Secret Garden since that's being staged at Zellerbach), and though the season largely follows Gockley's established pattern of presenting a stable of recently staged warhorses, he's also included two premieres of contemporary, English-language operas, with another on the way the following year (based on Stephen King's Dolores Claibourne). That's a bold move in the current climate and the riskiest thing he's done in San Francisco so far. After the two premieres, the appeal of 2012-13 is in the well-cast standard rep not seen locally for a long time. It's the best schedule SFO has announced since Rosenberg's era and hopefully it works as well onstage as it looks on paper.

Rigoletto brings back Michael Yeargan's well-worn production ('06, '01, and '97) for 12 performances. The title role is shared by Zeljko Lucic and Marco Vratogna. His daughter Gilda will be performed by Aleksandra Kurzak and Albina Shagimuratova. Lucic was good the last time the company staged Verdi's La Forza, but the presence of David Lomeli in the role of the Duke of Mantua makes my choice the cast led by Vratogna. On the other hand, Kurzak recently won great accolades in LA Opera's Cosi, so one probably can't go wrong with either cast. It's a dark and claustrophobic production which I've enjoyed the previous times I've seen it. My one question for director Harry Silverstein is will there be breasts this time- or is the San Francisco audience too provincial? Luisotti conducts one of Verdi's very best.

Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues) has only been seen on the War Memorial stage once before in 1991. Conductor Riccardo Frizza (last year's Lucrezia) returns to lead an excellent cast featuring Joyce DiDinato, Eric Owens, Saimir Pirgu (another singer well-reviewed in LA's Cosi) and Nicole Cabell, who seems poised for the next level. The presence of DiDonato and Owens are reason enough to attend, even if a Bel Canto version of Romeo and Juliet isn't necessarily your thing.

Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick makes its local debut after receiving a tremendous reception at its world premiere in Dallas. Ben Heppner and Jay Hunter Morris (Siegfried) share the role of the obsessed Captain Ahab. While Heppner's the more more established singer, the quickly-rising Morris is the one to see. Depending on the state of Heppner's voice, Morris may well end up performing more than the two performances for which he's scheduled. Patrick Summers conducts.

Puccini's Tosca was last staged here in 2009 and its the same Thierry Bosquet set and costumes seen previously for what seems like the last 100 years, but is in fact only the fifth time since 1997. Should still seem fresh, right? Twelve performances with two casts and a battle of the divas between Patricia Racette and Angela Gheorghiu in the title role. Racette's the local favorite, but Gheorghiu's appearances are rarer and she strikes me as the more interesting of the two in the role, which neither have sung in San Francisco before. So personally I'd go with Angela, assuming she actually shows up, but if you've never seen Tosca go with Racette- the supporting cast of Brian Jadge and Mark Delevan certainly trumps Massimo Giordano and Roberto Frontali. Luisotti conducts all performances.

Wagner's Lohengrin hasn't seen the War Memorial stage since 1996 and it returns with what may end up being the strongest cast of the season. The marvelous tenor Brandon Jovanovich sings the title role for the first time. The presence of Kristinn Sigmundsson, Petra Lang, and Brian Mulligan in the tale of the lustful knight all bode well, and though Camilla Nylund is an unknown in these parts, she'd have to muck it up pretty badly to keep this from being first-rate all the way around. The production is new to San Francisco and the only iffy thing about it is whether or not Luisotti can conduct Wagner. He did very well with Strauss two years back, so that's a good omen of what will come from the pit.

The allure that Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) holds for many has thus far eluded me, but I've never seen it performed before. This should be an excellent introduction- Natalie Dessay plays the four loves of Matthew Polenzani's title character, with Alice Coote and Christian Van Horn along for the telling. Conductor Patrick Fournillier ably led Cyrano recently and Laurent Pelly's productions are usually a delight (La Fille du Regiment).

Cosi Fan Tutte is the one opera of Mozart's I absolutely love, so who cares if this is the same production from way back in 2005. It was great then and with a young, vibrant cast featuring Ellie Dehn, Heidi Stober, Susannah Biller and Phillipe Sly, it should be quite fun. Luisotti hasn't convinced me yet that he has any facility with Mozart, but if there's one opera where he can prove himself, it's Cosi.

The world premiere of composer Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene is bound to be somewhat controversial- or at least it should be if it's done well. Mary has a strong cast featuring Sasha Cooke finally appearing on the other side of Grove Street in the title role, barihunk Nathan Gunn as Jesus, and William Burden, whose singing was the only thing I found worthwhile in last year's Heart of a Soldier, as Peter. Everything else is new, including conductor Michael Christie, making his SFO debut. Everything except the story, that is.

Ranking them in order of personal anticipation, top to bottom:
Lohengrin
Moby-Dick
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene
I Capuleti e i Montecchi
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
Cosi fan tutte
Rigoletto
Tosca

The debut of Eco Ensemble

2012-01-22T12:35:00.000-08:00

Eco Ensemble rehearsing Edmund Campion's Flow. Debris. Falls. Photo by Peg Skorpinski (Bay Citizen, New York Times)

The music department of UC Berkeley unveiled a new house band last night in Hertz Hall called Eco Ensemble, whose mission is to perform works by contemporary composers, including professors and grad students of the university. The group is led by David Milnes, music director of the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra and conductor of the Berkeley Contemporary Chamber Players. But it's not all about the local angle- the group will be performing pieces by eleven composers including Nico Muhly, Magnus Lindberg and Kaija Saariaho during three concerts, the first of which took place last night before a well-attended house.

The program began with Gérard Grisey's Talea (ou la machine et les herbes folles), a piece for five players- piano, violin, cello, clarinet and flute. Written in 1986 while he was teaching composition at Cal, the piece has two sections which examine speed and contrast of sound. Talea begins with a jolting buzz followed by sounds played so quietly they could be easily be missed. For the next seventeen minutes they expand and contract like a slinky designed by Ligeti.

Tristan Murail's L'Esprit des dunes, written in 1994 and dedicated to Giacinto Scelsi and Salvador Dali, is influenced by the sounds and sights of the Mongolian desert, a recurring inspiration of the composer's. Of the four works performed, Murail's was the one I found decidedly difficult to follow as its constantly shifting, electronically enhanced soundscape took me one place and left me there until I was suddenly jolted from it by a harsh note from a triangle or the introduction of another sound suddenly bursting forth from the musicians, often the percussionist. Here is a sample of it.

Edmund Campion, a current faculty member of the music department and instrumental in getting Eco off the ground, was introduced by Cal Performances director Matías Tarnopolsky. Campion describes his piano concerto/not a piano concerto, entitled Flow. Debris. Falls (2010) as "the musical equivalent of a B-movie developed under the radar of the censor-prone larger Hollywood studios. In these B-movie scenarios, stories that on the surface appear to be genre conforming, become subversive vehicles, sites for the creator's imagination to run without censure. It would please me if David Lynch like the title, as it is meant to evoke a location in America where normality exists mostly as an ornamental feature masking a more sinister underbelly."

That's actually not a bad description of the three movement work for ensemble and two pianos. The subversive element is twofold. First, the pianist's performance is analyzed by a software program hooked up to the instrument and fed to a player piano, which then performs an improvisation based on what's being played. Avatar, ghost in the machine, what have you, it's an interesting concept which worked really well, though I found the computer-generated parts often to be more forceful and interesting than what Joanna Chao was playing. Perhaps that's the intent, but it ultimately left me wanting to know if that was by Campion's design or if the software was capable of creating music more dynamic than that of the composer who created it. Truly, it's a musical Frankenstein and quite a fun little monster in both implication and reality. The second subversive element is the use of amplification at varying levels which also featured additional electronic elements. The ideas forming the basis of Campion's work would likely offend a lot of musical purists, but I find this transgression of tradition to be liberating and I'd like to see more works incorporating technology find their way into "mainstream" concert halls.

The last piece was Marc-André Dalbavie's In advance of the broken time (1994), a composition which wonderfully examines the shape and structure of sound and its movement as seven musicians take a single note on an extended journey which concludes where it began. It was a fitting end to the performance.

The program notes for the performance made it impossible to identify the musicians performing each piece- something I hope is remedied for Eco Ensembles upcoming performances on February 11 and March 24, as many of them merited individual praise.

Here's the program for those concerts:
Feb. 11: Saariaho: Ballade, Prelude/ Lindberg: Corrente/ Bedrossian: Swing/ Saariaho: Trios Riviers
March 24: Matalon: Tunneling/ Muhly: Clear Music/ Lim: Songs Found in Dream/ Einbond: What the Blind See

Nameless forest

2012-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

Photo by Julieta Cervantes

Dean Moss' Nameless forest is better experienced than described- a success on multiple levels defying a single interpretation, touching the audience in so many places, it's a work that keeps expanding within the mind long after it's over.

Moss is the former curator of dance and performance at The Kitchen in New York, a guest lecturer at Harvard and Yale, and a guest professor at Hunter College and the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. The inspiration for his most recent work comes from the sculptural self-portraits of Sungmyung Chun, a Korean artist whose work deals with alienation, identity, and violence. Working together, the two men have transformed Chun's solid and heavy works into a piece of living theater, which incorporates 12 members of the audience into its core of six dancers, ensuring no two performances are ever quite the same.

Taking place under and around an exploded figure based on Chun's work, with its pink neon guts dangling in mid-air at the center of it all, Nameless forest has three parts.

The first begins with a dark stage floor, the dancers and participants seated on opposite ends of the square space. Stephen Vitello's compelling score begins a snarling lion moving through a jungle (or forest), creating a sense of unease and impending violence. The lights come up revealing a man lying face-down at the edge of the floor. He begins to flop across the floor like a limbless creature emerging from the water to make land for the first time. It also looks like a birth, and as soon the initial struggle to emerge is over, others pile upon him like the dead weight and ghosts of ancestors and expectations, smothering and eclipsing him from view. The newly emerged being soon finds himself within recognizable societal situations- uncomfortable, awkward, confusing, ritualistic and soon no longer the center of the audience's attention.

Photo by Paula Court

The second part is an arresting visual and aural cacophony- the being is emerged in a world of alienation, violence and sex, enhanced by Michael Kamber's recordings and images reflecting his experience as a war correspondent.

