Matt Hart: poet, musician, publisher, teacher. His latest collection of poems, “Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless” (Typecast, 2012) was just published, and he kicked it off with a live reading at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Hart is known for his dynamic readings of both his and others’ poetry, but how could a poet, musician and teacher not be compelling if he’s descended from a fire and brimstone preacher whose corpse delivered a final admonition from the pulpit?

It just so happens that this interview immediately followed my conversation with the CSO’s Louis Langrée at Music Hall. (See our digital edition.) I walked the three blocks to the Art Academy, and into a completely different, yet equally fascinating world.

Thom: So when and how did you choose to become a poet?

Matt: This is kind of an easy one actually. I was a junior at Ball State University, majoring in Philosophy. I was playing in bands and writing most of the songs. I took a poetry workshop to help improve my lyric writing. There were these graduate students who called themselves The Smaller Midwestern Poets. And they were kind of a poetry gang.

For whatever reason they were really kind to me and took a liking to the stuff that I was doing and they put on readings. I went to (a reading) and one of these guys got up and said, “Tonight we’ll start with this poem by Etheridge Knight. It’s called “Feeling Fucked Up.”

And it was this litany of expletives, which turns out to be a love poem. I mean, it’s a really violent, musically percussive and cussing, you know, a cursing poem, but then by the end you realize it’s this love poem – that he’s been destroyed because his beloved has left him. And so, he’s in total anguish, in despair. And I remember sitting there in that audience at that moment and saying, “That’s a poem?! Because I get THAT. I’ve never gotten a poem in my life before now, but THAT one I understand!”

And that was it; I mean I was hooked. That poem was so musical.

Knight comes out of this oral African American tradition. There’s a lot of chanting, there’s a lot of jazz in what he does. And so, for me at that time, as a musician and somebody who was interested in language… Poetry seemed to speak to the human condition in a way that just set me on fire, and that poem really set me on fire. I think I’ve written poems pretty much every single day since then.

Thom: So why poetry versus other forms of literature?

Matt: Well, I can’t write sentences and paragraphs to save my life. (Laughter) No, I think really it has to do with the fact the Ancient Greek word for poetry means singing. And I’ve never been able to get away from singing.

In the new book, in particular, it’s a lot about singing sound as much or more than anything. I can never really get very far away from singing. And I like other kinds of rhyme. There’s something really visceral and really embodied that I respond to in poetry. In poetry, more than in other kinds of writing, you can actually feel somebody throwing themselves against the wall. So there’s something really kinda punk rock about poetry, just in a sort of expressive potential.

And it’s not that you can’t do that in other kinds of writing, but it’s really natural for me. The poetry that I really love, and that I really respond to, has that really musical character to it.

Thom: What’s your motivation for writing poetry?

Matt: It’s a means of trying to connect with the people I love and who love me. I think it’s the way that I make sense of my experience in the world. It’s the way that I can get closest to something approximating absolute values, even though I’m very suspicious of absolutes of any kind. I think some people are really good at sort of rationally making sense of things and compartmentalizing the world, and I’m not. The world is amazingly complicated and chaotic and overwhelming to me. And the only way for me to make that make sense, and to communicate the kinds of things that I want to communicate, is through poetry.

When I played in bands, I needed the words and the music, and I needed the band. Poetry is the words and the music altogether, no amplifiers. I am the instrument.

Thom: Is that true only when you are reciting your own poems or is that true even when other people are reading your poems to themselves?

Matt: I imagine some people are probably confused when they read my poems. If someone comes and hears me deliver the poems, I think that can give a personal window into the poems that they might not have otherwise, but I also think that the poems have lots of windows built into them on the page. There are ways of entering them.

At the same time, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I think they’re totally accessible, I mean, that would be a lie. I think that an artist’s first responsibility is to make the best art that you can make. But the problem is that artists are starting to make more and more specialized and esoteric and theory-based works that do leave a lot of people out.

I don’t think that’s bad in-and-of itself, but I think it’s bad when you make a work like that and then you say, “If you get it, then that’s great – you’re on my team. And if you don’t get it, you’re stupid.” I don’t have the responsibility to make accessible artwork; I have a responsibility to be, myself, accessible as a human being and as an artist.

So for example, I love when I get to read poems for non-poetry audiences. I love that opportunity and I love to get to talk to people about the kinds of things that I’m trying to do. I love coming up against the wall and realizing that I’m not connecting entirely the way I might want to. But I think the biggest disservice that artists all of all kinds have done to themselves in the last hundred years is that we have become elitists and decided somewhere along the way that, “You know, it’s good enough just to make art for each other.’

Thom: Tell me about some of your sources of inspiration?

Matt: The new book, “Sermons and Lectures,” comes from very specific sources. I taught a class at the Art Academy, where I used punk rock with lyrics as a sort of window for looking at other kinds of literature.

And that was such a blast; I would get so jazzed up: things the students were saying and bringing to the table, getting to really think about these lyrics in pretty analytical ways that I never had before. I would go home and just start writing these poems. And so, there are lots of references to early punk rock, there are a lot of references to philosophy, there are a lot of references to the ideas that were coming up as a result of the class.

My family is also ever-present, and my domestic situation. I write in the basement, so often I can hear my daughter playing above me – that’s a huge source of inspiration for me. At the same time I was writing all this stuff, my father was doing this genealogy work, and it turns out that my great-great-grandfather was Reverend James Hart of the Hudsonville, Ind. General Baptist Church for 50 years. It stated in his will that at his funeral he’d be stood up at the pulpit, with his eyes open, staring at the congregation – a real hellfire and brimstone Baptist preacher.

