Classical Music

Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Piano

Last Night in L.A.: Gloria Cheng and friends

Gloria Cheng opened the season of serious music-listening in her position as opener of the Piano Spheres series of concerts.  The program was oriented the program to two-musicians works, and there was a gracious lead-in to the guest appearance to be given by Thomas Ades in December, with performances of two of his early works.

Cheng began the concert with Ades’s Opus 7, “Still Sorrowing” (1992-1993), written at age 21.  This is a more restrained work than many of his, with the prepared piano dampening the middle range of the piano, creating a hollowness to support its feeling of loss.  The middle work of the second half of the concert was Ades’s Opus 8, “Life Story” (1993) in its version for soprano and piano; Angela Blue was our excellent singer last night.  The work is a setting of the Tennessee Williams poem (1956) of two strangers having had their first one-night stand; I wondered how the poem escaped the attention of composers before Ades.  Ades gives the soprano (with one minor exception the words work fine for a woman singing about a man) a yawning, boozy, blues-y melody, up to the sting in the tail of the last line.  Amazon has a great CD, at bargain price, with Ades at the piano; the CD includes seven of his early works, and clips are available.

Completing the first half of the concert were two major works for piano duet.  Cheng was joined by Robert Winter — UCLA professor, Philharmonic lecturer, interactive CD developer — for Beethoven’s four-hand version of the “Grosse Fuge”.  The two made things easy by using two pianos, which avoided developing the choreography for whose arm would be where, but I didn’t find the performance especially persuasive. 

She was then joined by Neal Stulberg — currently director of orchestral studies at UCLA and a former recipient of the Seaver/NEA Conductors Award — for a performance of “Variations on a Theme by Beethoven” by Camille Saint-Saens.  We seemed to be in a salon in Paris while this was being performed. To replace a premiere which was withdrawn because the work wasn’t ready, Cheng substituted a work written for her, two movements, rather.  Two years ago, she gave the premiere of “Seven Memorials” (2004) by Stephen Andrew Taylor, now at the University of Illinois.  This is an excellent work; the NY Times music critic called it “sparklingly tactile” in reviewing Cheng’s performance of four of the movements at Tanglewood in August.  Last night Cheng played the fifth and sixth movements; excerpts of the music are available here, from Cheng’s performance of 2004.

For the rousing conclusion, Cheng was joined on the second piano by Grant Gershon, now in his sixth year as Music Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale.  The two gave us a work written for them, which they premiered at Getty Center, “Hallelujah Junction” (1998) by John Adams.  I am an unabashed fan of this work.  It belongs in your music collections.

A good concert!  (And the attendance was about the largest I’ve ever seen there.)

by JerryZ
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Opera

What to Wear in LA

Michael Gordon’s new post-rock opera What To Wear opens tonight at the Redcat Theater in downtown LA.   Richard Foreman wrote the libretto and directs the stage production.

According to our sources (Michael, who “guarantees a good time will be had by all”), What to Wear is a raucous and bitingly funny work about fashion. There are 4 main characters (all called Madeline X) and 2 ducks,
a small one and a big one. There are ten singers, ten actors and 7 musicians all under the musical direction of David Rosenboom.

“What to Wear postulates a world in which military tanks and nightmare toy ducks take turns threatening  would-be fashion models, who are trying to escape reality by dressing in bizarre outfits that semi-disguise them as lost children who never found out how to be lovable,” Gordon explains, helpfully.  “They inhabit a large red room, dominated by four giant images of colorful abstract demons, suggesting that whatever one does finally wear, worse nightmares will eventually turn even the most riotous party inside out. They sing again and again, ‘I am Madeline X, beautifully dressed’. But as everyone on-stage turns less and less beautiful– something more ecstatic than beauty slowly reveals its awesome 21st century face.”

Whatever.

The Recat Theater is CalArts’ downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts and is located in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.   What To Wear runs through October 1

by Jerry Bowles
Awards, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Downtown

News Flash: Zorn is a Genius

John Zorn is officially a genuis.   The 53-year-old composer, improviser, saxophonist, provocateur, and ardent promoter of experimental music through his Tzadik recording label, was one of 25 new MacArthur Fellows named today.  Like his fellow honorees, Zorn will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years.  Unlike most other awards, MacArthur winners don’t apply but are picked by a secret committee of “experts.”  One day you get phone call that says you don’t have to worry about next month’s rent. 

The award notes that Zorn is a “largely self-taught artist who, since the mid-1970s, has been at the center of what has come to be called “downtown” music, based on his residence and collaborations in lower Manhattan.”

Speaking for the S21 community (always a dangerous thing to do), let me offer a hearty “Nice going, Johnny.”

Speaking of genius, Christina Fong posted some thoughts on that very subject a few days ago.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Critics

A WTF Moment From Mark Swed

I like Mark Swed’s writing a lot and find I normally agree with his tastes but I can’t make sense out of his review of the Carl Orff/Jefferson Friedman concert at Hollywood Bowl that we hyped a little last week.  I am particularly baffled by this line: 

As in “Carmina,” there is much to like musically in “Throne,” as long as you hold your nose. The political implications in both scores are troubling. Orff was, if not a Nazi sympathizer, at least a National Socialist opportunist.

Okay, but I can’t for the life of me see a parallel in anything else in the review that would make me think Jeff Friedman is an awful person.  What exactly are the “politics” of Friedman’s The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly?  Is Friedman some kind of closet skinhead?

Read Mark’s review and tell me what I’m missing.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Metropolitan Opera, Opera, Washington National Opera

Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky

Reader Bill Westfall passes along this link to a story about a new research study that reports more than one quarter of classical music fans use cannabis and 12.3 per cent of opera buffs have tried magic mushrooms.  This, I suppose, is as opposed to the 100 per cent of Grateful Dead fans who do and have. 

The finding suggests an interesting topic:  Great Composers Who Were Stoners.  Discuss.

And speaking of discussion, get on over to the new, spiffed up Composers Forum page and weigh in on Rob Deemer’s question about how important a web presence is for an active composer’s career.

Meant to mention this a couple of days ago but the WaPo has a profile of William Friedkin, director of Sorcerer, indisputedly the worst movie ever made, who is directing Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the Washington National Opera.

I am told by a reliable source that new Met manager Peter Gelb was once punched on the grounds of Tanglewood by Michael Steinberg, who was then the Boston Symphny’s program book annotator.  Anybody got details?  Pictures?

by Jerry Bowles