Tuesday, December 20, 2016

The Weekend that Almost Wasn’t (12/17–18/16)

Saturday was outdoor Christmas caroling in Greenwich Village, sponsored by the West Village Chorale, and hosted by Judson Memorial Church. When I ran errands on Saturday morning, it was snowy, but OK. As I ended errands, it was rainy and not OK. I decided to ditch it. Then I checked the weather online. Hmmm, fewer chances of rain. I braved it and got to the Village at noon. A couple of groups had already departed, but mine would be heading out shortly.

Group 3 did a bang-up job in Washington Square, along West 4th Street and Cornelia Street. We even went into a café for a subdued and pleasant rendition of Silent Night. At one point, we hooked up with another roving Group and formed a small choir for Silver Bells and one other song. Fun. Later, we strolled, singing the Twelve Days of Christmas—not the best choice. The Lords a Leaping weren’t quite in the same tempo as the Ladies Dancing. Somehow we all got together for Five Go-o-o-o-o-lden Rings! And somehow we all ended together. Along the way, we Came Upon a Midnight Clear, we Jingled, we Roasted Chestnuts, we Gloriaed, and we We Three Kinged, etc. I’m glad I overrode my veto!

Sunday had the prospect of going to the {gasp} Bronx for The Orchestra Now. Once again, I almost talked myself out of it but decided to take the plunge. I’m so glad I did.

Aladdin Suite – Oriental Festival March; Aladdin’s Dream and Dance of the Morning Mists; Hindu Dance; Chinese Dance; Prisoners’ Dance; Negro Dance (1918–1919) – Carl Nielsen (1865–1931)
Shéhérazade – Asie; La flûte enchantée; L’indifférent – (1903) – Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Scheherazade – The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship; The Legend of the Kalendar Prince; The Young Prince and the Young Princess; Festival at Baghdad—The Sea—The Shipwreck (1888) – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908)
All conducted by JoAnn Falletta

There was so much so cool about this concert. The Orchestra Now is a sort of training orchestra—to the best of my knowledge, all of the players are graduate students at Bard College. Actually, going back and re-reading the well-written program notes, it is “an innovative pre-professional orchestra and master’s degree program at Bard college … .” That means that this concert was free, but the ones they play at the Met Museum, Carnegie Hall, etc. are not.

This was a large orchestra, which was a good thing. Good in that you rarely hear an orchestration that includes two harps plus a celeste. And all three works had 22 violins … 5 French horns … 2 trombones plus a bass trombone … get it?—lots of instruments.

The Nielsen was great as a concert opener. The first movement was straightforward, while the second was calmer and slower, followed by a graceful dance section. The third movement was rather sinuous and included an extended winds-only section. The fourth movement was much brighter, with a quicker tempo while the fifth was much more dramatic, with a large brass presence, especially in the lower ranges. The final movement was rhythmic and very fast.

Both Scheherazades that followed were essentially a retelling of the 1,001 Arabian Nights fable (which also blended in well with Aladdin).The potentate/Caliph/grand pooh-bah was unhappy in love. His solution was to marry a virgin and then decapitate her after one night. Scheherazade decided to nip that in the bud. She married the aforementioned guy. On her wedding night, she wove an intriguing tale and spun it out until dawn, withholding the actual ending. Thus she lived to see another day. After 1,001 nights of this, the guy decided that she was a keeper.

The Ravel was a mini song cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. Susan Platts was the very effective mezzo in the three-song cycle.

The Rimsky-Korsakov is somewhat of a warhorse that I think you’d recognize, but here it was played very well. I had a few minor quibbles with tempi and the cohesiveness of sections and movements, but these were very minor.

There were two excellent portions of the afternoon. Each piece was introduced by an orchestra member, who recounted some of what we could read in the program, written by other orchestra members. Additionally, there was an Orchestra Quick Guide (similar to a setup card for your laptop or tablet) that gave you titles of the works, dates of the composers, date of composition and premiere performance, and orchestration. Cool stuff. One of The Orchestra Now’s missions is to create a new audience for classical music and, specifically, classical music concerts. To that end, there was a group of students in the rows behind me whose teacher pointed out the Quick Guide to them and also pointed out that there was more detailed info in the printed program itself.

As is often the case, the students were quick to applaud after the first movement before realizing that most audiences take a work as a whole before offering applause. This is not a hard and fast rule, but one that is generally accepted and they caught on pretty quickly. They did, though, tend to chatter a bit while the orchestra was playing. It could be attention span or just not acknowledging the talent/work/discipline on display on the stage. I think it will come, but these were young teenagers who should have known better by now.