And so, it occurred to me that being a really dynamic lecturer, or being a hellfire and brimstone preacher, or being a lead singer for a punk rock band, or being a performance poet really aren’t all that much different from each other. (Laughter)

The poems in the book are primarily collages, weaving bits and pieces of things from the classroom, my actual autobiographical personal existence, my thinking about preaching and giving lectures and singing in bands, and all of the things that have sort of influenced me. And trying to get those things to come to a head some how, to have some kind of gravity or joy at some point.

And the cool thing about writing these poems – and this has never happened with any of the other poems I’ve written – is that, almost literally (I know this is going to sound totally goofy), I would wake up typing. I’d be sitting there typing these things and I would wake up and there was a page of stuff. I would try to get up when that happened and just leave it there. Then the next morning I would come in and revise the poems like crazy, I mean, for a year. So these aren’t spontaneous unrevised stream of consciousness effusions. I really worked hard to make these musical to the point where, especially if someone were to read them out loud, they might get caught up so much in the music that it would just go by you, and you’d have no idea what was just said, but maybe you could feel it.

Thom: Three favorite poets?

Matt: Oh, that’s hard. Why did you do that?! Let me see… (Long pause) Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (Pause) Gregory Corso, the Beat poet. And the contemporary poet, Dean Young.

Thom: Is there an overarching theme among those three, or are they three different things for you?

Matt: Well, they’re all essentially romantics. Coleridge obviously was a romantic. Corso was a post-World War II romantic, as a part of the Beat Generation, meaning they really were in many ways trying to reactivate the spirit of the individual in the face of what they saw as mediocrity and conformism. They were in search of something to believe in, even in the face of the fact that they didn’t believe that there was anything to believe in! And Dean Young has been for his entire career a poet who is ever trying to find a way to catalogue and explore and explode (1) the relationship of the individual to experience, and (2) personal experience to other people in the world.

They’re all sort of driven by individual consciousness, and that individual consciousness in relation to everything. As much as I’m totally a product of my generation, and probably more than anything a postmodernist, I still really want to believe in the old values of truth and beauty. I still really do think that faith in what we do as artists is incredibly important. You’re always going to be sort of leaping into the void if you’re really risking something. You can risk incoherence and terror, and you can also risk joy. I mean you’re always doing both those things at the same time.

This is one of the things too about my poems: I think sometimes people get the sense that it’s a barrage of everything all at once. And it kind of is; it’s by design. I want them to be inclusive, not exclusive. I would include the whole world in every single poem if I could. Because I think we’re all a lot more similar than we are different. We could do a better job of celebrating all the ways that we’re exactly the same.

Thom: You frequently recite, perform your poems. Talk about that practice and versus simply having them read by others, you obviously feel strongly about performing your poems.

Matt: Yeah, performance is super important to me. I mean it’s been part of my life since I was –

Thom: Is it important as a means of expression, or is it an important part of conveying the poem?

Matt: It’s important as a means of expression. It’s important as a way of conveying the poem and it’s actually an important part of the poetry itself. I mean, in some ways I feel like the poem is not really complete until I read it in the air, and have sort of sent out that call for your response. Whatever that may be. It can be just a look, a gesture. But putting it out in the world is really super important.

Thom: Do they have less impact when somebody just reads them on the page?

Matt: No, it just makes them different to me.

One of the best things you can tell people about poetry readings is that even poets, when we go to a poetry readings, don’t remember every word they say. Half the time I can’t follow what’s going on. I’m trying to tune in to how it feels and what it sounds like, more than what it says. If I want to know what it says, I’ll go and read it on the page.

So I think that performances bring the poems to life in a way that they’re not alive on the page, but the page allows the poems to live for readers in different ways. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t read the poems. I read poems aloud even as I’m writing them.

When I was playing in bands, I would get such a charge out of playing in front of audiences. I mean, there’s nothing like the back and forth energy that you get. You put a lot out and you get a lot back. In poetry performances, it’s the same kind of energy. Except it’s a lot more civilized. (Laughter)

———————–
Matt Hart is the author of three previous collections of poetry: “Who’s Who Vivid” (2006), “Wolf Face” (2010), and “LIGHT_HEADED” (2011), and several chapbooks.

A longtime musician, Hart has toured nationally with the punk band Squirtgun, and he currently plays in the poetry/noise band Travel. Music from his previous projects has appeared on MTV and in major motion pictures.
Co-founder of “Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety,” Hart teaches writing and aesthetics at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

He often writes in the basement of his home, inspired by his wife, Melanie, and their 6-year-old daughter, Agnes.

Thom Mariner
Co-publisher, Express Cincinnati & EXP/arts

In an unprecedented show of unity, the boards of trustees of all six organizations affiliated with Music Hall met recently in Corbett Tower to show their support for the proposed revitalization.

The groups included: Music Hall Revitalization Corp. (MHRC), Society for the Preservation of Music Hall, Cincinnati Arts Association, and the four tenant organizations – May Festival, Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Opera and Cincinnati Ballet. (I attended as a member of the May Festival board.)

Each reported that its board had approved the initial design, and the CEOs of each tenant organization shared details of the agreed-upon plan.

Now, the decision whether or not to move forward with the revitalization hinges on one key issue: the creation of a public/private partnership between the City of Cincinnati and MHRC, and the sale of Music Hall to MHRC. Without this transfer of ownership, the project, according to May Festival executive director Steven Sunderman, “will simply not happen.”

