Archives for 2011

I’ve been mulling over the ways in which the directors of Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (Francesca Zambello and Joel Sass, respectively) which I saw last week chose to finish off their productions as there were noted similarities in their approaches and yet stark differences too.

Both directors chose to end with a momentous bit of stage business performed by a child.

At the end of Gotterdammerung (the fourth and final Ring opera) a small girl in a white dress who had not been seen in the production up to that point walked to the front of the stage with a sapling (an olive tree, probably) and then planted it in the ground as the lights faded.

Titus Andronicus finished with the boyish Young Lucius (played by Caleb Alexander) wandering around the stage on his own looking at the various bloody corpses strewn about and then crouching down in front of the enormous, half-eaten meat pie baked by the vengeful title character containing the ground-up bodies of Tamara’s criminal sons. The actor then stuck his finger in the pie and tasted the contents. Fade to black.

Both directors used children as a symbolic way to meditate on “the future.” Zambello’s use of the olive tree-bearing little girl seemed too easy an ending. It didn’t ring at all true for me personally. But Sass’ more troubled image of the boy literally “tasting revenge” made a much more imaginative, visceral impact.

Cliches can be powerful, especially when used as the very final image of a production. But they can easily be mishandled. I was bored by Zambello’s ending. But Sass gave me something to chew on.

I’m barely pausing for breath after seven long but lustrous nights (well, six nights and one afternoon to be precise) of Bay Area culture. Here’s a quick round-up:

MONDAY JUNE 20 – Leading Ladies at The Castro Theatre: A lesbian ballroom dancing movie by first-time filmmakers and husband and wife team Erika and Daniel Beahm. A touching and hilarious feel-good movie experience. The script is slightly hokey, and some of the acting a bit ropey, but it’s a remarkably impressive effort by a couple of filmmakers who spend their lives working as academics and musicians. Screened as part of the Frameline film festival. A late screening. Got home at around midnight. It was fun strolling through The Castro on a warm night as the neighborhood ramped up for Pride week.

TUESDAY JUNE 21 – Das Rheingold at San Francisco Opera: As I mentioned in a blog post last week, Francesca Zambello’s take on the first of Wagner’s Ring Cycle operas for San Francisco Opera didn’t do it for me. Couldn’t get past the clunky mise-en-scene. Couldn’t see through the impermeable wall of dry-ice. Got home at around 11pm. Early.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 22 – Die Walkure at San Francisco Opera: Despite the dry-ice which led me to dub Zambello’s effort as “The CO2 Ring,” I found myself completely immersed in the music and performances. Nina Stemme in particular makes for a rocket-powered Brunnhilde and Brandon Jovanovich’s open-hearted Siegmund took my breath away. Got home at about 12.30am. Couldn’t sleep cos I was so wired.

THURSDAY JUNE 23 – Missa Solemnis at San Francisco Symphony: I reviewed Michael Tilson Thomas’ inaugural conducting of Beethoven’s choral masterwork for The Bay Citizen. Read my thoughts here. It was a seat-of-the-pants affair. Very exciting. But some of the tension was undesired owing to wayward soloists. A very early night — nothing else on the program so I was tucked up in bed with the program notes by 10.30pm.

FRIDAY JUNE 24 – Siegfried at San Francisco Opera: Jay Hunter Morris and Nina Stemme made for a magnetic couple in the third part of Francesca Ring. I appreciated the male lead’s gamine sensibility. Again, the singing, playing and acting was so strong that the staging didn’t distract me too much. Got home after midnight sometime but stayed up till very late talking it over with friends.

SATURDAY JUNE 25 – Titus Adronicus at California Shakespeare Company: Joel Sass’ slick and beautiful-looking interpretation of Shakespeare’s hammy gorefest took the play (which Kenneth Tynan impishly dubbed “the worst play Christopher Marlowe ever wrote”) to a new level. Fine, metered performances by James Carpenter in the title role and his fellow cast members gave the play a kind of dignity and Ancient Greek tragedy-infused gravitas which had eluded me up until now. Emily Greene’s austere-eloquent set design and Paloma Young’s streamlined, gorgeous costumes added to the overall wonder of the experience. The play was outdoors at the Bruns Amphitheatre near Orinda and lasted three hours. Got home after midnight once again.

SUNDAY JUNE 26 – Gotterdammerung at San Francisco Opera: Didn’t much feel like being indoors on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon for the final part of The Ring Cycle. But I was well rewarded for my effort. Ian Storey made for a more solid and less boyish Siegfried, but Nina Stemme continued to gather fire. Staggered out into the evening sun at a very reasonable 6.15pm (only 5 1/2 hours after arriving!) in a state of euphoria.