The last part takes the audience inside the exploded being- the neon guts (by Gandalf Gavàn) are illuminated, and the participants are revealed in new ways. Reflecting the audience back on itself, Kacie Chang leads them through one of our culture's most banal forms of self-expression (and self absorption) and turns it into something unexpectedly poignant (and in this performance quite funny). Now blurring the line between performance and reality, the fourth wall knocked down (or is it?), coupled with the knowledge that as a member of the audience it could have been you on that floor, Nameless forest concludes on a heady and engaging note.

Photo by Paula Court

The excellent performers at the core of the work are Kacie Chang, Eric Conroe, Aaron Hodges, Pedro Jiménez, DJ McDonald and Sari Nordman, all of whom possess unique identities and express a wide range of physical and dramatic abilities. Moss requires them to give a lot during the show and together they form a fearless and bold troupe.

During a Q & A with Moss and the performers which followed, one commented that after working on the piece for two years, there is now more left out of it than what is currently presented onstage. That leanness and refinement shows- there's nothing in the work that feels redundant or unnecessary, and its remarkable how the core ensemble integrates members from the audience so seamlessly into the performance. Provocative, intelligent and completely engaging, it's definitely worth seeing.

The final performance is tonight at YBCA, which once again has succeeded in presenting something quite extraordinary for Bay Area audiences. Check out their website for upcoming events featuring a broad spectrum of work from contemporary artists across the globe.

Recital redux: Christopher Maltman

2012-01-20T17:34:00.000-08:00

Christopher Maltman: Photo from San Francisco Performances

As we were leaving Christopher Maltman's recital at Herbst last night, The Swede remarked how much he enjoyed the last song. I replied that I liked it too, and that I had recently just heard it somewhere else, though at the moment I couldn't remember where- perhaps it was it used in a film I'd recently seen? Only later did it come to me it was the same song Susan Graham used last Saturday night to end her recital in Berkeley- "À Chloris."

Also the same was the accompanist for the two performances- Malcolm Martineau, who again was a tremendous asset to the singer.

I also had a similar feeling to the one I had after Graham's recital- that while Maltman was certainly an impressive singer, his performance didn't connect with me much beyond a display of his obvious abilities. There were more similarities, truth be told, but I don't want to belabor the point nor do I think it fruitful to compare two artists with very different careers.

Maltman is better known in Europe than in the States, and although San Francisco Performances has presented him twice before, his only turn on the War Memorial's stage was in the 2007 run of Die Zauberflote, in which he sang Papageno. I remember that run, because there was "The Magic Flute for Families" presented during it, which delighted the two little girls I escorted, and I recall thinking at the time it was a shame the main cast wasn't having all of this fun with these kids. Runnicles certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. Knowing now he's the father of three sons, I'm sure Maltman would have as well. Sorry, I'm way off topic here.

I bring up the European vs. Stateside exposure only because the first half of the program was put together at the request of Venetians, for whom it was originally performed, and it consisted of songs about- yes, that's right- songs about Venice. Composed by Europeans. Who weren't Venetians. Maltman said later in the night it was difficult to find a lot of material to fill the request, but managed to find about 40 minutes of it composed by Fauré, Schumann, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Hahn. The songs by Fauré and Hahn worked well, especially the latter's, though during Fauré's songs there were two exquisite moments; the first being the elegant and extended finish of "En Sourdine," and the way Maltman let his voice soar during "C'est l'extase." The final "ah" of Hahn's "La Barcheta" left an impression that could be felt throughout the audience and Maltman seemed to truly enjoy singing "La primavera." But the German songs felt like they were composed by tourists who really had no insight into what they were writing about, no doubt in part because a song about a gondolier sounds absurd when it's sung in German. The disconnect between the subject matter and the material was exacerbated by Maltman's lack of engagement with the audience during the first half- he spoke no words and sang every song to one person seated in the center of the last row of the orchestra section, only smiling during the applause between cycles.

He warmed up during the second half, first graciously thanking SF Performances for how they handled his earlier cancellation and then saying how nice it was to be back in San Francisco- a city which he's been fond of since he first visited us at the age of 10. Then he announced he and Martineau were going to change the order of the program, putting Schubert's "Drei Gasänge" before Schubert's "Three Rückert Lieder." This turned out to be a wise decision, as the songs now being performed first were a kind of potpourri of Schubert sounding like Weber, Haydn and Rossini (Maltman's description), while the three lieder are, well, Schubert lieder. Since Schubert's"Three Rückert Lieder" was to be followed by Mahler's "Rückert Lieder," of which there are five, a sort of arc could be established that wouldn't have worked had the program been performed as originally planned- eight Rückert Lieder in a row. While all of this was going on I was wondering why the songs of the first half were about Venice if Maltman likes San Francisco so much? I was also puzzled by the cut and style of Maltman's tux, which The Swede assured me was "in the European style."

The Rückert lieder were the highlight of the program, closing on a marvelous note as Martineau held the end of "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen "I am lost to the world" for full dramatic effect.

Waiting for the encore, I was thinking that while I enjoyed the Rückerts immensely, there was strangely little I heard in the performance that compelled me to want to hear Maltman in an opera. This thought changed immediately with the first encore, the Doge's aria from Verdi's I due Foscari (yet another Venetian number), which Maltman delivered with verve and passion, even if he was still singing to the person in the back row. He followed this with a song about Naples, the name of which I didn't catch, and then, as mentioned, finished the performance with "À Chloris."

Walking home, I noticed a hooker who has worked Hemlock alley for years had taken up a new spot at Hyde and O'Farrell and wondered if she didn't want to walk the extra blocks to her usual spot because of the rain.

In praise of James Conlon

2012-01-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

James Conlon. Photo from LA Opera

The other day Isabella and I were discussing the differences between LA Opera and San Francisco Opera and naturally we ended up talking about conductors. Though Placido Domingo gets the lion's share of attention as the company's General Director and the world's most famous living opera singer, LAO wouldn't be where it is today without Music Director James Conlon. A tireless and passionate advocate of the art, Conlon is the company's not-so-secret weapon.

I've missed the "Recovered Voices" programming LAO has had to set aside during the current economic climate. The programming, featuring works by composers suppressed by the Nazis, has put some great productions on the stage of the Dorothy Chandler and it's Conlon's baby. However, the current lack of funds for "Recovered Voices" isn't stopping Conlon from bringing these works to the public. Over the weekend of January 20-22, he will conduct "a program inspired by [the] Recovered Voices series" at the Colburn School, just down the street from LA's Music Center. One has to admire the man's passion for this worthy project.

It's a double-feature of Viktor Ullman's one-act The Emperor of Atlantis, composed in 1943 while he was imprisoned in Terezin, paired with Ernst Krenek's The Secret Kingdom. Krenek emigrated to the U.S. after his works were labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis. Neither composers career was ever the same after the war.

Conlon will be conducting musicians from the Colburn School and the singers will be from the Domingo-Thornton Young Artists program. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased by calling 213 621 1050 or at colburnschool.edu/tickets. Conlon will be giving a lecture prior to each performance, which will surely be worth attending.

Les mauvaises filles sont toujours plus divertissant

2012-01-15T10:58:00.000-08:00

Susan Graham: Photo by Dario Acosta

Perusing the program as we waited for the lights to dim, Isabella quietly said, "You always take me to see such fluff."

"Filth?" I replied, my misunderstanding of her words surely based on her lack of appreciation for the genius of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, which I had been watching earlier in the evening.

"Fluff," she replied, with a wry smile.

The lights dimmed and Susan Graham strode onstage dressed in a form-fitting, an almost blindingly white dress which made her look simultaneously sexy and angelic. Accompanist Malcom Martineau followed behind her in white tie. She smiled, graciously acknowledged the audience's applause and they immediately went into Henry Purcell's "The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation (Tell Me, Some Pitying Angel)"- a scena published in 1693. Next came Berlioz's "La Mort d'Ophelie (The Death of Ophelia)" composed in 1842. Both of these selections are familiar territory for the mezzo and she sang them with vivid expression and conviction.

She followed with six songs with texts drawn from Goethe's Wilhem Meister composed by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Henri Duparc and Hugo Wolf (performed in that order). Liszt and Wolf used the same text and the contrast in musical styles was telling, with the latter providing a much more dramatic interpretation of "Kennst du das Land (Knowest thou where?)."

Intermission followed. Up to this point the performance was absolutely first rate, and I was especially impressed by Martineau's accompaniment. However, it wasn't exciting nor illuminating. One expects a singer of Graham's stature to be able to sing these kinds of works extremely well, and she did just that, pleasing the audience to be sure, but offering little beyond exhibiting her already known and established formidable talents. That's certainly not a bad thing, especially given the ritualistic nature of the format followed by opera singers, but recitals I've attended in the past year by Hvorostovsky, Kaufmann, Blythe (and what I heard about Mattila's) have raised the bar on what excites me.

For the second half, Graham came onstage in a dark, sequined gown, cut to bare her right shoulder and arm. She looked elegant... and hot. There's no other way to put it, and the audience let her know it. She responded by vamping it up a bit as she made her way toward the piano and though an explanation of the sartorial juxtaposition was really unnecessary, she gave us one, speaking to the audience for the first time to explain the first half of the program was about "good girls" and the second would feature music about women with "a more dubious moral compass." Needless to say, I found this pleasing.

She began with Joseph Horovitz's Lady Macbeth, composed in 1970 using texts from the Scottish Play. After Martineau played the introduction, Isabella whispered "Iambic pentameter" in my ear- an observation about the music I would have missed otherwise. Graham delivered it with relish, giving an excellent performance dramatically and vocally and here the recital became something special.

She followed with six songs by composed by Poulenc in 1939 set to poems by Louise de Vilmorin and collectively called Fiancailles pour rire ("Engagement for Laughs"). These poems, about desire, love, and death were quite beautifully sung and Martineau concluded "Il Vole (He Flies)" with a witty flourish.

The program noted "More Songs about 'Ladies' to be announced from stage" and Graham introduced the first by speaking the title in French, prompting Isabella to laugh. I turned to her, puzzled. Graham then said the title in English, "I have two lovers" and said something else in French about the song , causing Isabella to laugh again, then whisper in my ear, "This song's about you." Graham then translated the gist of the song for the audience as "men are beasts."

