Archives for September 2009

Why is it that no one thinks twice of adapting classic plays to suit certain ensembles and aesthetic predilections in the theatre, whereas the idea of creating new versions of canonical works from classical music repertoire is often frowned upon?

On Saturday, I attended a concert given by the ever-innovative New Century Chamber Orchestra (music director Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, pictured left) which featured a program of re-envisioned takes for string orchestra on two works by J S Bach (“Chaconne” from Partita No. 2 for solo violin arranged by Mark Starr and Concerto for Violin in D minor transcribed by Robert Reitz from the draft of a harpsichord concerto written in about 1738) and Clarice Assad’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at a Exhibition for string orchestra, piano and a battalion of percussion instruments.

The friend I brought to the performance with me is wild about violinist Rachel Podger’s performance of the “Chaconne”. “It’s such a gobsmacking piece, why would anyone bother adapting it for orchestra?” he said, as we stood in line at intermission for drinks.

Why bother indeed?

While I wasn’t completely convinced by the Bach arrangements in the concert, which sounded stormily thick and full but lacked the lightness of touch that I love so much about Bach’s music, I valued all three works on the program for the “strangeness” factor. The “Chaconne” and Pictures at an Exhibition are both so well known that one can get stuck in one way of listening to them. Assad’s interpretation of Mussorgsky in particular helped me to hear the work in a completely new way — one that reminds us that Ravel’s version is simply a riff on an existing piece, not the definitive take.

I particularly loved the viola solo in “The Old Castle”. Anna Kruger’s playing was at once mournful and mystical. And the use of percussion — brought to life by Galen Lemmon — gave some of the movements, and the playful ones especially, an energy and ebullience that stretched beyond Ravel’s capabilities.

Skillful adaptations of canonical works need not always be viewed with derision or as interesting curios. Arrangement has been part of the language of music for thousands of years. In the pop world it’s standard. It should also be that way in the classical landscape.

The close-knittedness of the Bay Area performing arts community (and indeed of any community worth its salt) is a constant source of delight and fascination to me.

Yesterday evening, while at the inaugural festivities for Z Space Theatre Company‘s new home at Theatre Artaud in San Francisco, I was reminded of the oddball pleasures of community when I joined a cluster of local theatre people mid-conversation. We were a group of four, myself included. I knew two of the people in our little group and the other person was a stranger to me, though he looked familiar. (Most theatre people look familiar to me around here — I’ve probably seen them on stage at some point over the last ten years but often can’t quite place their faces.)

Anyway, the first thing I heard when I joined the cluster was the guy whom I didn’t know, say: “Did you read Chloe Veltman’s review of August: Osage County? You should have seen the subheadline — ‘So what if August: Osage county won a Tony? It’s still boring and bloated.’ Hilarious. I thought…” Before he could get any further, the friend who was standing to my right jumped in with one of the most overenthusiastic introductions I’ve ever witnessed: “M—, This is Chloe Veltman!” We shook hands. M and I both turned scarlet. Everyone laughed. It was a great night.

A few people have written to me this morning both publicly via ArtsJournal and privately via my email address in response to the blog post I wrote yesterday about the upcoming National Arts Journalism Summit in Los Angeles.

A couple of commentators brought up some worthwhile criticisms of the concept which I would like to highlight and reply to. Here is the first:

“Only four hours for a “summit on journalism”? Seems to me a rather paltry amount of time to spend on such an important subject, and most of it is going to be taken up by speeches and presentations. They can talk about participating through text messaging or Twitter, but it seems a poor way to learn, reason and then offer insights and ideas about a complicated subject. But have at it. Perhaps it will dawn on people that superficial thinking is the problem.”

And here is the second:

“Four hours is not long enough, nor is the 10-15 minutes each of the five finalists gets to make their presentations. I also find the secrecy a bit overdramatic. The judges should be named and identified. Mr. McLelland said that 27 of the submissions were agreed by the judges to be strong. Why not at least identify those 27 strong ideas and let’s have a real dialogue on how we can forge a future for arts journalists. Why travel to participate in a 4 hour forum when you can do it from the comfort of your office?”

The criticisms that these commentators make about the summit seem reasonable. Four hours isn’t a long time. And now that commentator B mentions it, listing the 27 top projects considered for the summit on the website in advance of the live event might be a lovely way to generate excitement ahead of October 2 and make more of the people who contributed projects feel like their efforts were well received. Perhaps the organizers might consider doing this in the coming days?

On the other hand, it seems rather strange for people to start denigrating the summit before it even takes place. This is a first-of-its-kind event. We should be supporting and looking forward to its birth, not tearing it down in utero. Criticism will no doubt play a valuable role when the event is over and we can evaluate its success. But right now, the negativity comes across as rather hollow.

