Tezuka; Take Me Out

This weekend I went to opening of the exhibit Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga at the Asian Art Museum. I really don't know much about Tezuka other than that he was the most famous manga artist & animator in Japan, so this show was somewhat educational for me.

On this opening day, they had 2 informative lectures about his work. The 1st speaker, Phil Brophy, pointed out that a frequent theme of Tezuka's work is survival through childhood without a parent. He interpreted this as a reaction to the difficult conditions of life in post-war Japan.

The 2nd speaker, Yoshihiro Shimizu, was a Tezuka associate. He gave a comprehensive overview of Tezuka's work, presenting it as a series of innovations in both the design & subject matter of Japanese comics & animation. Seeing the way Tezuka's story-telling spanned comic books, TV, movies & merchandising & became a cultural phenomenon, it was hard not to think of comparisons with Walt Disney.

Unfortunately, the presentation ran a bit long, since each of Shimizu's remarks was translated from Japanese into English by Fred Schott. I didn't have as much time as I would have liked afterwards to visit the actual exhibit, which consists of a survey of Tezuka comic books. The images on display include large reproductions of pages from the comic books, cover art & the camera-ready artwork. The books were produced by a studio, & there are no preparatory drawings or sketches in the exhibit, so I was never convinced that I saw anything that Tezuka himself actually drew.

The subject matter of Tezuka's manga can be very unexpected: gory tales of a renegade surgeon; aliens come to earth disguised as a duck, a horse & a rabbit; a life of Beethoven. He even did a comic book treatment of Crime & Punishment!

Supporting the exhibit is a "Manga Lounge", basically a reading room for teenagers, stocked with manga in English & a display of collectibles. Spending some time browsing here might be the best way to learn about Tezuka. The museum is also screening a documentary containing lots of clips of Tezuka's animation, such as the astonishing shorts Jumping & Broken Down Film. Unfortunately he never completed a project called Legend of the Forest. It is set to Tchaikovsky' 4th Symphony, & each section is done in a different animation style. The fragments shown in the documentary look stunning.

But I really didn't spend all the time I wanted to at the museum. I also had to skip the Yoshitoshi prints, so I'll have to come back for that one as well.

That evening I went to the New Conservatory Theatre for their production of Take Me Out by Robert Greenberg. I remember reading about this play when it was on Broadway a few years ago. The hook is that it requires an athletic, all-male cast, most of whom appear naked at some point during the show. The action takes place in a locker room, &, yes, there's even a dropping-the-soap-in-the-shower gag.

The play itself is both funny & tragic. From scene to scene some new theme is always coming up, but in the end it's not clear to me what the play is really about. Afterwards it didn't make sense the more I thought about it.

It's still very entertaining. It's performed here by a very lovable cast. Especially outstanding are Jeffrey Cohlman, as the uncomprehending bad guy Shane Mungitt, & Patrick Michael Dukeman, as Mason Marzac, the accountant turned baseball fanatic. It's the happiest character arc in the play.

iPhone Ad with a Local Angle

One of the commercials for the soon-to-be-released iPhone features one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants. We've been waiting for that one mobile device that does it all, & this is about as close as I've seen so far. My boss calls it an "object of desire".

Noontime Concert: David Requiro

Schumann - Adagio and Allegro, Op. 70o
Brahms - Sonata in D major, Op. 78
Gaspar Cassado - Dance of the Green Devil

A musical co-worker tipped me off to the noontime concerts at St. Patrick's on Mission. Even though they are called "noontime concerts", they start at half past 12. Anyway, I went Wednesday & heard cellist David Requiro accompanied by pianist Miles Graber. The very young Mr. Requiro was last year's winner of the Irving Klein Competition. Suprisingly, he's the 1st Bay Area winner of this local competition.

Despite his age, David Requiro is clearly a veteran perfomer. I really liked his intimate playing. He's the kind of performer who draws you in. He's very musical & phrases everything, & he's almost indulgent in the easiness that he has with slow movements. Since he's a competition winner, I take it for granted that his technique is nearly perfect. He has an effortless sound even when playing extremely high up on the instrument.

Unfortunately this church is a very poor venue for this kind of recital. The sound is extremely muddy & difficult to hear. Sightlines from the pews are poor. There are also the distractions of street noise & people moving around the church. & this being San Francisco, we had a fair share of institutional types, though the audience was entirely well-behaved.