The basic terms of the sale are these: The city sells Music Hall to MHRC for $1, after which MHRC assumes all responsibility for the projected $165 million cost of renovation. This total includes the estimated $40-50 million simply to bring the 134-year-old structure up to current building codes. The city would have to absorb this cost eventually if it retains ownership.

MHRC is asking the city to kick in a symbolic $10 million to support the renovation as part of the deal, but this still leaves the city $35-$45 million ahead, and – importantly – without the associated future administrative costs and headaches.

Another crucial issue is this: The estimated $35 million in tax credits MHRC is seeking to help pay for this project would not be as readily available if the city retains ownership. It is supposedly much more difficult for government-owned structures to qualify for these “historic” and “new markets” tax credits. Also, many of those individuals who have pledged significant donations to the project indicate they will NOT contribute if the city retains ownership.

There is also the matter of timing to consider. Performing arts organizations must plan seasons in one-year increments (and more than one season in advance). If the sale happens after June 1, the project would have to be delayed at least one more year, and – in that event – may lose all momentum.

Simply put, the time is NOW to grasp this opportunity. The plan is in place. The people who care most about this beloved structure are ready to transform it into an even more compelling performing arts venue and asset to our city. Plus, they have the means, clout and expertise to make it happen. MHRC is a nonprofit corporation, not a private company looking to make profits at the expense of history. It will retain ownership following the renovation, and that means the historic landmark will remain in the hands of those who 1) have managed the transition and 2) are personally invested in its value.

If this transfer does not take place, then what? The city does not have the $40-50 million necessary to bring it up to code, and few on council have been closely associated with the arts. Can we leave this hallowed edifice to shift amidst the winds of ever-changing political terms? If unable to complete this transaction, the tenant organizations may have to seek other options, and what is Music Hall without performances by our most valued institutions filling the stage?

Also, it’s time to put aside individual concerns about details. Decisions have been finalized: The chandelier stays. The escalators go. In response to concerns, planners have indeed added a few more seats back in. The revised range is from 2,150 for symphony concerts to 2,458 for touring shows. The only seats being removed are the ones you would not want to sit in anyway. If you’ve ever been stuck in Section 4, Row 26 on the main floor, you know what I’m talking about. Also, new seating will be staggered to aid sight-lines, and will increase in both width and legroom. (Yay!)

The size of the auditorium will not shrink much at all. The plan is more about bringing the performers into the same room with the audience, and that will improve the listening experience dramatically. Having performed on Music Hall stage for the CSO, Pops, Opera and May Festival, both as soloist and chorister – in front of and behind the proscenium arch – believe me when I say this will make a huge difference for performers and audiences alike. Keep in mind, the acousticians for this project are the same people who made a renovated Carnegie Hall one of the most treasured performing spaces on the planet.

Want to know more?
MHRC has made available a wealth of information about plans for the revitalization, and its importance to the region.
Key Elements of Music Hall Revitalization
Explanation of Tax Credits

What can you do?
Phone, email or write City Council members TODAY to let them know how you feel about this project. Time is of the essence.
City council contact information:
www.cincinnati-oh.gov/council/pages/-4126-/

Thom Mariner, Co-publisher

NOTE: This story has been updated with 
information not available at press time.

Thom Mariner
Co-publisher, Express Cincinnati & EXP/arts

The Cincinnati new music festival MusicNOW has announced its seventh season, spanning three evenings: March 28-30.

Festival curator and Cincinnati native Bryce Dessner, founding member of indie rock group The National, has assembled an impressive cast of performers to showcase a wide spectrum of contemporary music, with the expressed intent of blurring the distinctions between musical categories.

Extending from modern works for church organ to improvisations for flamenco guitar and cello, this year’s MusicNOW leans more in the direction of classical music than in the recent past, but there are infusions of more popular styles, as well.

There is a focus throughout the festival on the music of Nico Muhly, one of the hottest composers on the planet.

The opening organ concert at Christ Church, featuring Westminster Abbey organist James McVinne, features several classical works ranging from Bach to Arvo Pärt and Muhly, but also includes a piece by Richard Reed Parry of indie rock band Arcade Fire, and that has to be considered, well…genre-bending, at the very least.

The middle concert welcomes the amazing eighth blackbird back to their “second home” of Cincinnati in a performance of – and with(!) – Philip Glass, and also more music of Nico Muhly. This appearance will be especially anticipated due to the sextet’s cancellation of their January concert with the Cincinnati Symphony. Read more about eighth blackbird in our January feature: www.expresscincinnati.com.

Glass is here in Cincinnati as part of his residency at the CSO, and their world premiere performance of his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra No. 2, “Naqoyqatsi” – played by Matt Haimovitz.

The closing night features a “workshop” performance of a new song cycle composed by Muhly, singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens and Dessner (interesting!), as well as the aforementioned works for guitar and cello.

DO NOT MISS THIS!

Check out the lineup below, and look for more details and background in the March Express, available Feb. 29!

MusicNOW 2012 Festival Line-up

Wednesday, March 28
FREE organ concert with James McVinnie at Christ Church Cathedral. McVinnie, from Westminster Abbey, will be performing new pieces from Richard Reed Parry and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang along with selections from Philip Glass, Bach, Arvo Pärt and Nico Muhly.

Thursday, March 29
eighth blackbird will be joined by Philip Glass to perform “Music in Similar Motion” and premiere a new work by Nico Muhly at Memorial Hall.