"You speak French?" I asked, surprised I hadn't known this before as we've spent a significant amount of time together these past months.

"Mm-hmm," she replied.

The song was Guitry and Messager's "J'ai deux amants," which she followed with Cole Porter's "The Physician." Graham ended the second half with a parody written for her by Ben Moore called "Sexy Lady"- a fun piece of kitsch bemoaning her inability as a six-foot-tall mezzo to land the sexier operatic roles. Moore's written similar parodies for other singers, including "Wagner Roles" for Deborah Voigt.

She and Martineau returned for three encores: "Connais-tu le pays" from Mignon; a witty version of Sondheim's "The Boy From..."; and concluded the performance on a high note with what she described as her favorite song, Reynaldo Hahn's "A Chloris."

The concert was part of Cal Performances' Koret Rectial Series. Graham mentioned how much she liked performing for the Berkeley audience, thanked Director Matias Tarnopolsky, and said she hoped to be "back soon."

The series continues with pianist Kirill Gerstein on February 12 in a program of Bach, Mozart, Knussen, Weber and Schumann. The series also presents recitals by baritone Wolfgang Holzmair in March and soprano Sandrine Piau in April. Graham's twelve city tour of North America continues on January 18th at the new Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge, California before heading east to Morrow, Georgia, Toronto, Carnegie Hall and D.C's Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Check her schedule for more information.

Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (SFS @ 100 post #9)

2012-01-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

Ida Rubinstein

Debussy's Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, composed in 1911, has few champions, but count the San Francisco Symphony's Michael Tilson Thomas among them. He conducted the first performances of it here in 1995 and is presenting a new, semi-staged version of it this weekend. Containing elements found in a symphony, opera, ballet, oratorio choral work, it's an odd assemblage originally designed to be a popular piece, but it never achieved that goal.

The version presented by the Symphony and director and designer Anne Patterson is an alluring 70-minute pageant of beautiful music enhanced by accompanying projected and live visuals- a strange thing to describe and it's something of a modern masque, though that description doesn't quite capture its essence. The program notes by Michael Steinberg point out that this is the most Wagnerian music Debussy ever wrote, and one can certainly hear that, but the French composer's stamp is all over it- there are moments in the score of gorgeous Impressionism- cascading water, cerulean skies, Tristan chord-like yearnings of desire, all played with exceptional precision by the immense orchestra, whose brass section was exhibiting new heights of clarity and force throughout the evening.

Also on hand to make the whole thing work was a small troupe of excellent singers and performers- Frederica von Stade narrated the Saint's lines, and although she was miked and not singing, her voice possessed force and she performed the part with moving and graceful conviction. Sopranos Karina Gauvin and Joanna Taber, along with mezzos Leah Wool and Sasha Cooke, handled the singing roles and sounded lovely, though I have to admit the sumptuousness of the music, combined with the arresting visual projections and lighting designed by Adam Larsen and Matthew Frey, frequently found me paying less attention to the singers than I would ordinarily. The staging often featured images of the mercurial Ida Rubinstein, who as the original ballet dancer for Le Martyre had a large part in the piece's origination. For this production the dancer was San Francisco Ballet's Damian Smith, whose performance of choreographer Myles Thatcher's moves was projected on multiple screens, often in slow motion and still images- again, the only word to describe this was gorgeous- and at times surprisingly poignant.

MTT led a superb performance of the orchestra through the work's five movements, with each of the "mansions" building on its predecessor. It does seem a bit long toward the end, but the final movement (Paradise) unfolds to a reverent finale.

The first half of the concert featured Janacek's Sinfionetta- a twenty-minute militaristic blast featuring a bevy of brass on the stage and scattered in three trios on the terrace seats. The opening flurry lacks the subtlety typically found in Janacek's works but as the piece continues the themes clearly emerge in wondrous developments. The work features all of the gorgeous rhythmic vitality found in the composer's better-known pieces, like The Cunning Little Vixen, especially in the final allegro. Certainly these performances are another highlight of the Centennial Season.

Machine at the Crucible

2012-01-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

Eugene Brancoveanu in Machine. Photo by Sean Donnelly

I've been looking forward to finally seeing a production at The Crucible for some time and last night I caught the dress rehearsal for Machine, a "fire opera" by composer Clark Suprynowicz and director/ first-time librettist Mark Streshinsky. The production incorporates many of the skills taught and practiced at the educational facility, which means fire spews from the set constantly- from the floor, from above, from the mouths of performers and the entire production has a Burning Man/steam punk vibe to it- imagine Nibleheim beneath the Thunderdome.

The opera, based on the short story "Deus Ex Machina" by Derek J. Goodman, is about William, whose father has disappeared, leaving behind a destitute wife, daughter and son. William is performed by the very talented baritone and former Adler Fellow Eugene Brancoveanu- an incredible coup for this production and a sign of the indefatigable singer's artistic curiosity. William takes a job at the Longitude Steel Press to provide for the family and ten years later wakes from an imposed stupor not comprehending what has become of him or his family, since he's spent it working mindlessly for the Machine.

The Machine, or at least its slaves, has three authority figures: Sonya, played by mezzo Valentina Osinski (longtime veteran of Bay Area opera companies); Redshirt, performed by tenor Joe Meyers; and Brigid, performed by rock singer Dawn McCarthy. The staging and libretto never quite make clear who the big boss is, as each seems to control a different sphere within the Steel Press. The clever, three-tiered set designed by Jean-Francois Revon has action taking place in almost every corner during the 65-minute show, and it's easy to miss things- do you want to follow the singers, watch things ignite, or admire the bodies of the performers? The choice is yours.

The musicians are placed on all three tiers. Led by Barnaby Palmer (formerly of San Francisco Lyric Opera), there are seven percussionists, two guitars, a bass, cello, accordion, and some computer-generated sounds, all of which at some point are buttressed by the low-humming of gas jets (or something). Amplified in a space obviously not acoustically-friendly to nuanced music, Suprynowicz's music ends up creating effect and mood rather than driving the work more than one would deisre in an opera, but it's clear he has some interesting music in the score, with many of the opera's first forty minutes or so reminding me at points of Berg and Janacek (Wozzeck and Katya Kabanova specifically, both of which contain themes not far from those found in Machine). Toward the last third, the music shifts to a more jazz-infused rock orientation, with no ill effect. Brancoveanu and Osinski can handle everything thrown their way with ease, and the same can be said for the smaller roles of Alexis Lane Jensen as William's mother and Ann-Kathryn Olsen as the sister once her microphone was adjusted.

There are many fine elements at work here- creative staging (though it all feels very Burning Man), some interesting music, and two fine performances. The story, a variant of one told many times before, is well-translated to the stage by everyone involved and one can easily discern the commitment and energy of the entire crew to make it all work. But not all of it works and there are a few things clogging up this Machine which keep it from being a complete success.

One problem is Brigid's vocal part, sung by "rock and roll singer" McCarthy. If that epithet makes you cringe a bit, hearing it will only be worse. The rock-style vocals don't blend in easily with the rest of the score and McCarthy doesn't bring enough to the part to make one wonder what someone with more vocal range and dramatic ability may have done with it, but as it is, the role veers toward camp. Meyers' Redshirt costume makes absolutely no sense in the production's visual aesthetic- he looks like he left his actual costume on a BART train on the way to the performance. Also, there are moments when the singers stop singing and just talk their lines, completely disrupting the flow of the what the audience is hearing.

These are relatively minor criticisms but I do have one major one and that's Streshinsky's libretto, which has a couple of moments in it where I couldn't believe the lines actually made it into the finished work. At one low point I felt somewhat embarrassed for Brancoveanu, who has the misfortune to have to sing about how surprised he is to have an erection in the presence of Sonya. Not that that's inappropriate to his character or the story (and Osinksi's character is certainly alluring in her black leather hot pants and boots), but it was handled so clumsily it was- well, just bad. I almost laughed, and I'm 99% sure it wasn't meant to be funny. The other problem with the libretto is it more often than not fights against Suprynowicz's score instead of working with it, though that may be the composer's problem and not the fault of the librettist.

There are seven performances coming up- check The Crucible's website for tickets and details, and I did see some on Goldstar. Oh, and the vending machine for drinks is broken- bring your own.

The Cookie

2012-01-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

There were still plenty of holiday leftovers in the fridge, including more sweets than either of us would ever consume. Looking for something to snack on while making dinner, I saw two cookies that had been on one of the shelves for awhile. I popped one in my mouth. It was chewy, and its time in the fridge seemed to have robbed it of any real flavor it may have once had. I moved on to the homemade caramel corn, which was much more satisfying.

I went about preparing the meal, pausing to light a cigarette. As I inhaled, I couldn’t feel anything entering my lungs. I looked to see if there was a tear in the paper somewhere, but there wasn’t. I took another deep drag. Nothing. Stubbing out the defective American Spirit, I lit another. Same result, but I kept on smoking it.

“Where did you buy these cigarettes?” I asked.

“The place on the corner,” she replied.

“Hmm.”

“Something wrong?” she asked.

I didn’t reply, but kept on about my business. She was in the living room watching Bell, Book and Candle. It annoys me that I remind her of Jimmy Stewart. I took another hit off the cigarette and felt a strange sludge winding its way outward from my ribcage to my limbs, eventually encasing me in something which felt toxic. I figured it was just the combined latent effects of the previous night’s dinner, not enough sleep and the torn muscles I was experiencing after working out hard for the first time in years.

Having set up what I needed to in the kitchen, I joined her in the living room bearing three cheeses and a medley of crackers arranged on a piece of black slate, which my sister had given me for Christmas. Setting the slate on the coffee table, we started talking about something. I can’t remember what it was, probably something about how awful it is to be compared to Jimmy Stewart when you’d rather be thought of as a Bob Mitchum type. I started eating the cheese- I was particularly enjoying the Stilton.

Between mouthfuls I said something which didn’t quite sound right, meaning I didn’t like what I was hearing, not what I was saying. Then I realized I didn’t even care for what I actually said. And then it hit me.

“There were two cookies by themselves in the fridge.”

“Yes,” she replied, turning to me.