I’d like to end the week by sharing this link from the composer John Adams’ website. It contains the text of a terrific commencement speech which he gave last month at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

Some people in the comments thread underneath the speech complain that the composer says nothing new with his words about why art and artists matter.

But to the detractors, all I can say is that the composer’s eloquence on the subject is as startling as it is passionate. If more people explained things the way Adams does, maybe those that are in the business of slashing arts funding would stop.

The San Francisco Opera‘s new Ring is in full swing.

Although technically we’re not quite halfway through Francesca Zambello’s production in terms of hours spent in seats at the War Memorial Opera House, we’re close enough with two operas completed in the second of three full cycles that are unfolding between the start of last week and the end of Independence Day weekend.

As such, now seems like as good a moment as any to reflect on how things are going so far.

First of all, I’m impressed by the size of the audience. The 3,000-plus opera house has been almost completely full both nights so far. A few tickets are still available for sale, I’m told, but the house is at a healthy 96% capacity. Apparently people have been lining up for hours for the $10 standing places (the only discounted option available for the cycle.)

Contrary to what I’d been told by the press office, neither Das Rheingold nor Die Walkure have changed much at all since I saw the “preview” runs of the productions in 2008 and 2010 respectively. But my feelings towards Die Walkure changed immensely since last year, largely as a result of being completely transfixed by the opening scene, which propelled me through the rest of the nearly-five-hour production on the edge of my seat. Everyone’s been talking about Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde since the soprano sang the role here in 2010. But Brandon Jovanovich’s Siegmund equals Stemme’s take on the defiant Valkyrie for the sheer-edged intensity of the singing and understated yet seething emotion of the acting. I couldn’t take my eyes off the stage when these performers were on it. The orchestra led by Donald Runnicles swept me along with a focus and determination that I rarely experience at an opera performance. In general, I am not a fan of Michael Yeargen’s conception for the set design. I’ve seen enough craggy symbolic trees, enormous full moons and grim post-apocalyptic underpasses on stages to last me a lifetime. But I was so transported by the performances, that I stopped caring about how annoyed I was by the ticks of the visual design.

Sadly, this was not the case the previous night with Das Rheingold, which left me mostly cold (and that’s not just because the opera house had the air-conditioning system cranked up to its meat locker setting.) I felt particularly sorry for the poor Rheinmaidens and Alberich having to do the entire first scene wreathed in dry ice. The smoke frequently swallowed the performers up. It can’t have been good for their voices and much of the physical action on stage was lost as a result of their stumbling about in the impenetrable swirling fog. If I may judge by the first two operas in the cycle, the stuff is way over-used in this production. It’s liberally employed throughout Das Rheingold and Die Walkure. Zambello’s production has earned the moniker “The American Ring” for the mise-en-scene’s references to different periods in American history. But I hereby rename it “The Carbon Dioxide Ring.”

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for impassioned feedback on pieces I’ve written about various arts events in the Bay Area. The variety of approaches and fury-levels prompts me to create a short list of the most over-the-top ways in which artists and arts organizations have exerted their will in recent times:

1. Leave a voicemail for the critic followed up by an email saying, among other rabid things, that you’re going to make it a stipulation of your contract that I be forbidden from attending your performances.

2. Have the head of your organization’s PR department call me up and tell me that he had to stop the artistic head of the organization from writing me a venomous email.

3. Have your organization’s Board of Directors write an indignant letter to the Board of the major media organization for which I work as a regular freelancer to complain about my coverage.

4. Refuse to allow me access to artists so that I can write a fully-reported (ie non-editorialized) feature assignment commissioned by a major international newspaper following the publication of one article with an editorial slant in another newspaper more than a year previously that included some critical insights.

5. Call me up and tell me that I’d better get a good lawyer because you’re going to sue me and that “I don’t know who I’m dealing with.” Follow up with a similar phone call at the same time the following evening for good measure.

6. Slip a tarantula on to my seat at the theatre when I come to critique your show following a negative review of your previous effort. (Just kidding. This has never happened to me.)

The chorus in which I sing garnered a gushy review from the San Francisco Classical Voice for this past weekend’s pair of concerts devoted to contemporary Scandinavian repertoire.

What amazes me is how my fellow choristers took the reviewer to task via our group email messaging system over one tiny detail (a passing remark about a 12-tone cluster of all things) even though she was overwhelmingly positive about every note we sang. It just goes to show how much people who are personally invested in an arts event obsess over these things. I often forget this fact as a critic.