Friday, March 30
A workshop presentation of a new song cycle from Nico Muhly, Sufjan Stevens and Bryce Dessner. Pedro Soler and Gaspar Claus will perform improvisations for flamenco guitar and cello at Memorial Hall.
Two-day passes are available for the Memorial Hall concerts.

Tickets are available now:
www.musicnowfestival.org/tickets

****

Thom Mariner
Co-publisher, Express Cincinnati

Frank Zappa composed classical music, you say? Really? Isn’t he the guy who wrote songs about yellow snow and being a dental floss tycoon in Montana soon?

Sunday evening, to a standing-room-only crowd at the 20th Century in Oakley Square, concert:nova paid tribute to the diverse, organic and unique creativity of Frank Zappa, American Composer, 1940-1993.

When I was in high school, we used to snigger conspiratorially at Zappa’s lyrics, which we saw as juicily irreverent and oh-so daring. At that age, we had no clue what his music was all about. I think we saw it as just a vehicle for his silliness. Turns out, the man was a certifiable genius. Who knew?! Leave it to concert:nova, Cincinnati’s genre-bending chamber music series, to explore the musical life of this much-misunderstood trailblazer.

The first half of the concert alternated performances of Zappa’s early rock output with classical pieces that especially influenced him as a composer. Leading off was “Hungry Freaks, Daddy,” the first track from the debut album by Zappa’s Mothers of Invention from 1966. This was followed by “Octandre,” by Edgard Varèse, scored for seven wind instruments and double bass.

Igor Stravinsky – another important classical influence upon Zappa – was represented by his Octet for winds and brass, sandwiched between the title track to 1970 album “Chungas Revenge” and “Little Umbrellas” from 1969’s jazzy “Hot Rats.” These juxtapositions gave audience members a peek into the creative pathway Zappa took on his journey from political rebel to composer of “art music.”

The first-half concept worked because of first-class performances by rock band members Dave McConnell, Roger Klug, Julie Spangler, Erica Drake, Matt Zory and Ted Nelson, as well as the two excellent chamber ensembles. Klug’s scorching guitar was the highlight, solidifying his stature as a peerless master of both technique and creativity.

What’s important to note about Zappa’s rock offerings is that, like the classical music from which they drew their influence, they don’t bowl you over with waves of sound. Instead, they tickle your ears and mind with nuance and cleverness, inviting repeated listening. It’s a shame that this concert was only presented once.

Both the Varèse and Stravinsky were expertly delivered, with much of the credit going to conductor Edwin Outwater, who was solid and extremely clear in his leadership of these rhythmically challenging compositions.

Concert:nova is well-known for its multimedia approach to concerts, and this was no different with video clips serving as continuity, further illustrating Zappa’s transformation from nerdy, eccentric guest on the Steve Allen Show to acerbic, surrealist social commentator in his movie “200 Motels.”

The second half featured Zappa’s purely instrumental classical compositions, ranging from 1972’s “Big Swifty,” for brass ensemble and drum set, to “The Perfect Stranger,” a piece Zappa recorded in conjunction with Pierre Boulez in 1984, as well as several excerpts from “The Yellow Shark,” released by Boulez’s Ensemble Modern in 1993, just a month prior to Zappa’s death.

It was fascinating to hear how Zappa, a self-taught composer, absorbed the influences surrounding him and made them his own, with a special ability to exploit the unique characteristics of specific instruments. The colors and textures are one-of-a-kind, spiraling effortlessly through genres from rock to jazz and the most avant-garde. But everything is infused with scads of the personality and humor that are uniquely Zappa. It was fun to see orchestral musicians actually smiling while playing!

In terms of what might have been better, several of the Zappa classical pieces sounded as if they needed just one more rehearsal. This is fiendishly difficult music. Also, a more polished overall sense of continuity would give the evening a better sense of flow. Transitions could have been smoother and tighter, and the introduction, while charmingly delivered, could have been cut by half, and perhaps would have worked better after intermission. It’s important to grab the audience as quickly as possible, and most of the information was available in the program.

The finale, Yellow Shark’s final track “G-Spot Tornado,” was a Dionysian dervish highly deserving of the encore: “Peaches en Regalia” from “Hot Rats.” The resulting standing ovation (all too common these days) was sincere, appreciative and long. The crowd was diverse in age and sensibility, drawing from c:n’s existing chamber music fan base, Zappa devotees from his earliest years, and younger fans who came to experience the legend live.

Bravo to Ixi Chen, concert:nova artistic director, for pulling together this fascinating, varied and complex tribute, and to Al Lopez and the c:n board of trustees for their support in making it possible, and for helping to create the wonderfully campy ambiance with fake Zappa mustaches, a fun photo booth, and posters for sale.

If you haven’t yet experienced a concert:nova performance, put Sunday, April 29, 3 p.m. on your calendar, when c:n and VAE: Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble collaborate on a program at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

www.concertnova.com or www.vaecinci.org

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Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati music director Donald Nally promised “a rest from the bustle of the holidays” and a “world of carols, candles and contemplation” for the VAE’s annual Christmas concert.

Nally kept his word Sunday in Summit Country Day School Chapel in Hyde Park. Always a beauty, this VAE Christmas concert was that and more. Call it a musical essay, a gift of time, whatever, Nally made the listener feel immersed in the music – in another world almost. And no one does it better than the 24-voice VAE. There were no thoughts of shopping, decorating, baking or any of the multitudinous tasks of the holiday season.

