The winter edition of the indie marketplace the Renegade Craft Fair was impressively crowded Saturday afternoon. It seemed to be a day out for lots of families, & there was much socializing among the predominately female attendees. According to the fair map, there are over 300 vendors, & they put a lot of effort into making their products look appealing. I saw plenty of jewelry, printed tea towels & clothing, as well as a range of items from baseball bats to toffee. Food products seemed to be popular with shoppers. Concert posters by John Howard, some in 3-D & inspired by the psychedelic '60s, were striking. It was nice to see wooden pie boxes made in Chicago. I bought one on-line for a wedding gift earlier this year, but up to now had never had a chance to see it in real life.
One day I went out and bought a recording of Beethoven's Second Symphony and was so taken with it that I began to accumulate all the Beethoven symphonies. I then went on to Brahms, Mendelssohn and all the others. By that time, the first long-playing records had appeared, and my friends and I would listen to each other's new albums. That was the way I developed an appreciation for music. It is amazing how much you can learn about music just by reading the backs of album covers.Charles Schulz. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Me
Wednesday night I attended the 1st of 2 Messiah performances by American Bach Soloists in Grace Cathedral. The setting was made even more stunning by seasonal decorations of long, shimmering ribbons hanging in the interior. There was a feeling of a special event. The Rt. Rev. Marc Andrus, Episcopal Bishop of California, introduced the program, praised the musicians & conductor Jeffrey Thomas, & urged us to act in solidarity with the poor.
The serious-minded audience was as focused as the performers. The attentive silence throughout was palpable. Even though a couple at the end of my row slipped out after the Hallelujah Chorus, this was among the quietest audiences I've ever been in. Despite a program note debunking the origin story of the tradition of standing for the Hallelulah Chorus, the audience rose without hesitation for a "Hallelulah!" with a perfectly smooth & even surface.
Over the weekend I visited the San Francisco Bazaar Holiday Show at the Concourse Exhibition Center, a sprawling marketplace of independent vendors & hand-crafted items. Just about everything was eye-catching, though this is not a cheap place to shop. The atmosphere & the offerings were generally girlie, & I walked by lots of t-shirts, stationery, jewelry, DIY kits & children's clothing & cupcakes. Stuff made out of other stuff was a common theme. I saw things like wallets made out of seat belts, Christmas ornaments made from maps & terrariums growing in discarded computer chassis. I enjoyed handling the finely constructed artist's books from Green Chair Press, some of which fit inside a matchbox & feature pop-ups & unusual bindings. Attendees, & maybe vendors too, were predominately women.
This Saturday I checked out the East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest. It's grown quite a bit in its 4 years. Close to a hundred exhibitors were crammed into a downstairs room at Berkeley City College. The space behind tables was so tight that some vendors took to crawling under their tables to get out. They were a diverse group, from artists to established independent publishers to first-time zinesters. It was nice to see some old-school zines, like Abigail Young's Camel Toe, which definitely wins the prize for best-named zine. It has content to match. It was fun to see zinester Jason Martin & recreate our scene from his story in Tablegeddon. I also had enlightening chats with the flat-capped Andy Warner & the ebullient Brian Herrick. There is speculation that the independent comics scene is reaching a crisis where there are more creators than readers & that these expos are just gatherings where creators sell to one another.
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| Alessandro Corbelli (Doctor Bartolo) and Lucas Meachem (Figaro). Photo by Cory Weaver. |
The orchestra played extrovertedly under conductor Giuseppe Finzi. Tempos were brisk, & there were a few moments when the orchestra & singers were not in sync. I liked hearing the clarinet & flute solos. A harpsichord accompanied the recitatives for Bartolo & Basilio while a fortepiano accompanied the younger characters. I was in upstairs standing room & spent a lot of time watching the woman seated in front of me bounce up & down to Rossini's music. During intermission the odor of pot wafted from a knot of older patrons on the outside balcony.
Sunday afternoon I saw public radio broadcaster Ira Glass & dancers Monica Barnes & Anna Bass in a live performance with the ungainly title of Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host. The hybrid show combined interviews from This American Life with Mr. Glass's live commentary & dance. Mr. Glass stood at a lectern, which he assembled on stage at the start of the show, & triggered audio clips with an iPad. I'd never had a clear idea of what he looks like before, & it took me a while to adjust to his tall, lanky appearance. The dancers were incorporated into some stories & also performed their own numbers. The audience cheered Mr. Glass when he bravely danced a few times himself.