I don’t know if I am more surprised by the post-mortem conducted by my singer friends on the article or the article itself, which was overly kind. We didn’t remotely deserve such an enthusiastic appraisal in my opinion.

If I had been reviewing the concert, I would have taken the chorus directors to task for choosing material that was so same-y. In a program that included about 12 different pieces, only two of them had any kind of rhythm or pace to them. The rest meandered in a quasi-beatific fashion through enough languorous chord clusters and dour religious sentiment to send audiences (and most of the chorus members) into a state of incoherent sloth. Much of the music we performed was beautiful. But variety would have given the program much more shape and definition.

Fog and Smog, a San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles-based collective of composers, film editors, producers, designers, DJs, animators, photographers and other culture industry types has come out with a clever rap song about the high-end Wholefoods supermarket chain. The references to hybrid cars, girls in yoga pants, artisanal cheese and komboocha make this the perfect hip-hop anthem for the privileged classes.

It’s also right out of the “Stuff White People Like” cannon, Christian Landers’ longstanding blog about the cliches of caucasian life in America, which makes the song a little dated in a way.

Yet I love the idea of things “getting real in the Wholefoods parking lot,” as the song’s recurring mantra goes. It couldn’t be more surreal really.

Watch the video here.

Thanks to Greg for forwarding the link.

When Glee premiered a couple of years ago, I was the Fox TV series’ biggest fan. I watched the first couple of series avidly, and then my viewing dropped off. I got busy. And I just didn’t feel like making space in my schedule for the show, which was starting to bother me for the auto-tuned quality of the singing.

I’ve checked in with “Glee” a couple of times since then. An episode that aired a while back featuring Gwyneth Paltrow as a substitute teacher was fantastic in terms of the show-stopping musical numbers, strong characters and witty dialogue. I was so immersed in the story-telling that I didn’t mind the fact that the voices were so bland.

But a less compelling episode set amid the National Show Choir Finals in Manhattan which I viewed last night made me realize that the series is really doing its musical numbers — and the upsurge of interest in ensemble singing in general created as a result of the program’s popularity — a disservice by featuring such varnished, unnatural voices.

The auto-tuning has got to stop. Everyone sounds the same. The voices are boring. Every nuance is flattened out into a homogenous beveled sound which lacks any kind of grain or distinguishing timbre.

I think hearing singing like this might also undermine the confidence of young singers who are inspired to develop their voices as a result of watching “Glee.” Singing with the glassy perfection of the vocalists on the series simply isn’t possible without the aid of digital enhancement. And if people realize that they can’t get the same tone no matter how hard they try, they may be put off from continuing on their singing path.

I hope that this blog post reaches “Glee’s” producers and they do something to make the voices sound more individual and less canned.

P.S. Another kvetch for this Tuesday morning: I caught the Joe Goode Performance Group’s‘s latest show, “The Rambler,” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at the weekend. I would normally dedicate a full blog post to talking about Goode’s work, which I usually find visually and sonically compelling for its powerful mixture of speech, song, lights, costumes, expressive movement and bittersweet humor. But I really don’t have much to say about “The Rambler” except that it rambled. I have no idea what the show was about to be honest and there were so many ideas recycled from previous Goode productions that I found myself feeling like I was listening to Samuel Beckett’s Krapp going over and over and over his last tape.

Brief roundup as I’m nearing the end of a hectic week.

1. The Chorus America Conference is in full swing here in San Francisco. Everyone’s talking social media. Tweeted my way through a discussion at the Conservatory of Music between Grant Gershon and John Adamas. Some interesting stuff on working with singers in France who have trouble pronouncing the “the” in “the” correctly. Bit of a nightmare when you write a line that has a lot of “th” sounds in it and the chorus keeps insisting on singing “ze.”

2. Attended two fantastic choral concerts over the past couple of evenings. Chanticleer‘s “Out of this World” was true to its name. It provided the perfect overview of what this superlative group can do, which is to say that they can do everything. The program careened from Palestrina to Schumann to Sean Crouch to Harold Arlen and ended with a gobsmacking a cappella rendition of the cheesy pop song “Change the World” by Tommy Sims which soloist Ben Jones made me appreciate anew. The only downsides were a) that the group sounded a little tired in places, and b) the choice of Matt Oltman’s arrangement of the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th Symphony as an encore. A really long, po-faced downer after the euphoric programmed finale. You could tell the singers were enjoying it about as much as the audience. The San Francisco Girls’ Chorus concert last night was sonic perfection. I am so proud to be living in the same city as this organization. The singers have a beautiful, glassy tone and, like Chanticleer, there seems to be no end to their ability to sing a broad range of stuff. I particularly relished both pieces they performed with the Cypress String Quartet – Brian Rosen’s arrangement of Bach’s “Wachet Auf” from Cantata 140 and Chen Yi’s “Angel Island Passages.” But the video that went along with the latter was a bit heavy-handed with its images of Chinese immigrants looking through bars etc.