Throughout, the orchestra played very well. Unfortunately, with the hall only about one-third full, it was difficult to sustain applause, especially when Ms. Falletta wanted to acknowledge individual solo players (specifically in the Rimsky-Korsakov). It was even difficult to sustain the applause for the de rigeur second curtain call for Ms. Platt after the Ravel. Sometimes one acknowledgment from the audience is enough.

Would I go again? You bet I would. This performance was at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts at Lehman College (a new venue for me). The next two free Around Town concerts by The Orchestra Now will take place in Brooklyn and Queens. Woo-hoo! I go non-Manhattan-centric!

ConcertMeister

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Very Full Weekend+ (12/10–12/16)

Saturday afternoon was Holiday Songbook I, with the music of Jay Alan Zimmerman, consisting of sixteen songs, all of which were holiday themed. Representing crass commercialism (and fun) was Buy! Buy! Buy! which melded well with the fact that Mr. Zimmerman’s published holiday songbook is now in print and available. If memory serves, all of the songs we heard on Saturday afternoon are available in the print version.
 
It’s somewhat hard to do an all-holiday-themed show (there are just so many regular and off-the-wall scenarios to be dealt with), but this was a fun afternoon. Mr. Zimmerman repurposed a few existing songs with Emmanuel (a reworking of
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel), sung by Matt Case, and Carol Loves the Bells (probably my favorite title of the show), sung by Casey Erin Clark and the guys from the entire performance cast. Both were quite interesting. A patter-style, Grinch-like Happy Jolly Merry Headache, sung by Doug Shapiro, was also fun, as was Gingerbread Man, sung by Angel Desai and a pair of backup singers, Stephanie Joyner and Tony Ramos. Not listed on the program was a rather ribald The Perfect Gift which was essentially a musicalized orgasm. The plight of the homeless was brought to light in No More Room, where a homeless man,
Ritt Henn (also the terrific bassist for the afternoon) is down on his luck and a somewhat ghost-like choir intones, “No more room,” in nice harmonies.
 
A “trunk song” (one written a while ago but then for some reason tucked away), Mistletoe Manipulation, was brought out and given a first performance. The nicely sung duet eventually brought Ray Zanders and Mariana Barbosa together for a Christmas smooch. A Little Holiday Secret dealt with a gal, Tiffan Borelli, who lets her atheist Jewish fiancé, Ross Urken (actually Tiffin's husband), know that she really, really, really likes Christmas. It was fun and enjoyable.
 
Quite touching was Time to Find Home, performed by a deaf actor,
Stephen Drabicki, and sung by Angel Desai. It was doubly effective
in that Mr. Zimmerman himself is a deaf composer. His deafness was a direct result of the 9/11 attacks, though he’s kept on composing ever since. Holiday Zombie was a bit of a hoot and included appropriate zombieography.

The show finished with a touching duet, Silly Star, sung by Mr. Zimmerman and his 21-year-old (if I’m remembering correctly) son Zachary. It’s one of the first songs he ever wrote and was quite appropriate to end the afternoon with.
 
Sunday afternoon found me out in the cold at Rockefeller Center where, in front of the famous tree, 424 tuba players took part in the 43rd Annual Tuba Christmas. From the beginning organ-like sound of O Come, All Ye Faithful, which was really awe inspiring, to the final notes of Jingle Bells, it was a fun afternoon. I’ve attended this event at least a couple of times previously, and every year they announce that they’ll play each song twice—first for us to listen to and second for us to join in and sing. It never works. We, as a crowd, are just too far away and dispersed for any type of cohesive choral sound to be effective. A few of
us valiantly sang along, but it still just didn’t work. Favorites included the sacred (We Three Kings, Away in a Manger, etc.) and the secular (Deck the Halls and the aforementioned Jingle Bells) and, possibly my favorite, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, where the tubists stop playing in the middle and they sing to us! At approximately forty minutes, the concert was just the right length for me, though I know that others in the crowd got there up to thirty minutes ahead of the start time.
 
