Music vs. Theater

I’ve been doing a lot of composing so far this year. In addition to an encore for the Hilary Hahn competition (which didn’t result in an honorable mention, but did result in a pretty cool piece for violin and piano), I’ve been chugging away on the solo opera that’s been a good four years in the making. I’ve got a solid chunk of 50 minutes of music (i.e. 50 milliWagners) composed, which is about two thirds of the final piece.

I’m going to perform that 50 minute chunk as part of the Solo Sunday performance series at Stage Werx. If you’re in San Francisco next weekend, please come on by.

Today’s blog entry in Deceptive Cadence echos a theme of my Voice Box radio show with Chloe Veltman and the corresponding conversation on Lisa Hirsch’s blog. Specifically, musical taste, both what you love and despise, is often more about self identification, ego, and image than it is about the music at hand. Some of the comments (predictably, this is an NPR blog after all) argue that opera is clearly more worthy since singers dedicate decades of their lives and thousands of dollars to honing their craft. But even that argument buys into it’s own narrative of ‘hard work and dedication’ over the narrative of ‘overcoming a hostile environment through self promotion’ prevalent in rap. (Although I’m veering dangerously close to a cultural relativism war that I’m ill-equipped for.)

I know which I prefer (even though I dislike most opera). But of course I would. And even those who loudly extoll the virtues of both wear their eclecticism on their sleeves. To paraphrase Buckaroo Banzai, No matter what you like, there you are.

The Australian Broadcasting Company recently released a list of the “Top 100 Classical Pieces of the 20th Century.”  As with any list, there is much fodder for discussion, debate and derision (judging from this list, Stravinsky apparently stopped composing after 1913). Blogger, pianist, and educator Elissa Milne was particularly disturbed by the complete omission of Sondheim’s work, particularly considering the inclusion of Bernstein’s West Side Story in the top 20.

Now I love Sondheim’s work with a fiery passion. My first exposure to Sweeney Todd in middle school forever altered my understanding of musical theater and its possibilities. The most viewed posts on this blog are in depth analysis of his works. Stephen Sondheim is no slouch. However, I find that his exclusion from this list of classical works, even in light of West Side Story‘s inclusion, makes perfect sense. There is something inherently more classical about West Side Story than any of Sondheim’s work.

In my admittedly unconvincing responses to Elissa’s tweets, character challenged as they were, I pointed out that West Side Story is more suited for the concert hall with symphonic suites and adaptations, and that there are nothing like the ballets of West Side Story in Sondheim’s work (with the exception of the “Cookie Chase” in Anyone Can Whistle, which seems, like of much that piece, rather self conscious). But these are more symptoms than causes. The real reasons that Sondheim’s works are inherently unclassical is also their primary strengths. I would characterize these strengths as a combination of specificity and inviolability.

The beauty of Sondheim’s music and lyrics are that they are Read the rest of this entry →

Stare at image for 2 hours. Intermission. Resume staring.

Somewhere imprinted in my brain is a sacred rule of story: take only as much time as you need to get an idea across. Get in, make your point, get out. Keep things moving and don’t lose your audience. But this week in New York two separate pieces, both non-narrative, reduced me to tears by combining a staggeringly slow pace with one or two immense gestures of inspired stagecraft that hit at just the right moment.

SPOILER ALERT – the unexpected nature of these gestures contributed much to their impact. If you plan on seeing either of the pieces discussed, reading this essay could well rob you of that discovery. Shen Wei often tours the country and you almost certainly have a great opportunity to see Satyagraha on screen in your local movie theater this Wednesday, Dec 7 via the Met’s Live in HD program. Perhaps go see the work and then come back and read this.

The Shen Wei Dance Company performed an evening of works adapted or created  for the mammoth Park Avenue Armory space. Read the rest of this entry →

This is not the morning thing you're looking for...

Composer Robert Ashley’s “opera” (experimental performance piece is a more appropriate name, although if an opera is a multifaceted convolution of music, text, and motion, I suppose this is an opera) That Morning Thing, produced for the first time in 40 years at The Kitchen as part of the Performa 11 biennial, is among the most difficult pieces I’ve experienced. It’s dark. Dark in a way that I wasn’t expecting, dark in a visceral, what the heck just happened to me, I didn’t sign up for this kinda dark. This isn’t (necessarily) a bad thing. But it is a thing that is likely to stick with me for a while. What follows is less a review as it is an effort to come to terms with what I saw and how I responded to it.