3. The above was long for a bullet point.

4. Check out Jeanne Carstensen’s fun article in the Bay Citizen and New York Times about a dust-up between a violist and unhappy audience member in San Francisco: The story was broken by the forementioned Brian Rosen in his blog, here.

5. And here’s a link to my latest piece on The Ring in The New York Times / Bay Citizen.

6. Finally, I was gazing up at an enormous (and, frankly, unattractive) wool tapestry made in the 1970s that’s hanging in The Wattis Room at Davies Symphony Hall during last night’s Chairman’s Reception for Chorus America insiders and donors when someone came up to me and told me that the tapestry was hung the wrong way around. Apparently neither the artist nor the person responsible for commissioning the work at the Symphony had thought to ask or share information about the dimensions of the wall upon which the tapestry was supposed to hang. I don’t think it would look any better hanging the right way up, mind you.

Over the past week, I’ve filed similar stories for a major national UK daily newspaper and a major national US daily newspaper. The proximity of the assignments palpably brought out the differences between the ways in which the arts editors process stories in these two countries for me. I think the contrasts are fairly representative of the editorial approaches at work in the two countries, judging by work I’ve done for many media outlets on both sides of the pond over the years.

The article for the American publication went through six rounds of edits before appearing online and then in print the next day. Four different editors worked on it with me and I communicated with two of them on the phone as well as email. The piece was checked and double-checked and triple-checked for factual errors. Every turn of phrase was questioned for clarity and concision.

The article for the British publication was published about 20 minutes after I filed it. I didn’t hear back from any editor. I simply sent off the draft, someone at the other end made some changes and threw the thing out the door. End of story.

In both cases, what appeared in print was an approximation of what I originally filed. I can’t say I was thrilled with either result. But because I consider myself a team player, I tend not to stress too much about editorial decisions unless they radically screw with my thinking, which is generally quite rare.

I’d like to be able to point to something in the national character of the UK and the US media that can be gleaned from these radical differences in editorial style. I guess the US is a much more litigious country, which might explain the media’s crazed efforts to dot the t’s and cross the i’s. But I’m not sure what it is about the British newsroom that would elicit such a lackadaisical approach. Maybe it’s to do with a greater self-confidence based on a longer history of churning out articles?

Whatever the above observations point to, I’d prefer an editorial approach that’s in between these two extremes. I’d like to see what it is that the publication intends to publish before they put it out there. But at the same time, I don’t understand the necessity for obsessing over every single phoneme.

A few days ago, Barbara Sachs Osher, the Honorary Swedish Consul General in San Francisco and a well-known philanthropist and chair of the Bernard Osher Foundation, hosted a dinner for the members of the Kronos Quartet.

The San Francisco-based string ensemble recently won the 2011 Polar Music Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious music award. The prize, which Kronos won in tandem with Patti Smith, is typically shared by a pop artist and a classical musician. It was founded by Stig Anderson, the manager of the Swedish pop group ABBA, in 1989.

The musicians are flying to Stockholm in August to accept the prize of 1 million kronor ($166,000) and shake the hand of Sweden’s King.

The dinner provided an opportunity for guests to eat Swedish meatballs and exchange anecdotes about ABBA. It seemed like everyone in the room had an ABBA story, whether it was to do with bumping into one of the members of the rock band running through the forest or how a favorite ABBA song transformed a key moment in someone’s life.

I’m wracking my brains to remember what it is that David Harrington, the leader of Kronos, said about ABBA in the short, sweet speech he made during the dinner. Whatever his reminiscence about Sweden’s premiere pop cultural export was, it didn’t leave as strong an impression on me as the discussion we had over the buffet table about Diamanda Galas.

While filling our plates with delicious food, Harrington told me about the Kronos Quartet’s collaboration with the amazing Greek-American avant-garde composer and vocalist a while back. The tracks were scheduled to be the apex of a Kronos’ album but then Galas changed her mind about the music and ordered the ensemble to pull her contribution from the CD.