“Are they pot cookies?” I asked.

“Yes, don’t you remember? A_____ gave them to me.”

I suddenly had a vague recollection of a conversation we’d had more than a week earlier.

“Oh no!” she said, “Did you eat one?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“What do you mean? They’re small- I ate the whole thing.”

“Oh shit. Really?”

“Yes. Why?”

“What’s your tolerance like?”

“I don’t know, can't really say- it’s been a long time, but I never had a high tolerance for the stuff.”

“Oh shit. Shit. She said a half of one would last for hours. She recommended a quarter for me. You ate it all?”

“It was a small cookie.”

“This is going to be a very interesting night... what are you like when you’re stoned?”

“Like this, I guess,” feeling very much like Jimmy Stewart and nothing like Bob Mitchum, as I stuffed another piece of cheese into my mouth.

She began to laugh. I did, too.

“Do you want the other cookie?” I asked.

Christian Tetzlaff shreds Ligeti's concerto (SFS @ 100 post # 8)

2012-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Now that the holidays are over, the San Francisco Symphony can get back to celebrating their Centennial Season and they certainly got the new year off to a good start with last night's concert featuring a rock star performance by violinist Christian Tetzlaff in Gyorgy Ligeti's violin concerto and a sumptuous account of Tchaikovsky's first symphony. The promotional materials for the concert emphasize the Tchaikovsky, but I was drawn by the chance to hear Ligeti's work, and the well-attended house seemed to be split in its perception what was actually the night's main event- a healthy sign in my opinion.

Michael Tilson Thomas introduced Ligeti's concerto (written in 1990) as "village" music, and being of the "past and the future," as well as commenting on how fiendishly difficult it was to play, requiring every musician onstage to perform at a virtuoso level, and he noted they certainly had one in the house as he introduced Tetzlaff.

Hearing Ligeti performed live is an altogether different experience than listening to a recording. The composer's music contains sounds that slowly appear from nowhere and one repeatedly finds oneself looking around onstage to see where they're coming from. There's always something drawing the listener's attention in multiple directions, though the music always weaves its frequently disparate components into a cohesive, complete whole.

Christian Tetzlaff, Michael Tilson Thomas: photo stolen from Ivan Maly.

Tetzlaff led off the five part work with hardly a sound coming from his violin as the rest of the strings slowly came in behind him, including a violin and viola tuned scordatura, and together they built a screeching, wriggling frenzy which felt monumental within moments. MTT's conducting brought out a rhythm to the work I hadn't previously noticed in the one recording with which I'm familiar (Christina Astrand/ Thomas Dausgaard/Danish National Radio Symphony Orch).

The first movement continues without pause into the second with an abrupt about-face into a gorgeous "aria" performed by the soloist, soon joined by a viola, a single flute, then followed by a cello before the entire ensemble joins, including the strange-sounding quartet of ocarinas, a double-duty performed by the horns, with sharp accents coming from the percussion and winds. It's perhaps the most "traditional-sounding" part of the work and hearkens back to both the romantic and the baroque traditions of the form.

The third movement has the soloist taking on a wickedly forceful pizzicato section. Here Tetzlaff was able to achieve an enormous volume from his instrument, leaning forward and using his body as much as his fingers as the music built to fantastic flourish before ending so abruptly it was as if the orchestra had suddenly been swallowed by an abyss. The Passacaglia of the fourth movement is one of melody performed in tricky ways, and I was constantly drawn to the cellists sliding their hands repeatedly up the necks of their instruments until my attention was forcefully drawn elsewhere by a sound I couldn't initially recognize without seeing which instrument it was coming from.

The final movement featured Tetzlaff performing his own cadenza, and since I spent a good chunk of the morning being alternately amused and horrified by NME's list of the 50 greatest guitar solos ever, I'm going to describe it using the vernacular of a different musical genre: simply stated, unequivocally, Tetszlaff fucking shredded it! It was truly an astounding performance.

At the intermission I was actually willing to leave, because the thought of listening to Tchaikovsky after such an incredible performance was actually unappealing. But we stayed, and I'm glad we did. It's been awhile since I've heard MTT conduct anything in the Russian rep and I had momentarily forgotten how good he is with it. The orchestra sounded fantastic- the strings, which as I've noted before are playing at an altogether heightened level of excellence this season, were astonishingly gorgeous throughout, as were the horns and brass, with the horns sounding as good as I've ever heard them, if not better. The scherzo was taken with a loping elegance which was especially pleasing to experience. During the finale, associate principal cellist Peter Wyrick cast a wry smile at principal Michael Grebanier, as if to say "damn, we're good tonight." I don't know if that's what he meant to convey, but it's certainly what went through my mind.

The concert began on an uneven footing with Liszt's Symphonic Poem no. 5, Prometheus, which sounded under-rehearsed and never gelled. Its fourteen minutes sounded more like the god was waving to a crowd at a parade instead of shaking his fist at Zeus. No matter, I suspect no one really cared after what followed.

Doe Paoro

2012-01-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

In the last year I've received a lot emails promoting musicians of all sorts. Many of them I just delete- it's obvious the sender hasn't bothered to read this blog or they wouldn't be sending me information about Mary Mary or whomever. But today I received a press release from the Muse Box hyping a song entitled "Can't Leave You" by a new artist from Brooklyn who goes by the name of Doe Paoro.

Atypically I decided to check out the video, which I'm not terribly enamored with, but I love the song. So much in fact, I've listened to it about a dozen times this morning. Paoro's album comes out January 31st, and one can only hope the rest of it is as good as this track. In the meantime, give it a listen.

The Artist

2012-01-02T14:11:00.000-08:00

The other night I saw The Artist- the delightful film by Michel Hazanavicius about a silent film actor's inability to deal with the advent of "talkies." It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a film in a theater- not that I don't go, though I haven't gone that often in the past year, it's just that I usually let someone else pick the film and more often than not I end up seeing movies geared toward a teen audience. Even the ones I had fair expectations for (Super 8, Drive, The Tree of Life) I felt were pretty awful. I didn't choose The Artist either, though it was my second choice (mine would have been My Week with Marilyn). So I was pleased it lived up to the accolades its receiving.

Jean Dujardin plays George Valentin- a Valentino-like actor at the pinnacle of his career until the head of his studio (John Goodman in an excellent supporting turn) decides silent films are a thing of the past and cancels further production of them. Valentin's ego pushes him to make his own film, which flops. From there, he goes into a decline resembling that of Hurstwood's in the Dreiser novel Sister Carrie. There's another parallel element in the film reminiscent of Dreiser's tale- as Valentin falls, a young woman who owes her career to him becomes a superstar. Thankfully, the beautiful Berenice Bejo (a glowing performance as the ridiculously named Peppy Miller) is no Carrie Meeber, and it's her continued interest in the fading actor which saves him in the end, despite his self-sabotaging pride.

Technically the film is gorgeous, shot in a rich black and white that makes the most of current technology. There are three fantastic set pieces: the first takes place on a tremendous staircase, replicating a common element found in 20's films; the second finds Miller alone in Valentin's dressing room- one of the most romantic scenes I've seen in a long time; and finally, Valentin's nightmare of living in a "talking world" is brilliantly crafted. The Artist is also buoyed by Dujardin's flawless performance and visual credibility in the lead role. I had a harder time accepting Bejo, who little resembles a star of the era, but in the end she won me over. There are unexpected cameos throughout the film, and James Cromwell's loyal driver is another noteworthy performance.

The music by Ludovic Bource is no small part of the film's success- at times referencing Wagner and Bernard Herrmann as well as hits and film scores from the era (Waxman and Korngold are two obvious inspirations), it consciously supports the film at every moment. When Hazanavicius finally breaks the silence it comes so perfectly I almost didn't notice it.

One quibble- the dance sequence at the end, with choreography reminiscent of the best of Astaire, was ably handled by Dujardin- so expertly in fact that Bejo's lesser abilities become a distraction. That's hardly a reason not to see it- but it is the only flaw I found in an otherwise perfect film.

The Kreutzer Sonata

2012-01-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

This first morning of the new year broke so brightly there was really no choice about what to listen to as I prepared the first cups of coffee- Furtwangler's 1951 recording of Beethoven's 9th from Bayreuth. It's turned out to be an all-Beethoven morning- next was Solti with CSO for the 6th & the 8th, and now, as I procrastinate a bit longer before making steak and eggs for breakfast, the third piano concerto is on the stereo. The steak is leftover from last night, which was spent listening to perhaps 100 songs from the past 50 years during a long, relaxed, home-made dinner.

2011, which I've decided to call "the year of living perilously," needed to expire on a quiet note.

I'm not one for making resolutions, because I resolutely fail at keeping them, but the holidays and the end of a year are always a time of involuntary reflection for me- and in the case of this past year I had almost too much to look back on and attempt to make sense of. In the end I couldn't, and as I told Isabella last night, though in a slightly different context, "there may be no resolution to be had." Like the ending of James' The Ambassadors, there's little more to say than "Then there we are!"- with no one in the story of the last twelve months arriving at a destination they could have foreseen, though for anyone viewing it from a distance, the denouement was likely the only one possible.

But here we are, indeed. The ships have been burned and there's nowhere to go but forward, wherever that is. For me, that doesn't necessarily mean ahead to a particular destination because I have a strong desire to go back to a time when things were simpler- a time when I used to wake up with a clear mind, make myself some coffee, and listen to some Beethoven to begin the day.

The End of the Affair(s)

2011-12-29T22:47:00.000-08:00

To the Lighthouse: Isabella at Point Cabrillo, California, Christmas day.

Marching onward.

Happy New Year.

JM/MR

The Nativity, as seen by Messiaen

2011-12-28T11:19:00.000-08:00

After spending most of the day on a long, leisurely drive down the coast from Mendocino, it felt odd to walk into a church at 9:00 PM on Monday night. It was only after dinner that we decided to attend the concert featuring the music of Olivier Messiaen- and it felt almost illicit, as if we were doing something a bit naughty. But it also felt right- like we were breaking a tradition which needed to be broken in the same way the composer often did.