Welser-Möst tries it again

A while back I got all pissy over MTT's Stravinsky mishap wherein he took 3 tries to get one of the movements started. Well, these things might happen more frequently than I thought. Here's Franz Welser-Möst having a Berg breakdown, via Opera Chic.

On the lighter side, here's Yefim Bronfman having mechanical trouble in Detroit, via The standing Room.

Zombies; Arab Photography; Political Cartoons

As I left work yesterday, I witnessed a zombie attack on Market Street. It was messy. I think these people are responsible.

This afternoon I visited the SF Camerawork gallery to see an exhibit titled Not Given: Talking of and Around Photographs of Arab Women. It turned out to be a multimedia show of photographs from something called the Arab Image Foundation http://www.fai.org.lb/. This one was a bit too post-modern for me. The multimedia portion was 4 concurrently running slide shows of photos from the archive, grouped by search terms. I unfortunately remained unenlightened. I didn't understand the post-modern jargon of the wall text, & the photo selections seemed indiscriminate to me.

After my SF Camerawork visit, I went next door to the Cartoon Art Museum to see their provocatively titled exhibit Why Do They STILL Hate U.S.?. It's a collection of political cartoon about the Bush administration that appeared mostly in English-language newspapers outside the U.S. I like the idea of this exhibition, but my sense was that this was pretty much the same kind of criticism we already see here, only more blunt. The caricatures of Bush were very familiar: he's usually depicted as a big-eared hypocrite, ignoramus or tyrant.

The only cartoons that offered a new point of view to me were ones attacking Bush's stance against Iran as a nuclear threat. In these Bush rails against Iran, while ignoring a gleeful Korea, already holding a nuclear bomb. I don't think I've heard Korea come up here whenever we talk about the threat of Iran as a nuclear power.

Maker Faire

I'd never been to the Maker Faire in San Mateo before. I had no idea it was going to be so big & so crowded & such a family event. Definitely something for everyone, & probably the closest I'll ever get to Burning Man. If there's an over-all theme, it's something like "extreme arts & crafts". I never knew that welding could be a hobby.

The main ideas of the Faire come together in the many robotic exhibits: interactivity, recycling & repurposing of materials, customization, digital technology, playfulness, humor. I even took in racous round of Robo Games, in which a flame-throwing robot pursued a small beer keg on wheels & reduced it to a smoking shell.

I pretty much ignored the stage presentations, even though Steve Wozniak was a featured speaker. However, I was lucky enough to hear the awesomely retro Project: Pimento, who bill themselves as the only theremin lounge band. They totally convinced me that we don't hear enough of the theremin these days.

I also couldn't ignore the knitting drummer. I guess one way to creativity is combining existing skills in new ways.

Carnivorous Plants

Sunday was insanely warm in San Francisco. I even wore shorts! Went to Golden Gate Park to check out the special exhibit of carnivorous plants at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. Great stuff. The exhibit has healthy examples of all the major types of traps, many of them in bloom. Even though it's tough to refrain from touching the plants, it's a full sensory experience. You'll get sprayed with steam, & there is jazz music piped into the room! Can't fail to inspire a sense of wonder.

Steven Isserlis's Russian Program

SHOSTAKOVICH: Sonata, Op. 40
RUBINSTEIN: Sonata No. 1, Op. 18
GLAZUNOV: Two Pieces, Op. 20
PROKOFIEV: Sonata, Op. 119

Thursday night I heard cellist Steven Isserlis's Russian program at Herbst Theatre. I've never heard him before, but at least visually he is a pretty unmistakable performer. He has a huge mop of long curly hair, somewhat like Evgeny Kissin. He tends to look around while he plays, sometimes appearing to stare straight out into the audience. He also has a peculiar mannerism of occasionally flipping his left hand up & open at the end of a phrase.

He doesn't seem to have a big or weighty sound. Instead, his playing is very clean & adroit. Even when Shostakovich has him doing all sorts of wild strumming, sliding, pizzicato, or tearing through rapid passages, the sound was always precise & clear. He's a tasteful performer.

