Music vs. Theater

It's cooler with the projections...

Regular readers of this blog know that I have a taste for the surreal and irrational in theater.  What they may not know is that I happen to have a degree in computer science.  My wife knowing both those facts (either that or she got REALLY lucky) brought my attention to a show opening in NY this week that was described as the biography/fever-dream of one of the founders of computer science, Alan Turing.

Playwright Snoo Wilson shows excellent choice in subject material. Alan Turing’s life is operatic in its trajectory right out of the box, from the early mathematical successes at King’s College, Cambridge through his heroic breaking of German naval codes during WWII, to the tragic unraveling of his life due to his homosexuality and his ultimate suicide.  Wilson connects the strands of this tragic biography with a host of fanciful theatrical inventions, most predominantly the interjection of Turing’s beloved Porgy Bear into almost every area of his life as confidant, advisor, narrator, protector – a sort of deus ex ursa. Alex Draper as Turing and Tara Giordano as Porgy the Bear are the only actors on stage who maintain their roles throughout the show, the rest of the ensemble playing multiple roles (although in a clever turn, while the other actors play different characters in name, they each play consistant roles in Turing’s life, Alex Cranmer as the Father/Bully/Drill Sergeant, Peter B. Schmitz as the Mentor/Schoolmaster/Colleague, Nina Silver as the Mother/Judge, Cassidy Boyd as the Boyhood Lover/Fantasy Lover).

The challenge in biographical works, Read the rest of this entry →

Reviewed:
Letter from Linda (Alden Jenks, text:Frank Polite)
Sutter Creek (Robert Denham)
Medea Alone (David Garner)
Theresa Kren (Mark Narins)
The Hunger Art (Jeff Myers, text: Royce Vavrek)

A recurring theme in this blog seems to be how hard it is to get people to care about new music or theater.  An artist blows hundreds of hours creating something, it gets performed once (maybe twice if they’re lucky), some friends and family may mumble some befuddled congratulations, but more often then not, the tree falls in an rather empty forest.

I believe that composers want feedback, preferably positive, but barring the most thin skinned of temperaments, negative feedback would be preferable to the icy silence that accompanies most new works.  Well considered, articulate, direct and honest feedback is perhaps the best gift you can give an artist. In that spirit I decided to write a bit about the works presented by Goat Hall’s Tenth Annual Fresh Voices festival last weekend.

Read the rest of this entry →

The judge has spoken and the winners have been announced. (I was kinda hoping that Jonas Kaufmann would record this momentous announcement in rich Wagnerian tenor in a full orchestral setting).

With almost 1000 entries, narrowing the field to 5 winners was surely a daunting task and there was no doubt that many worthy entries would be passed over. The decision was bound to be a highly subjective one, depending largely on the sensibilities of the judge and his/her own sense of humor.

By almost any measure, Kaufmann has shown himself to have very conservative tastes. The winning entries are largely straightforward summarizations with the only the gentlest of twists. The most “modern” opera is Elektra (1909). It appears that Kaufmann had little appreciation for anachronism, post-modernism, or any pop culture references at all (with the exception of Daniel John Kelley’s txt-speak paraphrasing of Eugene Onegin). Based on these selections, I would guess that were Kaufmann to take a Meyers-Briggs test, he would test very high on the Sensing (as opposed to the iNtuiting) axis.

As a result, there are easily dozens of very clever entries that are going unnoticed, and that’s a shame. I’ve done pretty well myself (the extra effort of recording the Oedipus #operaplot paid off with a “Best creative use of an #operaplot” mention and my Gen-Yers misunderstanding of La Boheme was appreciated by the folks over at the English National Orchestra) but many of my favorite entries from other #operaplotters have been tragically overlooked. Regular readers know I have a deep appreciation for the ironic and the post-modern (and a complicated love-hate relationship with genre mashing). I rank so far on the iNtuitive axis that I have a hard time even making conversation with Sensors (my own wife is an N, and problems still pop up because she’s JUST NOT N ENOUGH DAMMIT!) Clearly my list of the five strongest #operaplots would look quite different. In fact, it would look more similar to the five randomly selected #operaplots that received Decca CDs than Kaufmann’s official list!

So, my fellow ironists, satirists, and post-modernists, I solemnly commit myself  to attaining a level of professional fame and notoriety sufficient to  reach the exalted position of #operaplot judge so that your ironic, satirical, and post-modern #operaplot entries can receive the recognition that they deserve!

Alpha blogger/critic/author/MacArthur grant recipient Alex Ross was in town Saturday to support his comprehensive examination of the twentieth century through music, The Rest Is Noise, and probably to prime the pump for his second book, Listen to This.   (Thanks to Amanda Ameer’s Life’s A Pitch blog for giving me the heads up.)