The concert (and Saturday’s opener at St. Boniface Church in Northside) was called “A Candlelit Christmas,” and so it was, with the Gothic-style Chapel handsomely decorated with red poinsettias, white mini-lights and candles. As the sun set and the light from the stained glass windows faded, the encompassing warmth of the Chapel heightened the feeling of being suspended in time. There was no intermission and no applause until the end. The singers played hand bells to provide continuity between numbers, create atmosphere and set pitches.

The choir entered from the rear of the Chapel with “O Come Emmanuel” and a gentle Norwegian lullaby, “Sov, Sov Liten Gut” (“Sleep. Sleep Little Boy”). Positioning themselves across the front of the chancel, they sang Gabriel Jackson’s joyous, full-voiced “To Morning” (2007). This was followed by John Joubert’s exquisite, 1954 setting of “There is No Rose of Such Virtue,” which began ever so softly on the interval of a third by a pair of women’s voices. This medieval text was heard three times during the concert, with versions attributed to John Dunstable (ca. 1420) and the 1996 setting by Stephen Caracciolo.

Presenting traditional carols in less familiar settings was a thread on the program. “Lo, How a Rose,” “What Child is This” and “Silent Night” also were heard in contemporary treatments.

The first set also included Paul Manz’s touching “E’en So Lord Jesus Quickly Come” (1953), Caracciolo’s joyous “People Look East” and Alfred Burt’s “The Star Carol” (1954), during which the singers filed down the side aisles. All stood for the proposition — as did the entire concert – that a carol need not be a familiar one to evoke the Christmas spirit. (It is the overall mission of Nally and VAE to focus on music of our time.)

The second set began with “Bia, Bia Lite Ban” (“Hush, Hush Little Child”), another tender Norwegian lullaby. Steve Martland’s cheerful, 1997 “Make We Joy” was followed by a big, dissonant hand bell “chord (commentary?), then the ineffable “Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming” in the 1933 version by Hugo Distler. The choir processed to the left transept of the Chapel for Nally’s own “Christ Child’s Lullabye.” This lovely carol began with soprano solo and alternated contemporary harmonization with more polyphonic treatment. Following was William Chatterton Dix’s “What Child Is This?” in the 1971 arrangement by B. Brant Ruggles.

Composer Karl Hirten’s lovely “Child of Sweetness” (1992) saw the choir move through the pews to the right transept. There they sang Sir David Willcocks’ spellbinding arrangement of the Basque carol “Gabriel’s Message” and Gustav Holst’s serenely beautiful “”Lullay My Liking” (1916).

The singers were back in the chancel for “Silent Night” in the splendid 1992 arrangement by former Cincinnatian and CCM graduate J. David Moore (founder of a cappella group The Village Waytes). Clothed in new harmonies, the old favorite sounded re-vivified and as such, segued beautifully into a repeat of the lullaby “Bia Bia Lite Ban” and the final set, beginning with Edwin Fissinger’s “Love Came Down at Christmas” (1979). Herbert Howells’ 1918 “A Spotless Rose” (a setting of “Lo, How a Rose”) demonstrated yet again how a new treatment can transform a familiar one.

“The Infant King,” a lovely Basque carol arranged by Willcocks, ornamented with hand bells, brought the final set to a close. The recessional, “O Come Emmanuel,” followed, but with a surprise. It was as if the outside world with all its noise and confusion had suddenly broken in. After a unison “rejoice,” the singers rapidly took their leave by the outside aisles, each singing in canon with the others to create a chaotic din.

To ease the transition to the cold outside, there were snacks and drinks in the vestibule.

VAE’s next performance is in conjunction with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, a concert version of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,” March 18. For more information, visit vaecinci.org.

From “Sarcasms” to DSCH, the chamber ensemble concert:nova illuminated a painful period in history, Dec. 5, at Know Theater.

It was the Soviet era, seen through the eyes – and music – of two of Russia’s greatest composers, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The multi-media production, “Pieces in the Key of Silence,” marked a new collaboration between concert:nova (c:n) and Michael Burnham, professor of drama at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM). Burnham has previously worked with c:n on programs focusing on composers Arnold Schoenberg and Gustav Mahler. Assisted by CCM professor Steven Cahn, Burnham assembled the text from journalistic and biographical materials, as well as poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Ossip Mandelstam, Anna Ahmatova, Sasha Cherny and others.

Performing the roles of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, respectively, were dancer/choreographers Stephen Jacobsen and Jimmy Cunningham. Both are members of the corps de ballet for Cincinnati Ballet and participated with c:n in the new Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts in October. (Interestingly, Cunningham was Prokofiev on that occasion in the world premiere choreography of Prokofiev’s Quintet, Op. 39.)

The Know stage area was bare save for chairs, music stands and a piano. A drape lit with color (blue) provided the backdrop. A trio of Soviet apparatchiks – actors Will Kiley, Ellie Jameson and Callie Schuttera, who also narrated and spoke the composers’ lines – introduced Prokofiev. Kiley (in the words of Aaron Copland): “Prokofiev? He was friendly, but not an easy guy to talk to. He was boyish, easily bored, even impolite at times. He was very bright and outspoken.” Pianist Albert Mühlböck began the musical program with excerpts from Prokofiev’s “Sarcasms,” Op. 17 (1912-14), and “Visions Fugitives,” Op. 22 (1915-17).

