Archives for 2011

It’s a bit of a shock when you hear a nationalistic song ripped out of its regular context.

This morning, someone sent me a link to an unofficial trailer on YouTube for Jerusalem, a play by Jez Butterworth which earned rave reviews in London at the Royal Court and is now heading to the Music Box Theatre on Broadway for a limited run starting in April.

In the video, an innocent-looking fairy of a girl sings the jingoistic British hymn Jerusalem (a setting by Hubert Parry of a William Blake composed in 1916) in front of an Airstream camper van in her most earnest musical theatre voice. If hearing the song sung as if it were a show tune isn’t weird enough, every now and then, the screen shakes spasmodically while captions tell us that a character by the name of Johnny “Rooster” Byron provides shelter for innocent young people…and also pedals them drugs.

The video is creepy and in slightly poor taste really, though it quickly sets up a dissonance between the “Jerusalem” of Blake and Parry’s proud anthem and the dark modern slant of the drama. It makes me curious to see the play, which I suppose means that the re-appropriation of the song works.

The official trailer for Jerusalem is quite different in tone. It has a touch of Monty Python’s Flying Circus about it. Watch it here.

As many British dramatists have been saying since the post-WWII years, so much for England’s Green and Pleasant Land.

Eric Alatorre, the amazing basso profundo of the all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer, has come down with laryngitis and is unable to anchor the group for this weekend’s concerts. In an unprecedented move for the group, the bass part is going to be filled in by a cello.

“This week laryngitis has taken Eric Alatorre’s voice entirely – a very rare occurrence,” writes a Chanticleer member on the organization’s blog today. “Eric always refers to his vocal role as being the basement of the house. So we are, for this weekend, anyway, without a basement. [Music Director] Matt Oltman had the idea of replacing some of that sonic structure with a cello. Laura McClellan (who sings with us at Sonoma [Chanticleer’s summer workshop for adult singers of both sexes at Sonoma State University], sometimes ushers for us, and plays the cello) has turned up overnight to rehearse today for this unusual moment.”

Chanticleer members tend to soldier through illness. “The most frequently asked question of us is, what happens when somebody is sick?” the blogger continues. “Our answer – always delivered with considerable confidence- is – we sing anyway.”

On the rare occasions when a singer cannot perform, the group generally manages without him. Only once in her experience, says Chanticleer President and General Director Christine Bullin, has the ensemble had to bring in another vocalist.

“I’ve only seen this happen once, when Chris Fritzsche was sick for the “Divine Tapestry” performances,” says Bullin. “He was replaced by a female soprano, the wife of a Chanti-guy.”

“Eric is presently communicating only in writing,” continues the blog post. “We’ll be fine – and it will be an interesting experience for us, and we hope, for our audience.”

I’m going to the concert next weekend, by which time Eric’s voice will hopefully be restored. Obviously I’m excited about hearing the works as they are meant to be heard, but I kind of wish I were going this weekend. And I’m envious of Laura McClellan. There can’t be too many women out there who can claim to have performed in an all-male vocal ensemble.

At last night’s show, the pop singer made “Norman Bates’s mother look like the Virgin Mary”

The video for “Born this Way,” the title track from Lady Gaga’s soon-to-be-released album, is full of grotesque birthing imagery. Pulsing, vagina-like forms swirl around the screen, wombs explode and sticky objects emerge from the space between the performer’s splayed legs.

At just 24 years old, Lady Gaga has somehow come to represent motherhood for millions of people around the world.

But like cultural history’s most divisive maternal figures – a line which spans from Medea to the pushy stage mom in Darren Aronofsky’s movie “Black Swan” – the performer sends out mixed messages to her children. She is exceedingly hard to please.

Over 15,000 of Gaga’s “Little Monsters” (as the performer affectionately likes to call her fans) turned up at the Oracle Coliseum last night to pay homage to their “Mother Monster” on the Bay Area leg of her “Monster Ball Tour 2011.”

Many attempted to gain the star’s affection by alluding to her lurid sense of style. Brightly colored wigs dotted the arena. Fans posed for photographs in assorted nun’s habits, sparkly unicorn horns and skeleton faces. Recalling the dress fashioned from hunks of meat that Gaga wore at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, one woman even had on a belt fashioned from miniature plastic cuts of beef.