Harrington described this decision of Galas’ as one of the low points of his career. It had been an amazing musical collaboration and the violinist couldn’t get his head around why Galas refused to allow the music to be heard. Harrington has forgiven Galas for the stunt she pulled, but there’s still some lingering befuddlement bordering on resentment there.

One day, hopefully, the singer will relent and that long-shuttered recording will be set free. And when that day arrives, I’ll think fondly back to our evening discussing the ins and outs of musical collaboration over a steaming pile of Swedish meatballs.

PS Thrilled to get the following response to my blogpost just now. It appears to be from Ms Galas herself. She posted it at chloeveltman.com:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Of Swedish Meatballs, The Kronos Quartet and Diama…”:

I am delighted that David discussed
this incident:I did indeed record KEIGOME KEIGOME for the ensemble to accompany
with an arrangement from a composer
we both respect. This was at David’s request, although it was
not the original terms of our
contract, which was original music.

However, the playing and attached arrangement arrangement had nothing to do with
rembetiko music. The sensibility
shocked me. It was something composed
by Freud, and completely antithetical
to the music of Smryna . It was stiff,cold,
and whatever passion displayed was
something no Greek would ever
have any interest in.

What is unfortunate is that I
had been comissioned to write a new
work and I had presented it in
part to Harrington but he then decided he wanted to do something more along the lines of music
from my recent recording, Malediction and Prayer.

I wanted to do new music and the
piece i have just been thinking
of sending them again is the piece
I eventually performed solo–the HEX piece composed by me to the text of Henri Michaux, JE RAME. If you
listen to my orchestration of it
just for voice and piano, you can
see why I thought it would be ideal
for KRONOS.

This is a glorious ensemble and I
would love an opportunity to give
them anything,of course, but as
a Greek I know the sound of our music. That is my only boss.

I have incurred the wrath of many
musicians because if I do not
not like something, it is merely
because I do not like it.

I always warn other musicians that
risking any collaboration with me
can be fatal. I warn them that
when it comes to music I am not
a nice person. But they never believe me and then….need I reiterate the above paragraph…..?

Thanks for the platform.
Sincerely yours,
Diamanda Galas
p.s. I do not do my own stunts.
Someone has me confused with Angelina
Jolie.

Posted by Anonymous to lies like truth at June 6, 2011 12:34 PM

Sometimes the reasons for experiencing a work of art can seem a bit random. But there’s nothing wrong with that.

I was in Los Angeles and at a loose end last night. Of the thousands of cultural activities I could have spent part of the evening doing, I opted for At Sundown, a physical theatre exploration by the small theatre company Son of Semele of how memory loss and associated forms of dementia in elderly people affect the individuals and those around them.

I was drawn to the production for several reasons.

Firstly, I have enjoyed work undertaken by Ian Garrett, who originated the idea for At Sundown and co-designed and produced the show, in the past. I blogged about The Gogol Project, which he was closely involved with and which I had the pleasure of seeing on a trip to LA about two years ago, here.

Secondly, I was curious about the producing company, Son of Semele, which occupies an intriguing, out of the way, black box space on the corner of a dog-eared corner of Beverly Boulevard.

Thirdly, I have a close friend whose father and uncle are suffering from Alzheimers. I thought the production might help me gain some small insight into my friend’s life as a caregiver.

The thoughtful show, which was seen at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, went by in a flash. It was as if an entire lifetime was compressed into a high-pressure cooker as the three performers acted out stylized versions of routine motions associated with everyday life such as eating meals, rolling up shirtsleeves and buttoning down blouses. The machine-like feeling to their movements made those everyday actions seem completely alien and divorced from normality.

At the same time, the three sections where the actors took it in turns to lecture the audience on the medical research that currently exists around the issue of dementia, completely normalized and almost trivialized the illness.

The push-pull between the feeling of alienation and normalization created a powerful impact in the compressed performance space.

Passages of bittersweet humor, such as when the performers took it in turns to embody an elderly person struggling to remember the details of their lives, lightened the mood and add to the overall poignancy of the work. In one of my favorite beats, two actors did a lively, rhythmic song and dance routine around memorizing the 50 United States.

Despite the production’s slight silly side, the overarching feeling by the end of the show was of the blankness and darkness that exists at the center of people’s lives when they no longer have the full power of their senses and the impact of this nothingness on those that love them.

The production was only 40 minutes long, but it’s safe to say that I came out of the theatre feeling slightly wiser and more tuned-into the emotional side of dealing with of memory loss as a result of the company’s efforts. It would be interesting to see how the collaborators might develop their ideas further.