Half an hour later, standing on the sidewalk out front on Fulton Street, I watched the crowd entering St. Ignatius as they filed in in groups of twos and threes- they looked jovial, relaxed and more than a little curious. We were warmly greeted as we entered by a man who encouraged us to view the art gallery, which was still open. Two more jovial chaps handed us programs and asked if we had any questions. I had one about the church's acoustics, having never been inside before, and was told I would be able to hear everything perfectly no matter where we sat. This turned out to be true.

The gallery left both of us unimpressed. I didn't really understand the artist's concepts and Isabella didn't care much for the execution, though being Catholic she understood the art's meaning with a clarity I don't possess. The church was gorgeously decked out in holiday decorations, the most festive of which were a dozen trees of different sizes, strung with white lights and clustered upon the apse creating a small bright wood before the altar.

We sat on the gospel side of the church, at the very edge, to avoid being under the strong lights coming from the ceiling of the huge nave. It didn't seem right to hear this music in such a brightly lit space. I wanted to hear it in the dark.

Once we were seated in the pew I opened the program and was surprised, then amused, to learn that not only could we use our phones to do whatever we wished (as long as the sound was turned off), but that we were encouraged to walk about during the performance, and even lie down if we felt like it. No "set" rules- just don't disturb anyone else and do whatever makes you feel comfortable- and hold any applause until the conclusion. We chose not to partake in any of these freedoms.

Shortly after 9:00 organist Jonathan Dimmock came out, music in hand, and addressed the audience, which I estimated to easily be over 100 people. He repeated the freedoms stated in the program, mentioned the lights would be dimmed per the composer's intent during the second and eighth movements, and said he would be available after the performance for conversation. He then strode over to the organ, sat down on the very wide bench, and after a long pause in which he seemed to be summoning something, began to play La Nativité du Seigneur- nine meditations for organ.

Perhaps I should mention my interest in this concert didn't stem from the religious theme of the music, but rather from curiosity about Messiaen's music in general and the opportunity to hear a rarely performed, challenging work.

The first two movements- depicting the feelings of Mary toward the child Jesus, followed by the Shepherds praising his arrival, didn't move me very much. The music felt, if not quite traditional, far from conveying a sense of transcendence, though it does have elements of reverence.

Things certainly took an interesting turn with the third section, Dessiens éternels, which, according Dimmock's program notes, has the listener entering into "the mystical world of the composer." The slowness of the movement, and the distinct ability to hear what Dimmock was playing with each hand, caused my attention to focus in way it hadn't in along time. From there, the performance lived up to expectation, including two moments when the floor of the church literally rumbled under our feet, causing me to open my eyes and see the silent question "are we experiencing an earthquake?" cross Isabella's face as it went through my own mind.

My eyes remained closed until the horrible pain and agony of the seventh part's depiction of the passion brought me out of a sense of reverie. I hadn't read through the program notes entirely, but the sound was enough to let one know something horrific was going on.

The lights dimmed again for the Magi's journey to Bethlehem in the eighth part, a welcome respite visually and aurally as the pain receded, replaced by gentle, repetitive music which ended in a flourish of light.

For the final part, Dieu parmi nous, a page-turner appeared to assist Dimmock. I asked Isabella if there had been anyone assisting Dimmock before this and she said no, but that the sixteenth notes of the toccata would require one. Oddly, it had the effect of increasing my expectations for an ecstatic conclusion, which turned out to be met. As the final notes dissipated through the church, I felt a deep sense of not wanting to make or hear a sound.

Dimmock sat still for a long moment and the audience remained hushed. It indeed felt like something profound had just been heard and communally experienced. When he finally rose, the audience did too, giving him a warm standing ovation followed by many queuing up to speak with him. We, however, had no questions- they had all been answered in the performance, and so we made our way into the cold night air.

The Pumped Up Kicks

2011-12-27T00:23:00.000-08:00

I rarely listen to the radio anymore, and except for an occasional broadcast from the Met or the rare occasions when I've rented or borrowed a car, I could safely say I never listen to radio anymore. I tend to favor places that are quiet, so I don't frequent loud bars or establishments with music pumping through them, either. In other words, though I still like pop music I actually hear very little of it, and what I do is usually inspired by what I read or the recommendations of friends.

This means I typically hear about a new pop artist or a hit song long after everyone else has. It wasn't always this way, but it is now. I'm comfortable with that. It's okay that it was only this year I actually learned the title of the song "Clocks" and that it's by Coldplay, though it's been in my head for years.

Two years ago Maria Gostrey and I were in NYC together, and one night we found ourselves dancing in a dark, warm club in the Village on an extremely rainy night. Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" came on and the joint, which was full but not crowded, suddenly filled with palpable elation. I'd never heard the song before, but instantly knew it was a classic. Every time I hear it now I think of that night, of Maria in her red dress, and of walking in the rain toward the subway at 4:00 am. Only music and certain scents can conjure up Proustian memories in this unique way.

Like many, the holidays make me nostalgic, but it's a nostalgia often cloaked in dark shadows. The ghosts of Christmas past are often not pleasant company for me and for many I know they bring bitter madeleines with them. This year isn't any going to be any different. I just returned from a funeral in L.A..

I've mentioned before I've taken to listening to music on my phone as I walk to and from wherever it is I'm going. Many of the songs in the queue are darker ones by the Stones: "Hand of Fate," "Stray Cat Blues," "Midnight Rambler," "Paint It Black," "Gimme Shelter," and lately I've been playing "Crazy Mama" over and over again, relishing the lyrics and whiskey-soaked sound of the song:

... You can scandalize me
Scorn my name
You can steal my money
And that don't mean a doggone thing
'Cause if you really think you can push it
I'm gonna bust your knees with a bullet...

... If you're gonna keep on comin'
I'm gonna take it all head on
And if you don't believe I'm gonna do it, yeah

Just wait till you get hit by that bullet...

Don't think I ain't thought about it
It sure make my shackle rise
And cold blood murder
It make me wanna draw the line,

Well, you're crazy mother
With your ball and chain
You're plain psychotic, ooh
Plain insane

And if you don't believe I'm gonna do it, yeah
Just wait for the thud of that bullet, ooh
You're crazy mother, ah yeah
You're crazy mother, yeah

I know- it's only rock and roll, but I like it. However, as the days have grown shorter and the shadows darker, it's begun to feel like I was listening to Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" on an endless loop. Feeling stalked by a jackal (formerly the Femme Fatale) recently didn't help matters. I realized I needed to shine a light into all of this, but where to start? Florence & the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over"? The last movement of Beethoven's 9th? What the hell was I going to listen to now?

Then I heard a perfect pop confection via NPR Online- Canon Blue's "Indian Summer." I've always appreciated songs like this- simple, hook-laden, irresistible pieces of pop perfection. The lyrics are a sad current running through it, and the song has a definite yearning quality, nicely refuted in the refrain "No you won't ever reach me, won't ever reach me..." but it hit me hard and the shadows in the words couldn't obscure the poppy brilliance of the music and melody. Add some "Yellow Pills," by 20/20, "Hey Ya" or "I Like the Way You Move" by Outkast, and I'm well on my way to a queue chock-full of happy-sounding songs. Feel the music, ignore the words- and resume walking. There'll be no listening to this.

Last Thursday night The Swede came over for dinner. As I was preparing the meal before he arrived I was looking for some music to play. I decided to queue up an album by a band whose name I've often seen lately but haven't ever heard- Foster the People. Their warm, friendly name sounds like an Obama/2008 slogan and people I know on Facebook like them, so they seemed a perfect fit for two people sharing a meal and catching up on the past month whose favorite bands respectively are ABBA and Madonna (in his case) and Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones (in mine).

I loaded it up on MOG and the first song had a catchy hook and steady beat. The Swede arrived and we talked over the music coming from the other room as I fried potatoes, sauteed vegetables and clanked around in the kitchen waiting for the meat to warm. All I could really discern was this insistent beat you could dance to and easily memorable melodies. After dinner we sat in the living room having dessert, continuing our conversation about his recent visit to Sweden and his travels in Egypt (he's just returned- I was there in '97). A couple of hours went by. I must have accidentally hit repeat on the album, because it kept playing over and over- I recognized the ear-candy hooks as we talked but had the volume down and neither of us were really paying too much attention, though we agreed it sounded good "for young people's music"- a joke we have between us.

It sounded so good I loaded it onto my phone the next morning for my walk to work. I found the beat for "Pumped Up Kicks" irresistible bubblegum, but the distorted vocals gave it a tart bite until the glorious chorus kicks in, floating over it all in a 10cc/Style Council/Swing Out Sister kind of way.

As I hit Market Street I heard the lyrics "... better run, better run, faster than my bullet" clearly for the first time in the chorus. What? The song has fucking whistling in it. Where are these bullets coming from?

I hit repeat and turned it up, so the song didn't have to compete against the streetcars rumbling down the street. Four blocks to work. I heard the vocal in a different way- as a disaffected squawk. Holden Caulfield had suddenly been replaced by Jared Lee, as I realized the most delightful-sounding song I've heard in ages featured this chorus:

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,

You better run, better run, outrun my gun.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,

You better run, better run, faster than my bullet

I liked it, but found it disturbing. I listened closer:

He found a six-shooter gun
In his dad's closet, in a box of fun things
I don't even know what,
But he's coming for you, yeah!
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,You better run, better run, outrun my gun.All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,You better run, better run, faster than my bullet

Listening to it again, the chants of "Run! Run!," which precede the whistling section, now sounded like an homage to the "Run rabbit, run!" scene in House of 1000 Corpses.

I love the brilliant irony of the song's lyrics and sound. It isn't the first time this has been done of course, but it's the best example I've heard in a long time. I also appreciate the irony that I discovered this ear worm while trying to avoid songs with dark and violent lyrics. Like Crazy Mamas, I seem to attract these elements of darkness even when trying to consciously avoid them. I may as well give up running- it appears there's nowhere to hide anymore.

It's a fitting song for the year- at least the one I've had.