Dating from Prokofiev’s early to mid-twenties, both works reflect the brash, bold young composer, who, flushed with success, could say (Jameson): “I care nothing for politics. I am a composer. Any government that lets me write my music in peace, publishes everything I compose . . . and performs every note that comes from my pen is all right with me.” Beginning with “Tempestoso” from “Sarcasms,” a percussive, polytonal movement, Mühlböck evoked the rebel not yet brought down by the system. As Prokofiev, Jacobsen danced with confidence, exertion and considerable flair (both dancers choreographed their parts).

The apparatchiks provided a recurring commentary on all that took place during the evening: “All in the name of progress. All just to make things better.”

It was Shostakovich’s turn next. Cunningham looked the part, up to the round, wire-rimmed glasses he wore, maintaining the tip-lipped seriousness associated with the composer and dancing with lightness and agility. The c:n quartet, violinists Anna Reider and Heidi Yenney, violist Joanne Wojtowicz and cellist Ted Nelson, performed the first movement (Moderato) of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 1, Op. 49 (1938), a conservative work in the Russian tradition, without the modernity exhibited by most of his earlier music.

Mühlböck closed the first half powerfully with the second and third movements of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8. (1944). The scenario was now conflict, with the three apparatchiks surrounding Jacobsen, who pushed them away with a sneer on his face. Apparatchik (Kiley): “You are a brave man, they tell me.” Prokofiev (Schuttera): “I tried to say what I thought loud enough to be heard.” All: “A time will come to have done with those strange times when a man who was simply honest was called brave.”

The famous denunciation of Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” followed intermission. In 1936, Pravda published a scathing review of the opera that put the composer on notice that his life could be in danger. (“This is a game of unintelligibility than can end in tears,” read the review.) Then, isolating Shostakovich further, his friend Ivan Sollertinsky died. To set the scene, Mühlböck, Reider and Nelson performed the Largo from Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor (1944). To make it even more poignant, Cunningham danced with Sollertinsky’s corpse (Jacobsen).

The stage lighting blazed red to illustrate the next blow for the composers, the 1948 decree by the Central Committee of the Communist Party, censuring them for “anti-revolutionary, anti-people formalism.” Prokofiev showed his coolness by talking during Andrei Zhdanov’s speech. Shostakovich wrote a letter of contrition, later telling his friends (Kiley): “I read like a wretch, a parasite, a puppet, a cut-out paper doll hanging on a string.”

Then it was March 5, 1953, the day both Prokofiev and Stalin died (all attention was paid to Stalin). As a kind of latter-day tribute, Nelson and Mühlböck performed the melodic, cheerful Andante grave from the composer’s Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 119 (1948). Jacobsen danced affectingly here, with some awe-inspiring spins and jumps, then was carried off in death by the three apparatchiks.

In 1960, Shostakovich was forced to join the Communist Party. The evening’s real threnody took place here, with the string quartet performing his Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110 (1960). The work is pervaded by Shostakovich’s motto figure, DSCH (D, E-flat, C, B in German transliteration). According to his friend Lev Lebedinsky (Schuttera), Shostakovich intended it to be his final work and to kill himself after completing it.

Led with intensity by Reider, the quartet’s playing was touching, gripping and deeply felt, all reflected in Cunningham’s sensitive choreography. Both in struggling with the apparatchiks and solo, he seemed to be dancing himself to death. At one point, he made dramatic grasping motions, reaching out for something, then pulling it to his chest. The lights

turned purple as the hammer blows of the fourth movement (Largo) began. During the poignant cello solo heard here (Nelson), he danced briefly with Schuttera (Shostakovich’s daughter?). As the Quartet came to its heartbreaking end, he took off his glasses and curled up on the floor in front of the musicians.

The apparatchiks had the last (rueful) word: “Let’s drink to this – that things don’t get any better.”

The next concert by concert:nova is “Shut Up and Play the Zappa,” an introduction to Frank Zappa the classical composer, January 22 at 8 p.m. at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley. Information at www.concertnova.com

The inaugural Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts has met its own ambitious expectations. With 11 of its 13 concerts history as Express goes to press, the festival has experienced overall good attendance, especially for a new endeavor. Saxophonist Ted Nash’s concert at Blue Wisp was a sellout for both shows. Admittedly, turnout for the festival opener, violinist Hilary Hahn at Memorial Hall, was not what it should have been, and there was only a spotty crowd for Alexander Toradze and his Piano Studio in Corbett Theater at the Erich Kunzel Center for Arts and Education. However, without exception, the festival delivered lavishly on its artistic promise.
As befits any successful festival, there were stars, including Hahn, oboist Liang Wang, male soprano Michael Maniaci and saxophonist Ted Nash (with Joshua Bell closing the festival Nov. 8). Toradze did not perform, save for a part in a six-hand Rachmaninoff Romance, frustrating some expectations, but his students were exceptional. Having partnered with several other arts organizations, most in their season openers, Constella included other outstanding artists, such as pianist Menahem Pressler (Linton Music Series) and the St. Lawrence String Quartet (Chamber Music Cincinnati).
As also befits a festival, there were world premieres. Thirteen selections from “The Hilary Hahn Encores,” a set of 27 short pieces she will introduce over the next two seasons, gave considerable note to her concert, as did Nash’s “Suite Ivette” for double quartet (jazz and string quartets), commissioned by Constella itself. Also receiving their world premieres were “Ancient Machines” by Matthew Browne for saxophone quartet (Classical Revolution) and world premiere choreographies by members of Cincinnati Ballet and Exhale Dance Tribe to Prokofiev’s Quintet, Op. 39, and Astor Piazzolla’s “Histoire du Tango.”
Constella’s multi-media dimension was a big plus. Well presented and attended were art exhibits by Brazee Street Studios and Fifth Street Galleries, both of which helped give the festival an exciting “now” aspect (there will be an exhibit by Stewart Goldman at Bell’s concert). The Festival visited numerous Cincinnati venues, including Mayerson and Corbett Theaters in the Kunzel Center and the Blue Wisp Jazz Club, all with favorable results. Best of all, it has spurred collaboration among local arts groups, to the mutual benefit of all.
As for what the festival could do better, a chief concern should be ticket sales. It was difficult to understand and negotiate purchases at the Constella web site (www.constellafestival.org). Also, only the six concerts presented by Constella itself – Hahn, Liang Wang, concert:nova, Toradze and his Studio, Ted Nash and Joshua Bell – could be purchased at the Constella site, and it was perhaps unclear that a Constella Pass was good for those six, but no others. Tickets for the other seven concerts – by CMC, Linton, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players, Vocal Arts Ensemble, Classical Revolution and CCO – had to be purchased individually from those organizations.
The Constella Festival program book was a beauty: 74 pages with color photographs spread over opposite pages and copious program notes. There were Constella representatives at each concert to answer questions, and Festival founder Tatiana Berman greeted the audience before each one.
Absolute highlights? For this listener, Hahn, Toradze’s Studio, Maniaci, Nash, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Linton and VAE. On to Constella 2012. 