Other fans threw offerings for the performer on the stage. Adoring text messages poured out on the huge screens that flanked the auditorium before the concert began.

Though she cooed over some of the gifts, humbly thanked the crowd for buying tickets to her concert and, at one point, interrupted the music to have a conversation with an audience member on her cell phone, Mother Monster reciprocated with a tough version of her progeny’s apparently boundless love.

In some ways, Lady Gaga is the most doting of parents. She spent a great deal of time during her two-hour show massaging egos with statements that sound like they come from a soap opera script. She told us we’re heroes from the moment we come into this world, that we can be whoever we want to be and that we should love ourselves however we are.

This message comes across most palpably in Gaga’s soulful acoustic version of “Born this Way,” the only down-tempo part in an otherwise bestially high-energy performance. A beatific blue light bathed the artist, momentarily softening her mustard gas-hued tresses as she sung at the piano.

My mama told me when I was young
We are all born superstars
She pulled my hand and put my lipstick on
In the glass of her boudoir
“There’s nothin wrong with lovin who you are”
She said, “’cause he made you perfect, babe”

This marked the only point in the show when Gaga sung with unmannered ease. There’s a depth and sweetness to her voice that runs completely counter to the throaty, machine-like tone that she adopts for many of her aggressive hit songs including “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face.”

But the lullaby was short-lived.

For the rest of the performance, Gaga created such a terrifying vision of parenthood that she makes Norman Bates’s mother look like the Virgin Mary.

There’s nothing remotely maternal about Lady Gaga’s appearance. All of the many costumes she wore on stage exchange feminine curves for sharp angles. At the start of the show for the number “Dance in The Dark,” the performer strode out in a navy blue biker jacket with shoulder pads that would make Colin Powell cower. For her performance of the plucky disco anthem “Love Game,” Gaga wore a translucent rubber nun’s habit with protruding hips and an outsize beast claw on one hand. And she made an appearance towards the end of her show sporting her signature brassiere and panties —that shower sparks.

So much for mother’s milk.

She’s also extremely domineering and bossy. Gaga’s songs might be peppered with monosyllabic utterances reminiscent of baby talk like the “Ga-ga-ooh-la-la” of “Bad Romance.” But when she yelled, “Put your paws in the air!” to the crowd, everyone obeyed instantly.

Coupled with the air punches, writhings and squats of Laurieann Gibson’s fecund-aggressive choreography, Gaga’s show ends up being less of a pep talk for her Little Monsters than a place they are sent to get a good whipping.

If this is motherhood in the 21st century, then it’s a maternal nightmare worthy of a Philip Roth novel.

Yet Gaga’s approach to parenting is intoxicatingly compelling. Her energy and charisma induce a state of euphoria and songs like “Alejandro” and “Telephone” force even the most flat-footed of her fans to get up and dance. Just as there’s a little of our parents in all of us – both good and bad – so Gaga dramatizes the relationship between mother and child through exploiting its dual humanizing and monstrous sides.

Try as we might to sever the bond, we can’t help but be tied to Mother Monster’s warped umbilical chord of pounding beats, flashing lights and acres of flesh.

http://www.baycitizen.org/music/story/lady-gaga-mother-monster-indeed/print/

I’ve been getting some interesting feedback — part slapped wrist and part empathetic shrug — for my schoolgirl error regarding my last post about Alec Baldwin and NPR. The NY Phil broadcasts its concerts directly through radio stations, and not, as I erroneously wrote, via National Public Radio.

I’m embarrassed about misattributing Baldwin’s relationship with public radio to NPR. If I turn on the radio and I hear the announcer say “this is NPR,” I assume that I’m listening to NPR. I suspect I’m not alone in this assumption.

Of course, I ought to know better: I’m a music presenter for a San Francisco public radio station after all! But, in my defense, I’m a rookie radio host, a foreigner, and way too busy trying to keep up with the demands of putting out a weekly radio program to stop to consider the intricacies of the relationship between NPR, PRI, APM and the local stations that put out the content. But clearly it’s important for me to know this stuff and I stand humble and corrected and grateful to the folks who set me straight via email over the last day or so.