The Best of a Beast: 2011

2011-12-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

In compiling this year's "best of" list I knew two things before I even began: Prince would get the top spot and there would be very little opera on it. Part of the reason for the latter is because I didn't travel to L.A. or New York this year (though there was much I would have liked to see in both cities), and the other is locally it wasn't a good year. San Francisco Opera's Ring Cycle had some great moments, but overall, director Francesca Zambello's production failed to leave a lasting impact after the thrill wore off of having a Ring Cycle in town. Regrettably, I missed SFO's Xerxes, which was their only other production to get solid reviews and word of mouth. Half of SFO's fall offerings were so uninspiring I didn't even bother to attend them and those I did were severely flawed. However, I really enjoyed Merola's Barber.

The void left by the lack of good opera created a list dominated by contemporary performance pieces and recitals. Two shows, The Tempest: Without a Body and Necessary Monsters, were presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA). The organization is dedicated to presenting the work of living artists and they consistently deliver challenging and provocative programs. It's become an increasingly important source of culture for me this past year. I'd also like to acknowledge the success of the San Francisco Symphony's Centennial Season programs, both onstage and within the community- this is truly a special year for the organization and their hard work is paying off handsomely.

As has been the case in the previous two years, it was difficult to narrow it down to ten- in the end I cheated.

The ranking is in order, starting with the best:

1. Prince
Prince played three wildly different shows, each with a unique set list. More impressively, he struck a completely different tone as a performer every night- on the first he was a sexy crooner, the following evening he was the funkmeister, and finally, in the last show (my favorite) he was a blazing guitar god for over three hours. I've never been more impressed with a musician. Prince is a genius, and in his prime as a performer.

2. The Tempest: Without a Body
Eight months later this performance by Lemi Ponifasio's MAU company, it still frequents my consciousness. It was dark, disturbing and unforgettable and I don't think I could stand to see it again. Still, I would if given the chance, because I've never seen anything else that moved me in quite the same way.

3. Orphée
Ensemble Parallèle proved again that an opera company doesn't need tremendous financial resources to put on a great production- just talent and imagination. It's been years since San Francisco Opera did something this well. Get ready for their production of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby in February.

4. Necessary Monsters
Like The Tempest: Without a Body, Carla Kihlstedt's work also left a lingering impression long afterward. An enchanting work-in-progress that will make you think about the Necessary Monsters in your own life, see it if you have the chance.

5. The San Francisco Symphony's Mahler's 3rd
San Francisco Symphony's Centennial Season has had numerous highlights so far, but this exquisite performance was truly spectacular.

6. Yefim Bronfman
Bronfman turned in another brilliant performance this year, made all the more heroic because he didn't let on that he had seriously injured two of his fingers during it.

7. Jonas Kaufmann
He came and conquered the audience with an extremely generous performance. Never have I heard German sung with such eloquence and beauty.

8. Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Hvorostovsky's recital was an early highlight of the year. He's never sounded better and the material he chose was perfect. The encore was thrilling.

9. Goran Bregovic and his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra
The most fun I had at a show all year, maybe ever- and on top of that, these folks can play.

10. tie: Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester, Alexander Melnikov, & The Robert Glasper Experiment
Initially I was going to make this year's list a dozen so that I could include all three of these performances. Let's just call it a three-way tie instead because at one point each one occupied the tenth slot.

Honorable mentions are due to The Wild Bride, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, Elizabeth Rowe, Jay Hunter Morris, The St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Keith Jarret Trio, YoYo Ma & the SFS, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, which has been consistently spectacular over the past year.

The Yodeling Dominatrix

2011-12-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw her, I thought she would be perfect as Maria von Trapp in a Russ Meyer remake of The Sound of Music. Sure, she caught my eye- with that figure and those legs in that get-up, how could she not? True, she was funny, but there are lots of funny women, though I can't think of one who looks quite so good. She wore her hair in pigtails- something I'll admit having a fetish for, but even that small, delectable detail, which under normal circumstances would have caused me to lock my gaze on her like bear trap snapping shut, couldn't gain my full attention. She was a sexy red clown competing with a table full of food and booze, people chatting away and a circus swirling around her.

But it's true what they say- that clothes make the woman, because the second time I saw her (I have no idea how much time had elapsed- an hour? two? twenty minutes?) she strode to the center of the floor, all 6'10" of her, in a pleated, skin-tight, black pleather dress. The front was cut low, removed actually, the better to expose a blood-red, patent-leather bra. It was like my brain split in half- everything stopped, yet I was aware of of every single sensation, like I had plunged underwater. I heard the distinct crack of a whip- a well-made one, signaling a baptism was about to start.

The familiar chords of AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" started up somewhere from the stage, the drums kicked in, she took over the room, strutting in time to the beat. A remarkably tall siren beckoning from the deepest recesses of my repressed fantasies, I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She sang with a German accent, which only made it all the more decadent and delicious- Marlene Dietrich on a "one-way ride." Then, where the chorus was supposed to be, she let out a tremendous "Yodel-ay-hee-huuuuu!" and I think the audience went a little nuts. I'm not certain, because my brain split into quarters at that moment.

The Yodeling Dominatrix had arrived and proceeded to turn the audience of Teatro ZinZanni into her slaves.

I had to meet her.

After the show we were introduced. She immediately held me in the palm of her hand and within minutes (moments, actually) at her feet. I dared to touch the eight-inch heels without her permission. She bent me over and held her crop aloft- a warning to behave. I succumbed. You would have, too.

Two weeks later we had our first rendezvous at one of my usual haunts. She had arrived before me, so the hostess led me to her. It wasn't so much that she sat in the booth, but was holding court waiting for a supplicant- at least that's how I felt. Everything she wore was skin-tight- including alligator boots which climbed to her knees. I thought the encounter would last an hour, maybe one and a half at the most. Seven hours later I returned to my apartment, spent, tired, and in a daze. That's what happens when one spends time in the company of Manuela Horn.

We ate. We drank. We drank more than we ate. We were told we had to leave.

Our next stop was for some real food, though more beverages were brought- Manhattans, of course. She ordered sausages, as any true Austrian woman would. Delicious, thick, juicy sausages, which she ate with her hands. I used my fork simply as a matter of defense, though it was of no use. I was aware we were seated in the middle of the room and all eyes, regardless of gender, were on her. I watched her too, with what? Desire? Lust? Fascination? Does it matter? All I can remember was the slow-motion sensation of watching her lick the juice from the tips of perfectly formed tendrils (merely fingers on most humans).

I felt the genie spring from the bottle. It was one of those moments you live for.

"Come with me," she said.

Helplessly, I acquiesced.

Soon we were in another part of town to see a show featuring performers who were friends of hers. As we walked in the door she was greeted by numerous people and I understood what Arthur Miller felt when he entered a room with Marilyn. There's no place for you. You don't exist- you are merely there, sucking up space where a well-wisher would like to be- to get closer to her. The fact that you are there with her doesn't even register because she's already taken up all of existing space in the room just by her presence alone. It's an ineluctable truth.

Then the party girl came out (I've learned it doesn't take much)- she lives for a good time and loves to entertain people. The show was pretty damn funny and included a pudgy, naked man dancing onstage holding a tissue over his genitals. She acted as if it were the kind of thing one sees everyday. After it ended, we wound up at Martuni's and somehow the hour passed midnight and then the cast of "Hair" came in and took the place over. Before taking my leave of her, we agreed to meet again and I watched her watching me as the train pulled away from the platform. I would think of the look on her face at that moment for days afterward.

The next morning I awoke exhausted and elated. She had told me about being on "America's Got Talent" as the Yodeling Dominatrix and of her day-to-day experiences working with companies like Cirque du Soleil and Teatro ZinZanni. It was illuminating and more. She has such a unique presence- intimidating and mysterious because of her looks and height, but completely open and unpretentious. She's a pussycat, truth be told, and she likes to purr.

A week later she arrived at my apartment early in the evening in white pants, black turtleneck, a short, white jacket trimmed in faux fur, fivefinger shoes, an eight-inch-wide leather belt, a jaunty black cap over her long blonde hair... and a black, well-oiled, hand-tooled whip. She had been eating oysters all day in Tomales Bay. I had prepared a pot roast and bought some Italian wine. Once again, the gaping disparity opened up before me.

I wanted to know where the Dominatrix came from. How did a mother of two, well-versed in the nuances and history of traditional yodeling, learned from her father as a child, end up dressed in pleather, expertly wielding a whip? Somewhere beneath the surface there was a different truth, and I wanted to uncover it. It turned out to be simpler than what I constructed in my imagination, yet layered with textures from a surprising array of life experiences.

Her physical stature impacted her career in unintended ways. Sure, she would love to be cast as Juliet, but a stage director once told her, "We can't hire you- where are we going to find an entire cast over six feet tall? Romeo would have to be almost seven feet!" Instead of fighting it, she's made it work for her by creating her own cast of characters. The Yodeling Dominatrix is just one facet of who she is- as is the Oktoberfest girl, and there are more- Roxie the gangster moll, a sexy milkmaid named Gretchen, the stern Fräulein Brunhilde von Schmetterling. She's a singer. A comedienne. An entertainer first and foremost. And she lives for it.

She also admits to relishing the control she has over people when she's dress to thrill. The power of the role intrigues her and its pull is strong. There was a man in Seattle in who came repeatedly to see her in a show and each time he'd ask for her crop across his behind, always requesting it land harder than the last time. The dominatrix persona creates an invisible but palpable psychological boundary between her and the audience. That so many wish to cross it is something she ponders often, causing her to want to understand the triggers of desire she pulls in people.

But there's also a playfulness to the masquerade. Take a look at this video on YouTube called Parenting 101 with the Yodeling Dominatrix - instructions and helpful hints for parents to "train your kid like you train your dog."

Manuela told me about Mr. Big, a fearless 3'2" dwarf she works with, whom she met at an erotic fair. Sometimes she dresses him up in drag. I flashed back to 1987, when I was working as a DJ in a North Hollywood strip joint, and Herve Villechaize used to come in frequently to take home one of the dancers- a six-foot-tall heavy metal queen named Jana whose hair added six additional inches to her height. He'd come over to the booth, say hello, and then pull out a gun- his most recent purchase, usually. They were always ridiculously large handguns. Watching them leave together always made me smile, knowing the gun would be brandished again before the night was over.