The program was 2 weighty pieces sandwiching the relatively lighter pieces of Rubinstein & Glazunov. Before the Rubinstein, Isserlis spoke a few words about the composer's huge stature in his day, then commented that we were about to hear why this piece is unknown today. He finds the piece old-fashion yet still enjoyable. The piece also gave our page-turner extra duties. During a cadenza passage for the cellist, she stood up, walked carefully around the pianist, turned Mr. Isserlis's page for him, then returned to her seat.

The accompanist was the very young Kirill Gerstein, whose similarly precise & clear playing, complemented & supported Isserlis very well. As an encore they did a lyrical piece by Rachmaninoff, which Isserlis said is probably his earliest known piece.

Rheingold in Valencia

The Opera Chic blog posted some wacky photos of a production of Das Rheingold directed by a group called La Fura dels Baus in Valencia: We Got Teh *lolbombs* Up In Here. The SF Opera has a new Ring in the works, but somehow I doubt it's going to look anything like this.

Christopher Maltman

Sunday evening I heard English baritone Christopher Maltman's song recital at Herbst Theatre. It was a fully romantic program of songs by Peter Warlock, Debussy, Henri Duparc, Franz Schubert & Hugo Wolf.

Maltman is young, tall & slim, & he looked very happy to be with us. Both his voice & his stage presence are operatic. The different ranges of his voice had different colors. He made discreet use of falsetto when a song called for a quiet ending.

Maltman is also a great actor & can create a character for a song. For Warlock's Captain Stratton's Fancy, he becomes the boistrous, happy drunk. But for Wolf's Der Gärtner, he is the naive, shy gardener.

Even though this was Maltman's recital, it was the accompanist Julius Drake who really had my attention this evening. He is a fantastic pianist & musician. He could make such a tremendous amount of sound that I could feel the low notes through the floor. But he could also play beautifully quiet & fluid passages. Drake inhabited the music so fully that he did more than the singer to communicate the songs. In fact I'm afraid that I listened to him more than the singer. Several days later, the strongest impressions of this recital I have are of Drake's intense accompaniments for some of the Duparc & Wolf songs. At times he would rise off the piano bench while he played, & at the end of each set he would leap up immediately.

Unsurprisingly, Drake seems to be in high demand as a chamber music performer & accompanist. He is no doubt more than just a supporting player. Maltman often seemed to be conferring with him between pieces. At one point Drake even gave him a pitch before starting a song.

There were a couple of unfortunate technical difficulties during the 1st song. First, there was a sudden loud blast of something electronic, like feedback or an alarm, but it stopped almost as soon as it started. Then there was a softer electronic buzz that took a bit longer to go away. Maltman carried on completely unfazed by the distractions. Then to test Maltman further, a woman came down from the side boxes & sat herself in the front row, speaking to a couple of people nearby as she did so. She did all this while Maltman was singing, then she disappeared after intermission.

For his first encore Maltman did a Flanders & Swann number & instantly became outrageously charming. For the first time I focussed solely on his singing so that I could catch all the words. He followed this by a comic Debussy song, Ballade of the Parisian Women, also dispatched with appropriate theatrics.

Berlioz's Damnation of Faust

Thursday night I was at Davies Hall for the SF Symphony performance of The Damnation of Faust by Berlioz, led by Charles Dutoit. At over 2 hours with no intermssion, it's long for a symphony night but short for an opera. It's an extravagant show, with soloists, large orchestra & chorus, & it gets even bigger at the end when, in a theatrical moment, the boys & girls choruses enter & fill up the terrace for the final moments.

Very good performances from all the soloists. Willard White's Mephistopheles was the stand out. His voice is deep, large, round & slightly metallic, & he acts with both his voice & his movements.

The tenor Gregory Kunde was also very dramatic. At moments the part is very high, & I felt like he took risks to get those high notes out without belting. I saw mezzo Ruxandra Donose as Poppea at the SF opera several years ago. I remembered her as very attractive & very affecting, & I had the same reaction this night. Her singing of the story of the King of Thule was appropriately melancholy.

I liked Dutoit's conducting. I felt he was in control of the character of the music at all times. He's always well ahead of the orchestra. Sometime he shapes the orchestra's playing by not conducting at all. There were great solos from the English horn & the viola. The violas might be the best section in the orchestra these days. During the applause, I saw our English horn soloist get a pat on the back from her stand partner.

