Hit or Miss Weekend (4/6–7/19)

Accordion Mixology Sing-Along (4/6/19); Devony Smith, soprano; Nikolay Verevkin, piano (4/6/19); Tartan Week Finale (4/7/19)

You know me, I enjoy a good sing-along. Saturday’s was a little on the strange side, and not just because of the accordions involved. Apparently the sing-along was the final event in a weeklong deep dive into the accordion and its history (I’m just guessing—some of that was hinted at, but I did not follow the deep dive at all). First off, the sing-along had no lyrics sheet. Part of that was likely because there was no set song list; a lot of it was sort of off the cuff. That said, not all of the songs were that familiar in terms of really knowing (as opposed to sort of knowing) the lyrics. Such was the case with Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning. Shine on Harvest Moon fared a little bit better. I was more familiar with Up, Up with People, but then I was also older than many of the other audience members/singers. Some were easier to follow along with because the refrains were simple and repetitive. Not so much with Kill for Peace, however (a protest song), or We All Live in a Yellow Submarine.

There were many more songs on the table. My favorites included Bicycle Built for Two and Pop! Goes the Weasel. An interesting story accompanied Home on the Range. The song leader recounted that when he taught chorus, he had a gang that were not very good singers. He finally got them to master singing the song in unison. Determining that he needed something a little more to show for the work of his group, he had them sing it through once and then hum it while one volunteer gave a dramatic recitation of the text during the hummed version. In performance, the gal ended up giggling through her recitation—it turns out that a faculty member was making funny faces at her (they were seeing each other romantically, but the chorus teacher didn’t know that). He gave her a grade of C+ but then the other faculty member spoke with him to see whether the grade could be changed. After learning the entire story, he agreed to change the grade. He gave her an F! Be careful what you wish for. At any rate, while the sing-along had some interesting things going on, I’d give it a grade of C+.

Later that afternoon, I attended the vocal recital by Devony Smith, soprano and Nikolay Verevkin, piano

Ravel, Shéhérazade; Korngold, Drei Lieder, Op. 22; Prokofiev, Five Poems of Anna Akhmatova, Op. 27; John Harbison, Simple Daylight

While the music making was well done, there was a certain sameness to the overall selection of works, in that there were a lot of dark settings of brooding texts. Snippets of my notes include: touches of sorrow … a sense of angst … a sense of longing … a little feeling of hope, though we never quite made it to cheery. Those were followed by: almost somber … a feeling of forlorn sadness. An encore (that I’m not quite convinced was warranted) was a cabaret-style blues song. Strange choice, to my ears.

On Sunday, I decided to give a selection of Scottish music a try at an outdoor concert held at Bryant Park. I got there just as it was starting, grabbed a falafel sandwich (not Scottish, of course, but a little treat for myself once in a while) and gave a listen. Names were announced from the stage, but they meant nothing to me, and they weren’t written down, so will not be included here. The first performers were a gal playing bagpipes accompanied by a guy playing guitar. I’d never heard that combination before but it actually worked pretty well. She then sang a song accompanied by the guitar and added a flute verse as well. Quite pleasant.

Less pleasant was a Scottish guitarist who now lives in North Carolina. He sang a sort of growling, rock version of Scots Wha Hae (lyrics by Robert Burns). It was, um, growly. And rock. A second Burns song followed, called A Man’s a Man for A’ That. It sounded like a harsh rock protest song, though I don’t think it really was. The set concluded with a growly, rock version of Loch Lomond.

Next up was a group called Whiskey Kiss composed of a bagpiper, a fiddle player (I did not quite recognize the instrument), an accordionist, and a percussion box player, all accompanied by a pre-recorded back beat. While they performed their first number, a crew of Scottish(?) cheerleaders strutted their stuff.

As the performance was out of doors and the weather was not quite as warm nor pleasant as expected, I called it a day after about an hour and fifteen minutes. I’d heard enough and figured that the rest would have been very similar (although a pipe band may have been scheduled—no printed materials meant no way of knowing what was next).

Hit or miss? Alas, the weekend was more of a miss than a hit. But as always, the price was right.

ConcertMeister