Ross’s book is a great read, and I’ll resist my impulse to throw in the usual adjectives here (“insightful”, “enlightening”, “thorough”) since they’ve all been used in myriad other reviews of the book from more qualified pens (laptops?).

For this live appearance, Mr. Ross would read a selection from the book about a composer, and pianist Ethan Iverson would then perform a brief selection from that composer, sort of like a companion CD that you’re actually forced to listen to while reading, instead of leaving it sealed the little plastic sleeve since you’re too lazy to walk over to your CD player and chances are you’re not reading the book in your house anyway.

So rather than a review, here’s a disconnected set of semi-coherent observations. (What do you expect, this is a blog).

• The Herbst Theater was about two thirds full, which seems reasonable for a 10 am program on a Saturday (featuring all 20th century music, no less).  From their reactions it seemed like most of the audience hadn’t read the book and were hearing the anecdotes for the first time.
• Sometimes the text was clearly designed to be on the page and was a little hard to track in spoken form. However, this was easily compensated for by the entertainment value of Ross reading quotes from Theodor Adorno and Louise Downes in their own voices, or at least plausible approximations. Well.  Approximations.
• Limiting the musical illustrations to solo piano works greatly reduces the timbral palette of the composers in question.  For Gershwin and Jelly Roll Morton (and to a lesser extent Bartok) this works out OK, but presents a distorted picture of composers like Ives, Webern, and Ligeti.
• Schoenberg’s Op 11 sounded jazzier than I had ever realized. After familiarizing myself more with Ethan Iverson’s work with The Bad Plus that made a lot more sense.  (I’ll definitely be digging through their recordings for more examples of transformative cover songs.  It looks like the Punch Brothers aren’t the only ones with a penchant for reinterpreting Radiohead.)
• Iverson’s Allegro Barbaro may have been the least barbaro allegro I have ever heard. I don’t know if this was a choice or if Iverson has the same aversion to being awake at 10 am as I do. Some of those repeated clusters sounded more like Debbusy than Bartok!
• Ross spends more time with jazz than most “serious” music authors, making the argument that jazz follows a parallel track with classical music, “… Armstrong the originator, Ellington the classicist, Charlie Parker the revolutionary, and so on.”  One (perhaps superficial) observation that supports this view is that I find in both Parker’s melodies and twelve tone “melodies” a similar interchangeability.  The melodies of Orinthology, Anthropology, and Moose the Mooch all kinda blend into each other.  There is a similarity in character and idiom. I find that much (but certainly not all) twelve tone music has a similar indistinguishability (especially when limited to the tonal palette of the piano, see above.)
• I’m surprised that Ross didn’t make a larger point that the Babbitt Semi-Simple Variations and the Shostakovich Prelude in E Minor were composed within FIVE YEARS of each other! Few people realize that Babbitt and Shostakovich were contemporaries and these pieces wouldn’t clue anyone in on that surprising fact.  Hearing one right after the other is a remarkable illustration of… umm… the impermeability of the iron curtain?  The vast stylistic upheavals afoot in the fifties? The stifling effect of authoritarianism?  I dunno.  I’ll happily leave that one to the guy with the MacArthur grant.
• The Ligeti was so damn fun! Why? I think it may be cuz he got rhythm. I’m starting to think that people misunderstand the source of inaccessibility in twelve tone music. The challenge isn’t the atonality, it’s the lack of any perceivable rhythmic structures.  There’s no pulse.  No groove. But people always seem to focus on the harmonic method, the atonality.
• As a finale, Iverson improvised two modern pieces based upon a series of individual pitches yelled out by the audience.  My favorite (unintentionally) funny response was “F minor” (a key, not a pitch, for the non-theoretically inclined).  My least favorite (unintentionally) UN-funny response was “E double flat” (an inherently annoying pitch, for the non-theoretically inclined).  Sometimes a little knowledge is a bad thing. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little pleased by Ross’s relief when I yelled out a plaintive “C”!
• Iverson’s improvised pieces were convincing and felt right at home with much of the music we had heard all morning.  Which… if ya think about it… is a little unsettling.

The morning was well worth it. My only regret was not bringing my copy to get signed. Oh…and not getting my picture taken with the author for this blog. Maybe I could have wrangled a shout out like the one he gave fellow Bay Area bloggers Sid Chen and Lisa Hirsch. I gotta work on that promotion thing.

OK.  I’ve got to run off to tonight’s rehearsal for Emmeline up at Cinnabar Opera Theater.  More on that later.  And I haven’t forgotten about the third movement of the string quartet. The program notes are mostly written, I just need to get the illustrations made up. And then… world domination!

I just got home from the the San Francisco International Film Festival where they awarded animator Don Hertzfeldt their (somewhat cloyingly named) “Persistence of Vision” award. The presentation featured a 90 minute long selection of his works followed by a (too) brief question and answer session.