Though a few people bailed towards the end, the audience was very quiet & not at all restless. A couple of times there was applause during the performance from one or 2 patrons, but otherwise the audience withheld its reaction until the very end. I actually wouldn't have minded some applause during the performance. It would have made it feel more like an opera.

Marino Formenti

This past Saturday evening I was torn between 2 concerts: Bach's B-minor Mass performed in Berkeley by the Netherlands Bach Ensemble vs. the last installment of Marino Formenti's modern music recitals, "The San Francisco Piano Trips". These were obviously going to be very different experiences. I opted for Formenti, & it was quite a show, as much performance art as classical music recital.

It was held in the Koret Auditorium of the de Young Museum. I hadn't been there before. It's a very comfortable space below ground level. It probably holds around 400, has stadium-style seating & very wide seats. The performing area is on the same level as the 1st row of seats, so there is no elevated stage.

It was a very high-tech set-up. At one side of the stage a piano was surrounded by a half dozen or so portable radios. At the other side of the stage was a piano surrounded by jars & vases of various sizes, shapes & materials. Each had a microphone suspended inside it. Center stage were 2 pianos with the keyboards placed at 90 degrees to one another. The pianos were miked, & wires ran all around the floor.

At the start of the recital Formenti came out, looking serious & slightly sheepish, acknowledged the audience, & barely sat down before I heard a loud, sharply attacked chord. I wasn't prepared, & it was so startling I jumped in my seat. He had my attention for the rest of the recital.

I got to witness a lot of wild piano techniques. Each piece had its own peculiar technical challenges. Formenti often had to move abruptly between intensely loud & extremely soft. He made the jars sound by striking notes on the piano that caused them to resonate sympathetically. He taped small microphones to his index fingers & played the piano not by depressing the keys but by running his fingers rapidly over the keys, creating clattering glissandos. He played 2 pianos at the same time. He played exhausting passages of tone clusters with his fists & forearms. The John Cage piece, among other stunts, calls on the performer to the play the piano with a hammer!

The program had a lot of variety. It was clear that every piece had at least 1 interesting idea that was being explored. & it always felt like it was music, even during the Cage piece, when Formenti was scanning radio stations or striking the inside of the piano with a hammer. In fact, I'm still thinking about this Cage piece.

Of the 9 composers on the program, the only name I recognized was John Cage. Because the repertoire was so completely new to me, I felt like I couldn't really judge whether these were good interpretations or not, even though I liked Formenti's performance very much. I wish there were more opportunities to hear programs like this.

PS
Marino Formenti spoke to me! During the intermission many of us in the audience milled around the stage, examining the score on the piano & checking out the electronic set-up. The stage crew were having a job keeping people from going behind the pianos. At one point I looked around the back of a piano & discovered a stand with a small Chinese teapot with a wire going into the spout. All of a sudden Formenti was in front of me pretending to cover the teapot with his hands & saying "You discovered my secret!" I was too startled to respond. Formenti should be pleased to know that when he revealed the teapot's role at the recital's finale, it was still a surprise.

APE 2007

It was such a nice day on Sunday, but I spent most of it indoors at the Alternative Press Expo. This show gets bigger every year, & the stuff on display keeps looking more professional. A big draw was the chance to see Art Spiegelman & Gene Yang on a panel discussion. I came home with a handful of short comics, including the latest Optic Nerve, which I am looking forward to reading. I also bought the absolutely massive, 500 page Cavalcade of Boys by Tim Fish.

Ignite at Web Expo 2.0

Sunday night I checked out the Ignite event at Web Expo 2.0. Ignite events originated in Belgium & have been held in Seattle & now here. The task this evening was to select 3 keynote speakers for the conference on Wednesday. 16 speakers are each given exactly 5 minutes to pitch their company or concept. Each speaker comes armed with 20 slides, changing every 15 seconds. The slides prompt the speakers & keep them within time. At the end of each round of 8 speakers, the audience votes, via text messaging. I just checked the final results, & I have to say that I agree with our audience choices.

The topics ranged widely, though they were supposed to be more or less related to the Web & new technologies. I was impressed by author Timothy Ferriss. If he's not already a media darling, he soon will be. Jordan Schwartz gave a talk about beekeeping which is probably the ideal Ignite presentation. It was totally unexpected yet somehow relevant. Oh, & Justin of Justin TV gave a talk too, so I was probably on Justin TV that night!