“Giselle” takes as the inspiration for its ghostly story a poem by the Romantic German author Heinrich Heine. With music by “Oh, Holy Night’s” Adolphe Adam, the work was first presented in 1841 Paris. Marius Petipa later revised its choreography for the Imperial Russian Ballet in the final days of the 19th century. That reworking has served well many a modern production of this large-scale, 168 year-old ballet.

“Giselle” tells the story of a village girl who dies heartbroken after being jilted by Duke Albrecht, a nobleman who disguises himself as a peasant, seduces and then abandons her. The Wilis – spirits of girls who were similarly deceived by men, roam the woods around the village in search of guilty cads like Albrecht, who are meted their punishment by being made to dance until they fall down dead. This is pure 19th century Romantic ballet, a world of painted backdrops, merry dancing peasants, benevolent aristocrats and haunted moonlit nights.

“Giselle” is to ballerinas what Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is to actors – an artistic triathlon that can either be a banquet served on a silver platter or a disaster-in-the-making. For the title part, a dancer is needed who can play the innocent village girl at the start of the first act, then break our hearts in her mad scene, and still later return as an other-worldly spirit in act two.

On Friday night, Janessa Touchet danced the title role with vibrancy and flair. An immensely gifted young dancer, she portrayed her part with both style and youthful energy, unstintingly executing all the difficult jumps and pirouettes demanded by the choreography and shining in the second act’s duet with Albrecht.
Guest artist Pavel Gurevich played Duke Albrecht. He is both a premier “danseur” with all the necessary athleticism and gravity-defying daring needed for the role, and a fine actor who put across his transformation from callous nobleman in Act I to repentant lover in Act II with sincerity.

Dawn Kelly and Cervilio Miguel Amador danced the Peasant “pas de deux,” replete with air-borne leaps, quick turns and humorous charm, showing them both as young stars-in-the-making. The important roles of Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis and Hilarion were respectively performed on Friday night by the lovely Gema Diaz with lots of regal presence and rock-solid attitudes and Zack Grubbs, a terrific character dancer and actor.

The company’s youthful corps de ballet, augmented by several new company members, was impressively disciplined, earning strong applause for both the men and women in the peasant scenes of Act I and the perfectly synchronized Wilis sequences of Act II, where the women danced with lyricism and strength to Devon Carney’s note-perfect staging and choreography.

With the CSO in the pit and Carmon DeLeone firm command of the score, the Cincinnati Ballet brought musical strength to its production of “Giselle.” Now in its 45th anniversary season, the company, under the artistic leadership of Victoria Morgan takes large-scale classical and modern ballets and does them with class and dignity.

There are two remaining performances of “Giselle” today: 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. at Music Hall.

Tickets: 621-5282 or www.cballet.org. Students with valid ID and Seniors (over 60) may purchase tickets at 50% off in person starting 2 hours prior to show time.

Rafael de Acha was born in Cuba, where he grew up watching the great Alicia Alonso dance on the stage of Havana’s Teatro Auditorium. He’s now retired and living in Cincinnati after a forty-year career in the arts.

Music is for life.

How clear this is, and how heart-warming, when you hear someone like pianist Menahem Pressler.

Pressler, 87, founding member of the legendary Beaux Arts Trio (now disbanded), made his debut on Cincinnati’s Linton Chamber Music Series Oct. 23 at First Unitarian Church in Avondale. A member of the faculty of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, Pressler performed with violinist Alexander Kerr, violist Paul Neubauer and cellist Eric Kim. Kerr, former concertmaster of both the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, is also on the IU faculty, as is Kim, former principal cellist of the CSO. Neubauer, who also made his Linton debut, performs for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They made an arresting ensemble.

A full house was in place for the concert, which was held in conjunction with the inaugural Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts.

On the program were piano quartets by Mozart, Joaquin Turina and Dvorak, plus an encore and a generous insert by Pressler. The insert was Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. posth., performed in honor of Anne Black, Linton board member and former president, who was presented a plaque following intermission. (Black did not know Pressler would perform, she said, slightly overwhelmed by the tribute.)