Here’s reader Matthew Westphal in answer to my confusion (thanks Matthew for allowing me to use your comments):

People confuse them all the time.

And NPR is probably perfectly happy to let that confusion continue.
After all, if people donate to NPR, or to the stations that pay NPR dues, because they love A Prairie Home Companion or This American Life or The Takeaway, why would NPR want to mess that up?

The stations are definitely happy to let the confusion continue: they want – they need – to have listener dollars go to them (the stations) rather than to NPR or PRI or APM.

If I remember correctly, after Joan Kroc died and left $200 million to NPR, the network (NPR itself) figured there might be more money out there from similar sources and was preparing to start fundraising to that end. The member stations went ballistic at the idea that NPR would compete for donor dollars with the stations to whom it charges dues. So NPR backed off.

I do worry that we’re now in a period where the distinction – notably between NPR and the stations – is important. If NPR loses federal money, it will survive. But if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the channel for federal funding) is eliminated, many individual public radio stations, especially in less populated areas, will probably have to close. (The latest version of the legislation doesn’t cut federal funding for stations, but it forbids stations from using the funds to pay dues to NPR or otherwise acquire NPR programming.)

If anyone can persuade politicians to continue to support National Public Radio, it ought to be Alec Baldwin. I know the actor is far from a friend of the Republicans, but Baldwin does such a great job presenting for the radio network that I defy the heart of even the most staunch Tea Party member not to soften when they hear him in action on the airwaves.

I caught the actor hosting an NPR broadcast of a New York Philharmonic concert on the radio yesterday (Daniel Harding conducting Szymonowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4). He did a great job.

Baldwin exuded a slightly over-the-top level of gravitas while announcing the music and personnel involved. But he’s still hip enough to give the concert broadcasts a fresh feel. He could even lighten up his tone a little to make the programming sound even more approachable.

I’d previously heard the actor shill for NPR during its latest fund drive. He was hilariously self-deprecating and again struck just the right note. I didn’t hesitate to make a donation.

While we’re on the subject of NPR, here’s a link to a terrific, in-depth analysis of NPR’s precarious situation that’s not only carefully written but also shines a ray of optimism on the murky proceedings. The author is Michael Marcotte, a public radio news trainer and consultant who is currently undertaking a Knight Fellowship at Stanford.

Is my life getting busier or are the number of hours in the day shortening? It’s already Wednesday and I can’t quite believe that I am only now getting to my blog, a beast that until January I would diligently feed five days a week no matter what.

These days things are a little different, but now that I’m able to catch my breath for a few minutes, I thought I would mention the following:

1) ODC’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY DANCE DOWNTOWN SEASON: I caught Program 1 on Friday night and think it’s exceptional. I cannot think of a more fitting way for a dance company to celebrate a major anniversary than with Brenda Way’s luminous-architectural Speaking Volumes:Architecture of Light II and I look Vacantly at the Pacific…though Regret, a jocund, anthropological study about human beings’ often comical attempts at multi-cultural connection by Kimi Okada. Way’s piece, set to Jay Cloidt’s atmospheric collage of a musical score, builds itself on simple geometrical forms. Complex relationships evolve before our eyes against the plain lines of triangles, squares and circles. The dancers suggest these shapes with their bodies but the emotional palette they create is anything but straightforward. In perhaps the most electrifying sequence, some kind of love triangle between two female and one male dancer, the tight-knitted bodies powerfully counter the elegant lines of a rope, extended down to the stage at its center from the ceiling to create a variety of triangular forms when manipulated by two other dancers. Okada’s playful piece is all bumps and squiggles where Way’s is about clean lines. The dancers, dressed in brightly colored, gamine street clothes, look like they’re having a great time as they rush about athletically on stage, imitating eastern and western cultural mores. The work isn’t very deep but it’s a riot as a sort of oddball celebration and commiseration on the theme of cultural difference.