Spring Chick at Marc Jacobs

The Marc Jacobs store in Pacific Heights currently has a window display that is way cuter than it sounds. On weekend afternoons, shoppers can have their picture take with a giant costumed yellow chick. The store puts the picture in the window. I sometimes wait for the bus in front of this store, & the pictures & the photo shoots are totally fun to see.

Cherry Blossom Festival

This weekend & next weekend is the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown. It was raining Saturday morning, so I put off going, but then it cleared up, so I went in the afternoon. The parade is next Sunday. I like to check out the origami exhibit. Very amazing transformer-like robot figures folded from foil paper. A lot of interesting things folded out of dollar bills, like a little model car.

MTT Embarrassed

The San Francisco Symphony had a mini-Stravinsky festival the past 2 weeks. I attended the program on Wednesday night which consisted of Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the Apollo ballet music & the Symphony of Psalms, as well as a clarinet concerto, Fantasma/Cantos by Takemitsu.

MTT likes to talk before the pieces, & he spent a good 8 minutes before the Apollo enthusiastically explaining how full of "delights" it is. He had the orchestra play excerpts to demonstrate how some of the part writing works. One of the excerpts was Barantschik's lyrical violin solo, & this amounted to a kind of musical spoiler.

Midway through the Apollo there was a false start to one of the movements, signaled by tentative notes from some violinists. After a pause, there was another false start, then MTT saying "sorry" to the orchestra & flipping pages of his score. At this point everyone in the audience could tell that something had gone wrong. MTT made a joke of it by making a show of shuffling the papers on the podium. He appeared to have lost track of which movement to start. On his third try, he got the next movement going.

I've never seen such an obvious flub occur on the podium before, & it was a bit heart-stopping to witness the performance come to a halt. I didn't feel safe or confident for the rest of concert after that. Joshua Kosman's review of the concert in the Chronicle referred to it as a "mishap".

Happier moments of the Apollo included Barantschik's beautiful violin solo & then a duet with Mark Volkert(?). I hadn't realized what a deep, mellow tone Volkert has.

After intermission, MTT had the soloist Richard Stoltzman speak about the Takemitsu concerto & play the prinicpal theme, which again was a spoiler. For me Stoltzman's playing was the highlight of the evening. He has an incredible sound, almost piercing. There are brillant high notes, mellow low notes, a big dynamic range. The piece is meditative, wandering, & has a dense orchestral texture. The clarinet plays almost continuously, & Stolztman was expressive throughout.

Woyzeck

Friday night I was at the Exit Theatre to see a production of Woyzeck by The Cutting Ball Theater. I've been to this venue for fringe shows, & it's a pretty scrappy operation. Before they open the theater doors, we're crammed into a small lobby, then when they let us in, we're crammed into 4 tight rows of chairs. There's a lot of crawling over people to get to a seat. I overheard someone remark that it's like getting on an airplane.

The show is performed by a committed cast of 9 young actors. The action moves very quickly. It's a spare, expressionistic production. It takes place against a white-washed wall of cubbyholes, filled with ordinary & not so ordinary house-old objects. There are lots of lighting effects & sound effects coming from different parts of the theater. The sounds are not quite noise & not quite music. The show has a hallucinatory feeling, like perhaps some of it is only happening in Woyzeck's head.

I'm seen Woyzeck in its operatic version, & I expected the Woyzeck character to be this bluff ox of a man. Instead, our Woyzeck (Chad Deverman)is tall, slim, sensitive & exceptionally good-looking. His scenes with Marie then became very sensual & sexy.

The murder scene was especially powerful. We know what's going to happen, but Marie is entirely unaware. When Woyzeck embraces Marie & they take a few dance steps together, we seem to get a peek into an earlier, more tender phase of their relationship. This makes it all the more terrible when he pulls out his knife. Unfortunately it's not a swift death. Woyzeck discovers that it takes a lot of stabbing to kill Marie, & he eventually has to slit her throat, at which point she becomes a wide-eyed corpse, her eyes rolling back into her head.