I asked her to tell me more about the erotic fair, deciding Herve and the strip joint were best left undiscussed, and she did. Somehow I knew we shouldn't linger too long on this topic, but I kept asking her for more details, which she gave. I found her forthrightness disarming. Nothing was off the table with her. She appreciates burlesque, erotic art, and painting naked bodies. This was a tangent I could have stayed on forever, but I also knew I could end up chained to it, so we moved on eventually, though not before I had some interesting images set in my mind.

We talked about music. I have this fantasy of her incorporating Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" into her act. She wants to be on David Letterman and the idea of Paul Schaffer leading the band through the classic riff as Manuela towers over Letterman is almost too delicious to contemplate. I can hear her yodeling in the part where the guitar slides downward after "wanna whole lotta love.... yodel-lay-hee-huuuuuu, wanna whole lotta love... yodel-lay-hee-huu." I see it as the first step in her inevitable path to world domination- "... you... need... me... BAM. BAM... whoaaa, yodel-lay-hee-huu!!!"

She's committed to furthering her career as a singer and has a recording studio in her Seattle home. After her current appearance in Teatro ZinZanni's "On the Air" closes, she'll resume work on an album of covers including "Highway to Hell," "Tainted Love" and "Like a Virgin"- all with yodeling of course. She also wants to move toward rock, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Zeppelin cover will get made one day.

Manuela also performs in her own shows, where she incorporates a variety of her characters. Next she year she'll take her act on the road, hitting festivals and rock concerts in her "Rock and Yodel Show", bringing the party with her, and encouraging audiences to "Get your yodel on..." She loves to see people having a good time and she feeds off of the audience's energy.

There's a joyful exuberance in everything Manuela does. She can walk into any room and own it without an effort. But underneath the raven-haired dominatrix in her pleather dress exists a thoughtful, inquisitive blonde who speaks in a soft voice with a lilting German accent. This is the woman who really entertains the audience- who knows that life's not always a party and that's the very best reason to have one.

She can't see herself ever retiring. Instead, she wants to die onstage- to take a final bow and then expire on the spot- in about 70 years. She imagines she'll be naked, with her costume projected onto her. I hope to be there that night, in the front row of the audience.

Manuela will be performing with Teatro ZinZanni in the company's terrific On the Air- their last production before the Speigeltent comes down and relocates to Broadway and the Embarcadero sometime next year. The final show is New Year's Eve, leaving you plenty of time to hear her yodel (and get a spanking should you desire one).

While it's best to experience Manuela live and in the flesh, if you're too timid to seek her out in person, you can find her here:
Manuela Horn.com
Facebook
My Space
YouTube

The Point of View

2011-12-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

I don't know what I shall do; I feel so undraped, so uncurtained, so uncushioned; I feel as if I were sitting in the centre of a mighty "reflector."

- Henry James, The Point of View

After the Bostonians vacated the hall a Finn named Esa-Pekka Salonen arrived to take charge of things for the weekend. He brought three pieces with him: a souvenir from his homeland, another from Germany (he's recently admitted to being fascinated with these heavy German items), and a substantial work of his own hand, for which he was recently awarded a handsome prize. Isabella and I had looked forward to his visit for some time, in no small part due to his bringing two illustrious visitors with him, both women- a musician and a singer.

As we neared the entrance to the hall I my eye caught someone I once knew standing alone under the harsh lights near the curb, furtively looking down. I had known such a thing would occur at some point, but the foreknowledge didn't prevent an unpleasant stain from spreading through my consciousness. It was the unexpectedness of it happening at this particular moment that took me by surprise, though in hindsight I could have easily deduced the odds if I had considered her past behavior. But who has the time for such things? I turned my gaze, unaware of whether if she saw us or not, and entered the lobby, whispering in Isabella's ear that a jackal was present in the garden.

As we waited for the Finn to take the podium I saw the jackal enter the terrace, followed by her elderly warden, and watched as they took seats in the back row, almost directly across the hall from us. It wasn't until the next morning an amusing but sad irony about the entire scene occurred to me as Isabella and I were having breakfast. As I've said before, it's a small town.

Salonen strode to the podium looking like he still lived in Southern California. He reminded Isabella of a certain pop singer my sister was involved with until my mother put her foot down, thus ending the absurd sight of a white Rolls Royce frequently parked at the curb of our house after school when we were teenagers. The quiet strains which open Sibelius' Pohjola's Daughter (Daughter of the North) rose from the bass and cellos. The piece, one of many by the composer inspired by Karelian poetry, is based on the story of a wise man who falls under the spell of a dangerous yet alluring female spectre while searching for a wife in the northern hinterlands.

The spectre requests the hero perform several impossible tasks in order to win her hand and the music grows louder and darker as his failures and frustration mounts, chugging along to an impressive climax which the brass took brilliantly. At the end, the wise man gives up and moves on and the music dissolved into a silence signalling an unequivocal, sad defeat. The orchestra has played the piece only once before, in 1948. It would be nice to hear more of these Sibelius tone poems, of which there are a dozen.

During the break I noticed the jackal and her warden rise and exit through the rear door of the terrace. I thought they were leaving but they soon reappeared on the side of the terrace and talked an usher into letting them sit in seats that didn't belong to them. I watched the jackal put on her glasses. Isabella, who has a keen eye for such things, had some interesting observations about their body language.

Leila Josefowicz walked onstage in five-inch heels wearing a gown accommodating her obvious pregnancy. The combination worked for me on a number of levels. There's something incredibly bold about Josefowicz which manifests itself in so many ways. She performs fearlessly. A serious advocate for contemporary composers, she's had some brilliant pieces written specifically for her, including Salonen's Violin Concerto which came next.

Salonen recently won the presigious Grawemeyer Award for music composition for the piece and I was present at its world premiere at Disney Hall- it was one of the bests concerts I've ever attended and I was looking forward to hearing it again. Salonen breaks all kinds of "rules" with the piece but hews to a traditional model. It begins with the soloist who then continues to play almost all the way through it. There's also a complete drum kit onstage, which drives the rythmic heart of the piece found in its third movement, called "Pulse II"- an evocation of the vitality of life in Los Angeles. The fourth movement is about as long as the first three combined.

Josefowicz tore through the half-hour long work with obvious relish, aggressively taking on the dizzying fast parts, sections full of double stops and loaded with notes that tumble on top of one another like an avalanche. Her performance, as I expected it would be, was thrilling, even if the orchestra didn't seem to fully gel with Salonen in the intricasies of the final movement.

The lack of cohesion between conductor and orchestra became more apparent after the intermission which featured music from Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Soprano Christine Brewer, whose career has taken her increasingly away from the opera house after a knee injury sidelined her for awhile, was on hand to sing Brunnhilde's immolation scene. The strings sounded wonderful throughout, with concertmaster Alexander Barantschik taking a seat onstage after Josefowicz' departure, but the brass were limpid during the dawn and journey down the Rhine. The funeral march was taken at very fast tempo, robbing it of a lot of its drama, and Brewer struggled to make herself heard over the orchestra. Though there were moments of beauty scattered throughout (how could there not be with some of the most gorgeous music ever written?), the overall execution was surprisingly a train wreck, all the more inexplicable because I've witnessed all of these artists give terrific, even stunning, performances of Wagner's music in the past.

We left without seeing the jackal again and stepped out into crisp, cold evening, admiring the almost-full moon shining brightly over the gilded dome of City Hall. Neither of us had to work the next morning, so we stayed up late, listening to sections from different versions of Gotterdammerung- Solti and Boulez's, discussing the evil of Hagen, the prescience of the Norns, and slowly everything receded into the twilight.

The Bostonians

2011-12-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed two concerts at Davies this week as part of the American Orchestras Series for San Francisco Symphony's Centennial celebration. Tuesday night's concert was very good, but Wednesday's was a revelation. After hearing them two nights in a row, I feel bit of of envy toward Bostonians.

The American Orchestra series features the leading orchestras of the country in two nights of performances- the first featuring a commission by the visitors, the second showcasing works closely associated with them. No two orchestras sound alike, and the opportunity to experience these differences live is one of the great aspects of the series, which previously brought the LA Phil to town. Still to come are the orchestras of Chicago, New York, Cleveland and Philadelphia.

Tuesday's concert began with Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture and from the first notes one knew a different band had taken over the house. It wasn't just the brass isolated at 2:00, nor the basses and cellos situated on the opposite side of the stage from where they usually are, nor the split string section. No, it was the warmth of their sound- a deep, resonant glow, fully embracing the classical tradition in a manner I'd never heard before which seemed to emanate from the entire orchestra. It was immediate and profoundly inviting.

Richard Goode. Photo by Stu Rosner

Soloist Richard Goode joined them for the next piece, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25. It's no secret that I'm not a tremendous fan of Mozart. It's not that I dislike his work, that would be absurd of course, but aside from Cosi, the Requiem, and a few sonatas, little of it moves me. Goode's restraint fit the piece well, and the result, for this listener at least, was predictable- I admired it but little of an impression was left. I found my mind drifting off, and soon I was imagining Isabella naked, frolicking in a field of flowers with a giraffe. Ridiculous I know, but that's how it went.

Elizabeth Rowe. Photo by Stu Rosner

After the intermission things became really interesting. The orchestra's principal flute Elizabeth Rowe came onstage in a gorgeous red gown as the featured soloist for Elliot Carter's Flute Concerto, a work composed in 2008 by the then 100 year-old composer. It's amazing enough Carter is still composing at this age, but to produce a work as engaging as this is something of a miracle. She handled the snaking melodic lines woven through the piece with ease and its jittery parts (which would be a perfect soundtrack for a high-tension thriller) with equal aplomb. Rowe performed the American premiere of the work last year with the BSO, which co-commissioned the piece, and her execution of Carter's determined, contemporary composition created an interesting juxtaposition against Goode's traditional take on Mozart and to borrow a line from a local art's organization, the resulting impression is that the future is now. Clocking in at around thirteen minutes, it left me wanting much more.

The final piece on the program was Bartok's suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, a work with which I have little exposure, though the lurid story line of the ballet (about three men who pimp their female companion to rob a man) is something which should have caught my attention long ago. The score is riddled with great moments- a magnificent blast from the trombones led it off, and when the Mandarin came toward the end, the orchestra let it all blow with a ribald burst. Now I know where Shostakovitch got his inspiration for the hilarious trombone orgasm in Lady Macbeth. Amidst the fun of sex and violence was a superb solo by principal clarinet William Hudgins.