2) HESS COLLECTION: Stumbled across this wonderful winery art gallery the day before yesterday during a quick zip up to the Napa Valley. I’d heard of the Hess Collection. But because the owners of wineries in California tend to have bad taste, I generally steer clear of their art offerings and had ignorantly not thought to delve more deeply into the offerings there. Donald Hess, it seems, does not fall into the typical winery art lover category. The winery owner started his collection in 1966 and the small museum, arranged on three floors at the winery, is full of extraordinary things including roomily displayed works by Robert Motherwell, Francis Bacon, Andy Goldsworthy, Fra

Conductors spend quite a bit of time during the average concert season making speeches about the music they’re performing with their orchestras before audiences. In principle this is a good idea. It helps to make concert halls and the music directors that inhabit them seem warmer. It also makes the music seem more approachable.

Special skills are needed in a music director to make these speeches work. All too often, the monologues seem dull and perfunctory, with language that comes straight out of the program notes. If you listen to a music director speaking about a piece that he or she is about to conduct, you really want to hear about their personal connection to it. You want to sense their enthusiasm for it above all.

Body language is also key: I know conductors that address the audience hunched over their microphones with their heads mostly bowed to the ground. That’s no way to connect with a crowd.

Orchestras should take some time to have their MDs work with public speaking experts. A few short sessions would doubtless make a big difference.

And if this is not possible, then the conductors might be better off sticking to conducting and not speaking at all.

In today’s world, connecting with people though social media has become the bottom line. If you don’t have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, then you’re way behind the curve. But it strikes me that some organizations (and individuals) have more of a reason to jump on the social media bandwagon than others.

I’m inspired to think about this today on the back of an email I just received from a new acquaintance who’s the head of allthis.com, a new microphilanthropy startup based in the Bay Area.

Allthis looks like a promising and fun service that could potentially benefit many worthy non-profit organizations. It works a bit like a silent auction at a non-profit fundraising gala, except on a mass, digital scale. The idea is that people donate or ask for specific skills or experiences via the website, e.g. lunch with the CEO of a big company, headshots, a video of a pop singer singing happy birthday etc, and the funds that pay for the donated services then go to charitable organizations. Allthis.com charges a percentage of each transaction to cover its costs for brokering the deal.

The email from Allthis.com asked me to do the following:

1. At a minimum: Please register on the site using Facebook Connect (will take less than a minute!)
2. If you’re feeling generous: Register, and make three friends do the same.
3. Make my day: Register, create an offering (that your friends would want), and send three invites.

This is a super smart way of getting people to connect to allthis.com via social media. And it makes perfect sense for an organization that can only exist and make any money through achieving a critical mass of users.

I am inspired to send out an email along similar lines to get people to sign up for the Twitter and Facebook pages of VoiceBox, my own non-profit organization. I’ve been advised that my project needs way, way, way more fans and followers than it currently has.

But to what end, I wonder?

Allthis directly makes money from having lots of people doing business on its site. But if the product you offer — which in my case is a public radio series about singing which anyone can listen to for free — isn’t so easily commodified, then what at the end of the day does one get from having thousands of Facebook friends and Twitter followers beyond the lovely notion that people are paying attention?

I don’t mean to poo poo the idea of building a huge community of people around VoiceBox. It’s obviously important to gain exposure, generate buzz, get people listening to the radio shows and, in a deeper sense, prompt them to think about the vocal arts and participate in singing activities which are all to the benefit of their personal wellbeing and even the quality of life in their neighborhoods.

I’m certainly not in if for the money.

However, there’s a belief that building a large social network will lead to financial gains. And who doesn’t want money to sustain a project that is currently being run on sheer passion and goodwill?

The mere fact of popularity does not translate automatically into financial sustainability, which at the end of the day is one of the main things that’s driving people who run organizations of all kinds to Facebook and Twitter.

But while leveraging a large following seems key to the success of a company like Allthis.com, it’s actually quite hard to see a direct correlation between eyeballs and financial support for arts and media projects, especially when most of their products cannot be so easily monetized. Instead, we all sit there hoping that our network will eventually reach someone who is invested enough in what we’re doing to invest directly in our activities, whether through philanthropy or a commercial contract.

It’s a bit of a crapshoot isn’t it? Does the world really work like that?

I guess I’ll just have to keep building out my network and see what happens. It obviously can’t do any harm and the “it only takes a couple of seconds” tack is a powerful enough driver. I suppose I should have more faith in the system, but this is challenging when the promise of exposure is now being touted in the same way as direct financial input used to be.