I had already seen almost all of the films that were screened.  Billy’s Balloon still brings tears to my eyes, even if it does go on for about 45 seconds too long (it’s a student film, what do you expect?). His latest work (Everything Will Be OK, and I Am So Proud Of You, the first two chapters of an eventual trilogy) is vastly more ambitious. Hertzfeldt has proven himself to be much more than a one gag film maker. He’s adapted his surreal, non-sequitor sensibilities to tell aching stories of isolation, regret, and possibly insanity. This is a far cry from the usual Sick and Twisted gross out fare that surrounded his earliest films. The fact that neither of these films received Academy Award nominations is further evidence of the questionable worth of that category.

His short Rejected (which WAS nominated for an Academy Award) features some very non-invisible film making. The first two thirds of the piece are typical of his early work, surreal, a bit shocking, and very funny. But in the last minutes of the piece, we start to see Hertzfeldt develop into a much more serious filmmaker.  The very medium that the characters inhabit starts to turn against them. The paper is torn, crumpled, as the fabric of their existence is threatened. One particularly haunting image is of two stick characters banging at the paper as if it was a window trapping them in. It’s shocking and scary and brilliant.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQqSVrkkag

Hertzfeldt possessed a charmingly awkward stage presence as he discussed his work, occasionally breaking into surreal anecdotes about classmates chopping off bits of their digits in elementary school art class, or being mistaken for Johnny Depp while sneaking into a Monty Python reunion. He discussed how he became an animator (he wanted to do live action, but live action uses more film stock than animation which made it too expensive), past projects (an ill fated feature for a big studio) and future projects (finishing up the trilogy and then possibly a non-studio feature!)

It’s kinda amazing. Don Hertzfeldt has managed to create a living for himself solely by selling DVDs of his self produced animations, ancillary products, and speaking fees. He doesn’t do any commercial work at all (although if Kellogg’s had any integrity whatsoever they’d send him a check for each Pop Tart they sell).  How many animators can say that? How many filmmakers can say that?

There’s a lot to like in Marcus Gardley’s …And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, a co-production of Playwright’s Foundation and Cutting Ball Theater. There’s a top notch cast, a beautiful set, gorgeous integration of very well sung spirituals, and more than a few breathtaking moments. It is, perhaps, an embarrassment of riches, and at the risk of appearing an ingrate, I can’t help but wish that the playwright had spent a bit more time honing these moments into a leaner, more focused piece.

Gardley knows he’s throwing a lot at us; he calls his piece a gumbo, a melange of characters and situations, a cross between storytelling and dream poem. The narrative is loosely based on the Demeter myth set towards the end of the Civil War. In the original, the earth goddess Demeter walks the earth to rescue her daughter Persephone, who has become the queen of Hades (it’s unclear how interested Persephone is in being rescued). Read the rest of this entry →

Disclaimer – this essay doesn’t have a lot to do with nudity or sex. The title and photo are there to draw your attention to a topic that you may otherwise find fairly dry and uninteresting, even though I happen to care about it a lot. Specifically this is an essay about how opera survives drastic restagings and reinterpretations, and the dichotomy of form and content. While sex and nudity are discussed, this is still a bait and switch technique, and as much as I resent such marketing tricks and believe they cheapen the content they try to promote, those sensationalistic tricks really do work.  At least in the short term. (Just ask Calixto Bieito.  Or the folks who market his productions. More on him in a bit.)

Read the rest of this entry →

Yeah.  I know it’s not news. I’m used to the best film not winning, but it really galls me when the WORST film nominated gets the prize. Sure, none of the nominated films were all that great, but jeesh, what was the Academy thinking?

Logorama is really the best animated short film of the year?

Heck, when I saw it I couldn’t believe it was even nominated. I mean, really? This poorly crafted one-note gag filled with drooling dialogue and despicable characters (actually, I can’t even call them characters, since that would imply that some effort at characterization was apparent) was almost unwatchable. There was one high concept “we create a world constructed entirely of LOGOs!  Get it?!  It will be like Where’s Waldo but with trademarks.  Oh how clever we are.” But they skipped the part where they found some compelling reason for this world to exist or why we would want to be there.  Or develop anything resembling characters we should care about.  Or any reason for us to be invested in any outcome.  Or any sense of actions having any consequence at all. It’s just a random smattering of profanity, violence, and “oh look, we can use a Stop and Shop logo as a traffic light! Where’s my MacArthur grant?”

So to do my part to banish the bad juju surrounding this collective lapse of reason, I’d like to share a 10 minute animation that is a lovely antidote to the 15 minutes of screen poop that won the Oscar.

Read the rest of this entry →