Woyzeck is a grotesque play & must be very challenging to produce. It's clearly fragmentary, though every scene just as clearly raises an important issue. & it's hard to feel positive about any of these issues raised. When the performance ended in a sudden black-out, the audience sat in still silence for several seconds before someone started the applause.

KDFC SF Opera Broadcast

Last night was the first broadcast of the SF Opera by KDFC Classical 102.1 FM. On the 1st Sunday of the month for the next several months KDFC will be broadcasting previously recorded performances from the current SF Opera season. This is another of General Director David Gockley's innovations, & I approve.

This first broadcast was Puccini's Manon Lescaut, led by Donald Runnicles & with Karita Matilla in the title role. The program was all meat. There were just short breaks between acts to give the plot summaries & the cast, & there was minimal advertising.

In a brief interview before the broadcast, Gockley said he chose this performance to open the series because he wanted to start off with his best. No kidding. I hadn't heard this opera before, & its sensationalism grabbed me immediately. Manon is transported to a prison in Louisiana in the 3rd act, only to die on a plain outside New Orleans in the 4th act! (Made me wonder what an opera Puccini could have made out of McTeague.) The orchestra sounded great, Matilla is a dramatic powerhouse, & I'm sorry I missed it.

R. Crumb at YBCA

Yesterday I went to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to check out the R. Crumb exhibit. I really like his drawing, though, I've never been much interested in the content itself. I think this is because I don't share any of his obsessions. Nevertheless, I like the idea of a museum exhibit about his work, & I definitely wanted to see it.

It's a fun show, & the work itself needs no explication. However, the exhibit doesn't have an organizing principle. Perhaps this is because Crumb's sensibility appears to have been fully-formed from the start. Even though the works are from several decades, they reveal no obviously stylistic development or chronology. Perhaps the curators could have provided a background or context. I came away mainly with an aesthetic appreciation of his work.

Looking at his drawings confirmed my suspicions about Crumb's virtuosity as a draftsman. It's unusual to see any kind of under-drawing or corrections. Even the pages from his sketch book show that he rarely has to restate any line he puts down.

The wall text seems a bit defensive at times. It makes the point that Crumb's becoming mainstream is not indicative of him "selling-out". He is positioned as someone who was an artist in his own right starting in the 60s, a complement to the abstract & formalist art movements of his time.

The wall text accompanying a cartoon with explicitly racist content states that Crumb is demonstrating the prevalence of racism in American society. I'm less convinced by this explanation. Of course the black female in the cartoon is an obvious caricature. But I don't think that we are meant to see it with any sense of distance. To me it looks like Crumb just found the caricature very attractive & accessible. He liked it.

Appropriately, a lot of the visitors were baby-boomers who were no doubt Crumb's original audience back in the 60s. There was even a family with their college-age son.

Vänskä conducts Sibelius

On Thursday night I was at Davies Hall to hear the SF Symphony lead by guest conductor Osmo Vänskä. The program started with a show piece for orchestra called Louhi, written by Finish composer named Kalevi Aho in 2003 for a Finish youth orchestra. It's only about 10 minutes long, but lots of things happen. You feel like you are exposed to lots of different moods & orchestral colors, but none of them linger for long. The piece ends quietly & ominously.

Emanual Ax played the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat. Ax is one of those famous artists that I don't think I'd ever actually heard before. He has a very low musical profile. He's not flashy & doesn't try to make big points, but his playing is efficient & serves Mozart very well. This is an amazing concerto, by the way. There's as much interest in the orchestra as in the solo part. In the 2nd movement there's a section for woodwinds only. It's like all of a sudden we're listening to the Gran Partita for 2 minutes!

Ax is clearly a well-loved artist. There was a big turn-out to hear him, & he received a bouquet of flowers on stage.

After intermission we heard the Sibelius Symphony No. 1 in E minor. It's standard, un-challenging Romantic fair, & I enjoyed the performance thoroughly. Vänskä has ideas, & he works hard to get them across. His cues look very clear, & he'll shake his arms at the musicians, encouring the most vigorous playing. At times he looks like he's wrestling with the orchestra. I like his conducting. I was originally interested in this concert because of Emanuel Ax, but it turned it out that Vänskä left the bigger impression on me.

American Bach Soloists: Early Bach Cantatas

This Sunday evening I heard American Bach Soloists in a program of early Bach cantatas at St. Mark's Lutheran Church. This turns out to be a very good venue for this program. The church interior is bright & not too large. I overheard people commenting that the new organ had been inaugurated on this day's service.