Monday evening was Holiday Songbook II, a more typical songbook in that more than one composer was featured. In this case there were sixteen different composers/teams with seventeen different songs performed. Many, though not all, of the songs were specifically written for this occasion, or at least written with Holiday Songbook, generally, in mind. As always, and including Songbook I, hearing new songs for the first time doesn’t necessarily give a lot to go on in terms of really commenting closely. In this case, some really crackerjack performances/
performers made me like some songs better than others. Not new, songwise, was the choreographed trio to Bette Midler’s recording of Cool Yule that opened the performance, with loads of fun.
 
A very timely We’re Not Going to Talk about …, sung by Danielle Trzcinski (also the lyricist), was all about holiday get-togethers where politics, as a discussion subject, is off the table. Until some of the guests get a little too much in their cups. There was some funny stuff here. Also very funny and effective was Beth Glover singing By Christmas, as a somewhat snooty mother trying to convince her son to ditch his current girlfriend or she (the mother) would be dead by Christmas.
 
Michael Linden and Larry Owens did a bang-up job of Sam Salmond’s Make My Yuletide Gay and Mr. Owens was positively manic in Will Aronson's and
Bill Nelson’s Oh My God I Love Christmas—an adult going all-out bonkers with the excitement of Christmas. With Polkadots Christmas, from Polkadots: The Cool Kids Musical, Brittney Johnson gave us a Motown pop-style up tempo rendition of a song set to a sort of music minus one soundtrack—she was singing live to a recorded track that included backup singers, as well as performing with a live piano accompanist.
 
The Christmas Tree Blues was funny, even allowing me to jot down some of the lyrics by Sam Carner (music, Derek Gregor): “I’m as blue as any evergreen could be,” and “Ain’t no way I’ll make it to spring … on my very last ring,” sung by Solea Pfeiffer. Then the dysfunctional family was represented again in Merry Christmas, with Grampa getting drunker and drunker. There was even a reference to that other holiday via the lyric, “Happy gin & tonic-a.”
 
Snow Day, with music and lyrics (and sung by) Jessica Ann Carp gave us hearts full of sorrow, pleading that these current times make us need some calming snow. The piece was scored for piano, violin, cello and voice, and the cellist made a special trip from North Carolina just to appear in this concert with Ms. Carp. That’s holiday spirit!

Joey ContrerasFirst Sign of Forever was given a touching performance by
Mia Gerachis telling of finding a new love at this special time of year. As a finale, we heard a rather adventurous, if slightly uneven, Focus on Tomorrow (music: Jake Chapman, lyrics: Henry Nettleton), that was a retelling of the nativity story through the Bailey children from It's a Wonderful Life. There were some good ideas, but it was a little on the long side and a little flawed.

Still, and I say this every time, it's astounding that so much talent (all volunteering their time and energy) is on display at every one of these Songbook presentations. I got some Christmas presents early this year. (Apologies for not naming every composer, lyricist and performer.)
 

Saturday, December 10, 2016

WQXR Midday Masterpieces (12/7/16)

This is a joint venture between WQXR, NYC’s classical music radio station, and the Juilliard School of Music, which may or may not be their official name. Still, it’s a great combination. Wednesday’s version presented four vocalists in an all-Schubert program. The following info is taken from WQXR’s website, since they don’t provide programs or info at the concerts.

Viola, D. 786Angela Vallone, soprano; Chris Reynolds, piano
Die liebe Farbe; Die Böse Farbe (from Die schöne Müllerin) D. 795;
Erlkönig, D. 328Matthew Swensen, tenor; Jinhee Park, piano
Ganymed, D. 544; Abendstern, D. 806; Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren,
D. 360
; Auf der Bruck, D. 853Miles Mykkanen, tenor; HoJae Lee, piano
An Sylvia, D. 891; Fischerweise, D. 881; Prometheus, D. 674Alex Rosen, bass; Chris Reynolds, piano

In keeping with ’Meister’s plan of not offering reviews—merely commentary on free and low-cost programs—let me state that all four vocalists presented themselves very well, as did the three partners/accompanists (because really, with lieder, the accompanists are truly partners). That said, Viola was nicely sung, with good (if maybe too direct) diction. The piece was fairly lengthy but had enough interest to fully engage us in the audience.

With the first of the two Die schöne Müllerin selections, the tenor captured the dark mood, but he really came into his own in the second. With Erlkönig, he might have worked a bit too hard differentiating each character, vocally, but it was still an effective performance of this somewhat chilling piece.

Ganymed seemed slightly mannered to me, as did Abendstern and Dioskuren. This could possibly be because these students (and we must remember that these are students, not seasoned professionals) are still developing their voices as well as their personal performing styles—indeed, their professional, performing personalities. Auf der Bruck was referred to as the ‘other’ horse riding song (in a reference to Erlkönig) and was well performed.