The show took place on a bare stage, but effective use was made of lighting & a small number of props. At one point, 6 audience members were pulled on stage to recreate a middle school dance, complete with disco ball & balloon arch. The show's finale included baton twirling & a confetti explosion. The Nourse Theatre looked full. The audience was attentive the entire time & gave the show a standing ovation.
I dropped in at the Columbarium on Saturday evening to catch Luciano Chessa's LIGHTEST, a performance art piece that concluded a full afternoon of site-specific events presented by the SFMOMA. The audience, which had just watched a film, was being asked to rearrange their chairs around the center of the rotunda when I arrived. The piece took place in the dark & lasted just under half an hour. It was evidently about searching. At 1st, 7 performers roamed the building with flashlights while boom boxes on different floors played overlapping tracks of conversations & songs. I recognized The Great Pretender & The Muppet Show theme song. The centerpiece of the performance was Mr. Chessa playing an amplified saw under the rotunda. He produced an unexpected variety of sounds, from scraping metal to thunder claps to high metallic pitches. After his solo, the other performers converged on him, attached their lights to his clothing & then led him blindfolded around the building. The piece ended when they reaching their goal, the niche of Harvey Milk. The performance had a receptive audience. A photographer & videographer recorded the proceedings, even though it was very dark.
The salon audience was attentive & appreciatively applauded each song. In the Q & A afterward we learned that German is Mr. Sly's favorite language to sing & that he finds it harder to sing in a language he speaks fluently. Mr. Sly comes across as an exceedingly pleasant person. He joked about the audience's drinking & laughed when Mr. Britton reminded him to read one of the poems. He readily allowed that excerpting from Die schone Müllerin & Winterreise was "blasphemy" but explained that he picked songs based on accompaniments that worked for the guitar. Apologizing for such a dark & serious program, he gave us the 1st song from Ravel's Don Quichotte cycle as a light encore.
Maestro Nicola Luisotti's conducting was brisk & extroverted. The orchestra played out, & there were nice woodwind solos. For the final scene, a musician dressed as a huntsman stood in box A & played the opening horn calls on a valveless horn. The grand pause at the end of the finale was dramatic, & Mr. Terfel's pianissimo utterance of "Tutti gabbati" was striking. I watched the performance from upstairs standing room. There was plenty of room at the railing, & I noticed 2 people reading scores. Many attendees arrived late & had to be seated after the 1st scene.
Conductor Patrick Summers did not push the music, & the duet of Senta & the Dutchman in act 2 unfolded at a slightly indulgent pace. The orchestra sounded clipped at times. I enjoyed the smooth & sweet oboe solos. The off-stage voices of the Dutchman & the Dutchman's sailors seemed to emanate from the walls of the auditorium. I watched the show in upstairs standing room, where there was plenty of room at the railing. This production takes an intermission after act 1.
Earlier this week, Merola Opera announced next season's events at a wine, cheese & dessert reception for members in the plush Wattis Room at Davies Hall. Jean Kellogg, Executive Director, revealed that next summer's productions will be André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire & Mozart's Don Giovanni. Streetcar will be presented in an arrangement for reduced orchestra by Peter Grünberg. Ms. Kellogg described Streetcar as a "good opera for young voices." Conrad Sweeting gave some details about the April 12th Gala at the Fairmont Hotel. The theme is "A Night in New Orleans." The event is black tie, but Mr. Sweeting assured us that the dress code could be interpreted liberally. The Gala will also honor former SF Opera general director Lotfi Mansouri. Dan Meagher, Merola's ebullient Marketing Director, told us about free opera movies at the SF Public Library & a holiday concert featuring soprano Kristin Clayton & baritone Bojan Knezevic in Lafayette on December 7th.
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| Photo by Jesse Goff |
Refreshments were served in an intimate party room with low lighting. It had a canopy of tree branches hanging just above eye level & an ambient sound of chirping birds. The bustling event photographer asked me to pose with several people I had only just met.