Mozart’s Quartet in G Minor, K.478 (1785), demonstrated the ensemble’s strengths right away. Pressler took delight in aligning his performance with the strings, lines were discrete, and Kerr and Neubauer’s tone quality blended so well that in the middle register, one might mistake one for the other.

Spanish composer Joaquin Turina’s Quartet in A Minor, Op.67 (1933), delivered a healthy dose of Andalusian flavor. Kerr phrased the opening theme graciously, while Kim’s solo moment against “icy” string tremolo (Kerr and Neubauer playing sul ponticello or “on the bridge”) later in the movement was hauntingly evocative. The second movement (Vivo) began pizzicato, like a big guitar, and Kerr put a touch of bravado into the cadenza-like opening of the finale.

Dvorak’s Quartet for Piano and Strings in E-flat Major (1889) was heard after intermission. It is a big, expansive work with lots of melody and gesture. Again, Kerr displayed exquisite tone production, invariably matching his instrument to the musical moment. The second movement (Lento) overflowed with melody, beginning with a lengthy passage for cello, beautifully rendered by Kim. The endearing third movement (Allegro moderato, grazioso) gave way to a brilliant Finale, with high-spirited, well-matched playing by all.

Responding to a persistent standing ovation, the quartet performed the slow movement of Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor, a “love song,” said Pressler who, as he did all afternoon, invested lots of it in his playing.

For more information on future Linton Series performances, visit www.lintonmusic.org.

Donald Nally, music director of the Vocal Arts Ensemble since the fall of 2009, has taken the 24-voice professional choir in a new direction – straight ahead. From the great wealth of choral music available, he has chosen to focus on the music of our time, finding new and innovative ways to present it.

Such was “American Icons at 100,” performed by VAE and pianist Christopher Allen in collaboration with the Constella Festival of Music and Fine Arts Saturday (Oct. 22) in Memorial Hall. Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti were the icons. Born in 1910 and 1911, respectively, both reached their centenary marks during the past year.

Nally, who wrote the program notes and also addressed the audience from the stage, explained the reason for pairing them on the concert. Barber and Menotti met as students at the Curtis Institute of music in Philadelphia and lived together as partners for 40 years. Both received acclaim as composers (each won two Pulitzer Prizes). Both also knew rejection. Their neo-romantic style of composition fell into disfavor as contemporary music ventured into new directions. Each wrote a deathless classic, Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” Each experienced the pain of living alone and feeling forsaken.

Nally had a connection with both composers, he said, having written his doctoral dissertation on the relationship between words and music in Barber’s choral music, and served as director of choruses at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, which was founded by Menotti.

The texts chosen for the concert dwelt heavily on loneliness and disappointment. There were brighter spots, but underneath most of them lay a feeling of loss. The concert opened with Barber’s best known song, “Sure on this shining night” (1938), a gorgeous “presentation” of VAE, Cincinnati’s (and the region’s) finest chorus. With its mixture of pathos and reflection, they wreathed James Agee’s poem in beauty.

The same could be said of the Twelfth Madrigal from Menotti’s 1956 “The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore” (performed in its entirety by VAE under Earl Rivers in 2008). Though written during the height of his popularity, it could have been a prediction of the future: An artist says goodbye on his deathbed to three creatures that represent the work of his youth, mid-life and old age. All have been successively scorned by the townspeople, yet the Artist dies full of love for all.

Openly autobiographical, Menotti’s “Landscapes and Remembrances” (1976) was written as he was leaving the U.S. to live in Scotland. Two movements were performed: “The Sky of Departure,” reflections on leaving America, included a full-voiced, heart-wrenching ”America, goodbye” by the chorus. The unresolved “A Subway Ride in Chicago” conjured the loneliness of passengers unknown to each other. Soloists from the VAE, soprano Samantha Stein, alto Debra van Engen, tenor Anthony Beck and bass Jonathan Stinson, made distinguished contributions.

“Agnus Dei” from Menotti’s “Missa O Pulchritudo” (1979), with soprano YoonGeong Lee, alto Jennifer Trombley, tenor M. Andrew Jones and bass Wesley Brax, was nothing less than anguished, with its repeats of “dona nobis pacem” (“Grant us peace”) and conclusion on a dismal, dissonant interval.

Conveying greater hope were Barber’s “Twelfth Night” (1968) which moved from dark to light, and his “Regina caeli” (1990), which concluded with a big, affirmative “Alleluia.” Barber’s a capella “Reincarnations” (1939-40 on verses by Irish poet James Stephens) offered a contrast, with the bright, enthusiastic “Mary Hynes” (a love poem) and “Anthony O’Daly,” a funeral dirge, that plunged at the end to a soft, hollow unison on “grief.”

Three movements from Barber’s cantata “The Lovers” (1971), a late work on poems by Pablo Neruda, originally for baritone, chorus and orchestra, were heard as arranged for chorus and piano. “Cemetery of Kisses” (Neruda’s “A Song of Despair”) was shattering, with a particularly hard “k” by the singers on the word “shipwreck” and a disconsolate ending (“O farther than everything? It is the hour of departure”).

One of the most touching works on the program was the concluding “To Be Sung on the Water” (1968) by Barber (from “The Blue Estuaries” by Louise Bogan). The interplay of the men’s and women’s voices was “picturesque” here, seeming to capture the motion of waves against the boat (men) and the lover’s goodbye (women).

Enough cannot be said of pianist Allen, who lent color and drama to all he did throughout the concert.

VAE’s next performances are December 10 and 11 – their annual holiday concert. For more info: www.vaecinci.org.