Surprisingly, An Sylvia and Fischerweise were the most difficult to pull off, in that they were classic, simple lied—strophic, relying on the artist to imbue the texts with enough interest to keep our interest involved. This was incorporated pretty well. Prometheus, on the other hand, was a dramatic setting, with a very effective performance. I think that the bass voice added a feeling of heft, maybe unfairly in comparison to the upper register voices that we had heard earlier.

Are these performers and voices that we will hear more of/from later? Hard to tell. Speaking from experience, there are lots of talented performers who have to work hard at finding their particular niche in show business. Or not. But these are seven very talented performers, and I wish them the best of luck (and I hope I hear more from them in the future!).

ConcertMeister

Monday, December 5, 2016

It's the Most Won ... (12/3–12/4/16)

OK, maybe I'm jumping the gun a little.

Saturday found me at Gotham Radio Theatre's production of Auntie Mame! It was a great retelling of the Patrick Dennis memoir of life with his Auntie Mame. I was seeing it through the filter of the book, the play, and the musical. Still, I got the gist of the story, though I may go back and read Dennis' original memoir.

The Gotham Radio Theatre troupe have Drood-style Radio Theatre characters (played by real-time actors playing Radio Theatre characters playing the characters in Auntie Mame!). I'm going to skip that. Here's the real-name cast list with their role(s) in Auntie Mame!

Laura Leopard – Auntie Mame (Mame Dennis)
Valerie Gilbert – Vera Charles, Nora, Agnes Gooch & others
Megan Mekjian – Pegeen Ryan, Gloria Upson & others
Jack Milazzo – Young Patrick
Kurt Hellerich – Patrick and others
Martin McGeachy – Beau, Mr. Babcock, Ito and others
John Moss – O’Banion, Lindsay and others

Directed and adapted by Sydnie Grosberg Ronga; Musical Director – Michael Ferrara

First off, the actors appeared with scripts in hand, which would be par for the course for radio broadcasts. And all of the troupe members took part in the audible sound effects—clip-clop shoes, paper rustling when reading the will, ding-dong! doorbells, pouring Auntie Mame's drinks, etc. And all of the actors were terrific. Watching Ms. Gilbert voice Vera, Nora and Agnes within seconds of one another was a tour-de-farce, while Ms. Leopard brought the right panache, plus sincerity, to Mame. Of special interest to me was the nifty hand-off when Patrick (as our narrator) would yield the stage to Young Patrick. Just a little nod, but it was a telling gesture repeated throughout the performance.

The score was provided by Mr. Ferrara (piano) plus strings (violin, viola, cello), reeds (saxophone, clarinet, flute), and drums. In true radio theatre style, our sponsor for the show was Chevrolet, so we heard, "See the USA, in your Chevrolet" (sing along—you know you want to) several times. The saxophone as a hunting horn for the fox hunt scene was a bit of genius. Other perfect sound effects included hand-manipulated tap shoes and slide whistles—I'm not making this up you know!

And at one point, there was a very effective split-screen situation—we were seeing it, but you could really hear it as part of the broadcast.

This is my second (at least) experience with Gotham Radio Theatre, and they have a real convert here. This was a most enjoyable afternoon in the theatre/radio.

Sunday found me at the Carl Schurz Park Ye Olde Annual Candlelight Holiday Carol Sing Along, which also included a countdown to lighting the Christmas tree. Not quite Rockefeller Center but more manageable. This was pretty much a repeat of the last two or three that I've attended—Cantori New York singing, and Orbital Brass (quintet) playing.

The welcoming remarks, featuring local politicos, was a little more streamlined this year, but still sort of yada-yada-yada-look-what-I've-done-for-you-and-the-park. Hey, that's what happens. This year, however, Cantori presented a much better-sized choral opening, with four nicely sung holiday songs (though with a slightly over-aggressive ved-y English-dictioned tenor).

They started (a little surprisingly) with Go Tell It on the Mountain, followed by Carol of the Bells, I'll Be Home for Christmas, and finishing with We Wish You a Merry Christmas (with lots of Med-y Ch-dr-istmases and B-dr-ing some dr-ight here from the aforementioned tenor). When the sing along started, I wended my way to the local liquor store while singing along with the brass, as long as I could hear them. Yeah, I got some weird looks on the street, but 'tis the season!

ConcertMeister