The American Bach Soloists are an early music group. The ensemble plays Baroque instruments, & they employ the economical practice of one performer per part (though they double the bass line with a sort of double bass listed in the program as a violone grosso). This extends to the vocalists as well, so even the choruses are sung by just the quartet of soloists.

Besides translations of the text, my program included music for some of the hymns. At the start of the concert the conductor explained that for the cantatas with final chorales, these chorales would be repeated, with the audience joining in. & indeed, after the 1st chorale, the conductor turned around, there was a blast from the loft organ, & just about everyone in the audience sang. I found that there was a particularly enthusiastic tenor right behind me.

I don't know enough about the development of Bach's music to understand the programming, but this is incredible music. Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt BWV 18 makes one feel the rightness of putting ones faith in God. The wedding canata Der Herr denket an uns BWV 196 manages to be both joyful & solemn, as befits the occasion. Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen BWV 12 says everything there is to know about anguish.

For me Baritone Jesse Blumberg was the star of the show. He has a voice that sounds strong & large enough for opera. I felt like he was always making a point when he sang. & he seemed very happy to be there. Also exceptional was Stephen Hammer, playing the Baroque oboe. This must be a demanding instrument, & he had surprisingly full sound that was never pinched or squeaky. The program gave him many opportunities to display his evident musicality. I also liked the tenor Aaron Sheehan. He has a clear, clean, high sound that is well-suited to this music.

I had the impression that most of the audience are regulars & fans of this group, so there was a nice rapport between audience & performers the entire evening.

Blomstedt leads Mendelssohn's Elijah

Last Friday night I was at Davies Hall to hear Blomstedt lead the SF Symphony & Chorus in a beautiful & absorbing performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. Blomstedt maintained a dramatic flow over this huge 140 minute piece & made it as good as a night at the opera.

It's a big cast. There was a large chorus that spilled out of the terrace onto 2 additional rows on stage, plus 2 quartets of singers representing angelic voices, plus 4 principal soloists, plus a boy soprano in a small but pivotal role.

The slightly reduced orchestra put the balance in favor of the voices, as it should be. The most dependable performance of the evening was from baritone Alan Opie. He has a thick, somewhat Wagnerian voice. I quickly learned to be confident of hearing expressive & sustained singing every time he stood up. The tenor Christoph Genz was also remarkable. He had a wonderfully clear, bright sound that must be fantastic for Mozart.

I felt swept along by Blomstedt's even pacing. The performance never dragged, yet every number was given proper weight, & often one number simply flowed into the next one. The audience expressed their involvement by their silences between numbers.

During the ovations at the evening's end, Blomstedt demonstrated extra gratitude to the players by wading into the orchestra to acknowledge solo work by the principal by cellist (Peter Wyrick?) & oboist Bill Bennett.

Now holding auditions

"Now holding auditions for the boyfriend position" -- Announcement on T-shirt worn by weight-lifting jock at the gym today.

Stuff I should have blogged in February 2007

The Cartoon Art Museum had a very clever exhibition of rejected New Yorker cartoons. As one would expect, the cartoons are off-color, inappropriate, tasteless & very funny. But then, it must be quite demoralizing to have your work rejected from the rejected cartoons exhibit.

I was an innocent bystander at the pillow fight in Justin Herman Plaza on Valentine's day.

Stuff I should have blogged in January 2007

The Painted Veil isn't a bad movie, but it felt like an extra-long episode of Masterpiece Theatre. In the next week I heard Lang Lang's recital at Davies Hall. As an encore, he performed a piece from the sound track of The Painted Veil, which he is on. Lang Lang is kind of a cross between a classical musician & a pop star. Of course his playing is technically very proficient, & he has very fast fingers.

Jennifer Koh & Reiko Uchida recital at Herbst. Both are exceptional young players, each with a distinct musical personality. I liked the Jennifer Higdon premiere. It used a very cool technique where the pianist imitates the violin pizzicato by reaching into the instrument to stop the strings.

The Children of Men was an unpleasant & very well-done science fiction thriller.

I heard my favorite pianist Radu Lupu give an ethereal performance of the Mozart d minor concerto with the SF Symphony.