The orchestra returned for a brief encore- a birthday tribute for their San Francisco friends in the form of Stravinsky's Greeting Prelude.

Ludovic Morlot. Photo by Stu Rosner

The impressive sound and cohesion of the orchestra made me wonder about the influence of conductor Ludovic Morlot, who took over the reigns for this tour when James Levine resigned his post due to his myriad health issues. Morlot, who just began as Music Director for the Seattle Symphony, is obviously well in sync with these musicians (he was the BSO's assistant conductor from 2004-07 and started working with them in 2001), but did the heart of their extraordinary sound beat with his baton or were we hearing the result of Levine's influence over the past few years. Or is it just that the 131-year-old orchestra is simply that great? There's no way to really know of course, but the next night's performance made it clear that Morlot is a formidable and gifted talent- and that the Boston Symphony Orchestra is an amazing group of musicians.

The concert began with John Harbison's Symphony No. 4. The timing of this was fortuitous, because earlier in the week I attended a workshop led by the directors of Ensemble Parallele on the composer's opera The Great Gatsby, which they will present in a re-orchestrated version this coming February. Harbison's Fourth deals directly with Gatsby - he's quoted in the program notes, "In the symphony I thought I was addressing the shaking of a three-to four year Gatsby endeavor... by acknowledging it in the first movement. That is, here is where is was. Ending in a dissolve. Then in the second movement doing something completely." He goes on to cite the influence of Stravinsky specifically on second movement, the origins of the fourth movement's "Threnody" coming from an awareness of "the imminence and inevitability of loss at times we of course do not choose," and the influence of Emily Dickinson on the final part.

The jazz riddling the score of Gatsby dominates the first movement and Harbison (who was in the house this evening) has an innate gift for weaving two musical genres together. There was strong playing throughout in this piece, but in the first movement it was the instruments traditionally found in jazz who created the greatest impact. The BSO's brass section is remarkable- especially the trombones, who made me long to hear them play some Wagner. The scherzo confused me a bit, causing me to wonder when is a scherzo not a scherzo? Anchored by the brass, it builds toward something approaching the frightening, only to turn toward a rough levity provided by the trombones and the tuba.

The "Threnody" features the score's most lush moments. There's no grief to be found in it, but a sense of resignation permeates the movement, which ends with a pronounced somberness. I wondered about the composer's inspiration for it and somehow that led me to feel the movement belongs in a Brian DePalma movie. Turning away from the darkness toward the light, the finale was the best part of the wonderfully played work.

Then something miraculous indeed happened. The orchestra took what I initially thought was going to be a bit of filler, Ravels's Daphnis et Chloe, Suite No.2, and turned it into one of the finest orchestral performances I've ever witnessed. The swelling sound they created by the strings, especially the nine bass players, during the "Daybreak" section was devastatingly powerful, so rich it was almost vulgar in its opulence. Rowe turned in a performance that was so stunning it managed to eclipse her star turn from the night before. She's worthy of any superlative one can use for a musician- pick one. Pick a few, in fact. Elizabeth Rowe amazed me. It was during this piece I began to realize the depth of Morlot's talent- I like Ravel and always look forward to hearing him, but if his work was always played like this his popularity with audiences would undoubtedly be much greater. The only thing I could say after it was over was, "Wow"- and I did just that, and then repeated the sentiment to Lisa Hirsch when I saw her in the lobby during intermission, who felt pretty much the same way about it.

The presence of a Mahler symphony on the program's second half seemed like a challenge in a way, given the prominence the San Francisco Symphony has given these works during Michael Tilson Thomas' tenure. If Mahler is associated with any orchestra at the moment, it's San Francisco. However, the Bostonians delivered a handsome performance of the First, going for depth and color in places one might expect to hear a more lustrous sheen coming from the locals. The "Wayfarer" songs were given an especially marked prominence, further intensifying the warmth the orchestra conveyed through the entire work. In the end it felt unlike a challenge, but rather a respectful compliment from one orchestra to another- an acknowledgement of the impact MTT and the SFS have made with Mahler's music. And even if none of that was intended either way, it was beautifully done.

Hopefully it won't be another fifteen years before they return.

The Wild Bride

2011-12-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

Patrycja Kujawska as The Wild Bride

As I was parking the motorcycle I realized I haven't been to Berkeley Rep for over a couple of years- not since The Lieutenant of Inishmore. I hadn't realized Freight and Salvage is now across the street from the Roda Theater and the restaurant Downtown is gone, replaced by Revival Bar+Kitchen- a favorite of Isabella's. I was glad to see Half-Price Books was still there, but I wondered how much longer it could last, even in one of the world's most sophisticated college towns. We stopped in at the packed Revival for a drink before the show. Usually I'm skeptical of the whole "artisinal cocktail" scene- the drinks often seem targeted to twenty-somethings and others with a preference for the sweet over the savory, but I have to hand it to the bartenders at Revival- they know their stuff and the drinks are good. Isabella vouches for the food.

From there we turned the corner and headed to the Roda, where Berkeley Rep is turning over the house this month to England's Kneehigh Theatre company for the American premiere of The Wild Bride- a dark, beautiful spin on the somewhat brutal fairy tale "The Handless Maiden," best known through the Brothers Grimm version, though there are others. Sadly, I missed Kneehigh's well-received Brief Encounter at A.C.T. last year, so when Isabella said she wanted to see this I agreed, despite finding the promotional video on Berkeley Rep's site a little off-putting (having seen the show I now appreciate it more). The play turned out to be one of the best things I've seen this year, in no small part due to its extraordinarily talented cast.

The story, about a girl whose father (Stuart Goodwin) unwittingly sells her to the Devil (Stuart McLoughlin), is broken into three parts. In the first The Girl is portrayed by Audrey Brisson- a phenomenal talent who can act, sing, and move will equal strength. The father, who thought he was giving the Devil an apple tree, not his only child, ends up chopping off the the girl's hands at the Devil's insistence- an act staged so harshly it caused a couple of walk-outs. I found it more dramatically effective than horrific, though it does take the play down a dark road with unexpected swiftness. There was much to admire in Brisson's performance (including a voice that falls somewhere between Alannah Myles' and Lisa Gerrard's), but what set her apart was her ability to be fully present in supporting parts after The Girl grows into The Wild and the role is taken over by Patrycja Kujawska during the second part, in which the daughter goes out into the wood to survive on her own rather than give in to the Devil.

Kujawska's turn feels like an entirely different play, and that's a strength of this highly creative production by Emma Rice. The girl's circumstances have changed- her innocence has cost her yet she clings to it as she tries to survive in the wild. Now mute, it's there she meets a prince (Goodwin), who takes her as his bride and outfits her with preposterous metal hands, which provides for some comic bits. It's not as dark as it sounds and many parts of this section are absolutely delightful. The Devil soon returns to wreak more havoc and the girl, now the mother of an infant, is forced to flee for her life once again. Kujawska, who resembles Kirsten Dunst, gives a strong performance. Hers is perhaps the most challenging role as its a mostly physical performance. Her Wild Bride has been horribly abused and yet her spirit remains unbowed. Kujawska's face is able to convey so much- her smile is likely to stay in your mind long after the play is over. She's also a fine violinist, especially in the third part, which finds the role taken over by Éva Magyar, now playing The Woman.

The Wild Bride loses a bit of steam when Magyar takes over. Until this point, she has been the least involved of the participants onstage and her assumption of the role lacks the impact created by Brisson and Kujawska. She's intense, but doesn't match her predecessors in staking out something altogether her own in the portrayal. Some of this is magnified by the third part's quieter, more ruminative tone as the Woman raises her child in the wilderness. I won't reveal how it ends, but it is a fairy tale and the play emerges from its darkness toward a lighter place, creating an emotionally satisfying conclusion.

Musically, this last part is the strongest of the show, though through it all musician Ian Ross has been onstage providing some wonderful, Robert Johnson-inspired blues guitar work. "Crossroads" is a theme threaded through the play, both dramatically and musically, adding a touch of the mythic to it all, resulting in something very familiar and yet foreign because Rice and her team bring such imaginative touches to every aspect of the production. The music is a key component of it all, deeply immersed in American roots, it provides a unifying thread through three segments of distinctly different tone. It also helps that Goodwin and McLoughlin are as adept at singing as they are acting and both were strong in their respective roles. McLoughlin's Devil has more than a touch of magical realism offsetting the vileness of his desires- never is he sympathetic, but he's always got your interest and the show really belongs to him. Goodwin displays a lot of versatility alternating between the roles of the father and prince.

After the performance all of the cast gathered in the lobby and performed for about half an hour while wine and snacks were served in the courtyard. It was just fortuitous luck we attended on "Out" night, when Berkeley Rep encourages the LGBT audience (and everyone else) to hang around afterward to talk, drink and "meet someone." I'm not sure why the event is pitched toward a specific segment of the audience based on their sexual orientation/gender identity, but we hung around for a bit and snacked, drank, and pretended to meet one another for the first time. After the cast quit a DJ took over, but we found her a bit too laid back so we got on the motorcycle and headed back across the Bay.

Midway across the bridge, since it was so clear and crisp that night, we stopped on Treasure Island to take in the view. Neither of us had been there in over fifteen years, and it was a delight to do something so touristy. We bought the last hot dogs the vendor had and munched on them while looking at the City. The view really can't be topped, especially during the holidays when the Embarcadero is outlined in lights. We waited some time after the guy drinking straight from a bottle of Crown Royal loaded his girlfriend into his car and drove away before we resumed the ride back.

Blame Ken Russell

2011-11-28T19:10:00.000-08:00

Do you ever wonder where your own particular fetishes/quirks/peccadilloes came from? Today I realized where mine began. It was all of those damn Ken Russell films I saw starting at the tender age of 7, when my mother took me to see "Women in Love" at the drive-in. I haven't missed many of his films since. Sex, horror, rock and roll, and classical music- there you have it- Marcher explained. Though the films were often awful, he was a true master of the indelible image. Here are a few of the tamer ones which will never leave me.

This should explain my bathroom to anyone who's ever wondered "what's with those photographs?"

Thanks for the memories, Ken (and the therapy bills).