A few reasons why the upcoming National Arts Journalism Summit which is taking place on October 2 at the University of California Los Angeles has me stoked:

1. It’s about time that arts journalists from around the world got together to figure out how to make cultural coverage viable from a business perspective for the future. As old media struggles to stay afloat and new media struggles to find its financial footing in a tough economic climate, the summit will provide an array of concepts aimed at promoting sustainability.

2. The summit is being streamed live from the summit website and will also be archived, meaning that people can tune in from all over the globe on the day of the event or afterwards. People can also participate in the discussion remotely on October 2 via text message or Twitter.

3. Attending the event, as I hope to do, will provide arts journalists with a wonderful opportunity to mingle and exchange ideas.

4. The summit is unlikely to come up with black and white “answers” in response to the complex challenges of finding models to secure the future of arts journalism. But it will hopefully get people asking the right questions about potential models going forward.

5. As someone who put forward a project for inclusion in the summit (though I sadly didn’t make the final cut) I’m personally very excited to find out about a range of projects from across diverse arts areas. The producers of the event have not revealed the names of the five main selected presenters for the summit, though the presenters themselves are already in the know. The revelation of the selected projects on the day of the event itself will no doubt add a little frisson of expectation and excitement to the proceedings.

Whenever a baby boomer waxes lyrical about how great the 1960s were, and in particular, how great the Woodstock Festival was, I tend to switch off. But Ang Lee’s new film about the events leading up to the famous festival, Taking Woodstock, actually makes me wish I’d been around in 1969.

The festival, which attracted some 500,000 concert goers to hear al fresco performances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Ravi Shankar, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin and Jefferson Airplane, took place on a 600-acre dairy farm near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969.

What’s great about this understated film is that it completely ignores the obvious. We never get to see and hear the performers do their thing — Lee uses neither documentary footage nor fictional reconstructions with actors pretending to be 1960s rock stars. The closest we come is a long-distance shot of the stage viewed from the outermost edges of the farm. The stage looks like a tiny white speck of light in a field of swarming black insects.

Instead of watching rock stars and groupies interact, what we get get is a frank, sweet and utterly unromanticized view of what it took to put on one of the most legendary rock events in western cultural history.

Lee tells the story through the eyes of Elliot Tiber (played by a sweetly gauche Demetri Martin) the nebbishe twenty-something son of a couple of down-on-their-luck motel owners from the old world. As the head of the local chamber of commerce, Tiber held the only musical festival permit in Bethel, New York, thus enabling the festival to occur.

Over the course of the film, we see the characters deal with the most prosaic of issues. Discussions about permits and portaloos are hardly the stuff of Hollywood reconstructions of seminal historical events. Yet James Schamus’ tongue-in-cheek screenplay and engaging performances by the cast, which includes Imelda Staunton as Elliot’s hard-nosed mother and Liev Schreiber as a transsexual security guard, make the everyday details dance before our eyes like fireflies around stadium floodlights.

As a result, Woodstock ends up coming to life in a completely vivid and human way.

It’s well known that here in the Bay Area, people have a habit of taking political correctness too far.

I was gratingly reminded of this fact a few days ago during a singing rehearsal. I am part of a group of singers that is preparing to perform a bunch of a cappella songs for the patients on the cancer wards of the University of California San Francisco Medical Campus. At the inaugural rehearsal last week, we were working on a trio of new arrangements of old folk songs, one of which was about a mother scolding her daughter for not behaving herself. The song mentioned the word “gypsy” a couple of times in a vaguely derogatory fashion. Almost everyone in the room, except me and one other person who seemed in two minds about the issue, thought we should excise the word “gypsy” from the song lest it cause offense to our audience.

I was instantly appalled at the suggestion. On the one hand I understand that we are supposed to perform a therapeutic function by singing at the hospital and want to uplift and soothe audiences rather than anger or upset them.

On the other hand, changing the lyrics of a song on the grounds of political correctness seems ridiculous to me. The song isn’t meant to reflect modern sensibilities. And surely audiences will not think that we as performers have something against Romany people. To replace “gypsy” — the use of which is pretty mild in the song — with something else seems pedantic, arcane and completely lacking in any kind of artistic sensibility, not to mention showing disrespect for the integrity of the composer’s work.

When the motion was tabled, I guffawed. “How about this for an idea,” I suggested, laying on the sarcasm a bit thick. “Let’s just say a loud ‘beep’ every time the word “gypsy” comes up in the song. Just like on NPR when someone says “fuck.” That’ll do the trick, won’t it?”

My idea wasn’t met with wild enthusiasm. To be honest, I think it went over most of the singers’ heads.