Please note, a work like this is bound to be understood in a very subjective manner (if any attempt is made to understand it at all). I make no claims at all that my thoughts are in any way informed, intelligent, or even coherent. Whether my experience with the piece has anything to do with the composers intention is difficult to know, but recording my response may be helpful to myself, or anyone else wrestling with the piece.

The piece starts out innocuously enough. Read the rest of this entry →

If you’re in San Francisco tonight and interested in hearing some brand new music, swing by Counterpulse at 7:30 to hear a brief excerpt of the latest from my solo opera Failing That.

The section I’ll be performing was composed in the past few months and shows the early scenes involving a middle school student struggling to survive his physical education class.

The music is truly straddling opera and musical theater with a bit more emphasis on the musical theater tradition than I expected. And the good news is, even after listening to it non stop for a week, I really like it. There are equal parts Sondheim, Stravinsky, and (if you know my tastes, you’ll know how shocking this part is) even Rachmaninoff!

I have to credit Bruce Pachtman for encouraging me to sign up for these workshops at regular intervals. They force me to write new music and also forces the work to get up on stage before an audience. This gives me a chance to see how it works as theater, whether some parts are slow or confusing (or really hard to memorize). The next workshop will be in mid January as part of Bruce’s Solo Sundays series at Stage Werx, and if I can stay focused throughout the holiday season, I may be able to perform the first 50 minutes of the opera in its entirety!

But first things first. I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon memorizing and rehearsing for tonight. Hope to see you there.

Words First at Counterpulse

1310 Mission Street

Wednesday Nov 2, 7:30

Buy tickets

After four years of filling the taverns and pubs of NYC with the sounds of Wagner and Verdi, Opera On Tap seems to be opening a San Francisco chapter. An audition has been announced on Facebook (hosted by local soprano/neuroscientist/miracle-debunker Indre Viskontas) and the Opera On Tap website has an as-of-yet unpopulated page for a San Francisco chapter. The invitation claims that the first concert will be August 27th at Cafe Royale.

Opera On Tap’s classical opera in casual settings is exactly the sort of non-traditional presentation that Classical Revolution has been doing with chamber music. There are certainly many fine singers in this town and I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the group to start up something out here. I’ve been to a couple of events in NY (mostly through my friend Natalie Wilson as well as their Opera Grows in Brooklyn co-productions with American Opera Projects) and they will be a welcome addition to the music scene here.

Early on in the week, based upon a few tweets from chambermusiciantoday and Sequenza21, I checked out Elodie Lauten’s ‘new’ opera The Death of Don Juan (apparently it originated in the 80s, but this is the first staging and it was radically overhauled). The timing was right, I was going to be in the neighborhood, and at only $15, it seemed worth taking a chance on.

The performance was, in short, underwhelming. It was scrappy and independent with rough edges and some questionable Read the rest of this entry →

My fellow singing waiter Mark Hernandez notified me (and all his other Facebook friends) of this cutting “dark bio” from regional opera performer Robert Orth:

Robert Orth’s “Dark Biograpy”

While it’s tongue in cheek (and damn funny) it offers an honest glance into the not-so-glamorous life of most working musicians that’s much more common than the still-not-as-glamorous-as-you-might-think lives of the brand name soloists in the classical music world. Consider the countless hours of practice and numbers of auditions Mr Orth had to endure to get to even this level, then realize how many fail to even get this far, and you can see why any father worth his salt would encourage alternative means of getting by.

But we do it anyway. Because, for the most part, it’s a lot of fun. And if we’re really lucky we get to participate in something amazing, perhaps even enduring. And sometimes, even if it’s neither amazing nor enduring, even if it’s getting paid to sing the same Puccini aria you’ve sung dozens of times before, while wearing a name tag and polyester apron and pretending to be a waiter at an annual reward dinner for the regional association of  morticians, the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd, genuinely appreciative of  the talents and skills you’re sharing, will make it all worthwhile.

Jake Heggie is kind of a big deal. If his own story were made into an opera, it would be laughed off as contrived and unbelievable (even more so than most opera plots). A working stiff writing copy in the PR department of a national opera gets noticed by the right people and is launched to superstardom (by opera standards) by a series of highly successful commissions. But amazingly this story is true. From his first commission, Dead Man Walking, and to his recent triumph with Moby Dick, Heggie is one of a handful of living composers who actually get to see their operas produced multiple times.

Last night the San Francisco Opera hosted an interactive workshop with Jake Heggie as part of their Adult Education program. The stated goal of the workshop was to explore the evolution of new opera, focusing on the adaptation of existing works. Read the rest of this entry →