Stuff I should have blogged in December 2006

Saw 2 programs at the SF Silent Film Festival at the Castro: Silly Symphonies (1929 - 1935) -- Hey, these aren't silent at all. Anyway, these must have been real novelties when they 1st started appearing. Instructive to see how quickly they evolved technically & artistically, with Fantasia being the culmination of the series. Chicago (1927) -- A typical product of the era, showing that cynicism & tabloid journalism are hardly contemporary obsessions.

Carmen at the SF Opera. An unexceptional performance, & I've seen this production many times before, but this is such a perfect opera that I can always find things to enjoy in it.

Russian language production of Twelfth Night from the Chekhov International Theatre Festival at the Zellerbach Playhouse. Beautiful, luminous, this was the kind of performance that really draws you in. I was practically weeping for joy. It was a real shame that the house was only about 2/3 full.

Attended the Conservatory Orchestra's 1st concert in their new hall. Very exciting & very loud! Very nice moment in the Saturn movement of The Planets when the conductor Alasdair Neale put down his baton & used his hands to elicit lush, romantic playing from the student orchestra.

I haven't seen the Nutcracker at the SF Ballet in decades probably. New production set in Edwardian San Francisco. Watching all those women standing on their toes got a little tiresome for me. I guess ballet is not really my thing. The pit orchestra has some really good players nowadays, though.

Yundi Li at the SF Symphony

I attended this subscription performance on Wednesday evening. The conductor was James Gaffigan, who was a new name to me. He's the new associate conductor of the SF Symphony, so I suppose I will be getting to know him much better.

The 1st half of the program was Brahms 3, which I am always happy to hear. Bill Bennett did a beautiful solo in the 3rd movement. However the orchestra seemed kind of detached from the conductor. I felt that Gaffigan was conducting along with the piece instead of leading it.

After intermission Yundi Li played the Liszt Concerto in E-flat major. Of course he's another technical prodigy. In one of the lyrical sections, he played the fastest trill I think I have ever heard on the piano. In passages with rapid chords his hands were just a blur. His understated, delicate style of playing was at odds with the virtuoso character of the piece, & this made it a very interesting interpretation. For instance, the 1st movement has some of those extravagant runs that you would expect to be played with a big flourish. Instead, Yundi Li executed them lightly & evenly, in a more Mozartean way.

The program ended with Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2, which is fun to listen to (2 harps & 9 percussionists!), but also always reminds me of when the plane lands in the opening of Fantasy Island.

I sat on the last seat at the left hand end of the row, half way down the orchestra section. The sound was fine & I had a good view of the keyboard.

Rules of the Game at the Castro

On Monday night, I did one of my favorite things to do in the City on a weekday. After work I went to the Castro, ate a quick slice of pepperoni pizza at Escape from New York, then saw an old classic at the Castro Theater. This evening was Renoir's Rules of the Game, which I had never seen before. In fact, I didn't know anything about it, other than that it is supposed to be a genuine classic.

It's about a bunch of horrible French aristocrats in 1939 attending a hunting party. The sequence that surprised & impressed me the most was the actual shooting party, which lays out the hunt in clinical detail. We see how the hunters are stationed, how the game is flushed out of the woods, even the death throes of the unlucky animals. It is also the backdrop for a key recognition scene & a set-up for the fatal climax of the story.

I enjoyed the movie very much. The story unfolds so logically & inevitably that you feel like the director didn't do anything but just tell the story in the most straightforward way. But of course it takes a lot of art to make something this seamless. I felt that even though it was old & potentially very dated, it still evoked exactly the audience reactions that the director intended. I suppose that's what being a classic is all about!

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

I read several reviews of this movie, & it kept sounding like something I would like. It's a damning look at how the Stasi destroyed the lives of innocent citizens. At first, I thought I could see exactly where the story was going, but then it went into unexpectedly deep territory. Instead of a cat-and-mouse game between the spies & the spied-upon, we see how the spy Wiesler is changed when he comes to identify with the famous playwright he is conducting surveillance on. The movie is long & humorless, yet I was completely engrossed. You feel dismayed by the fatal climax, but then there follows a 3-part epilogue that leads to a surprising & emotional moment of redemption. The ending might even make you sniffle a bit. I think I will remember Ulrich Mühe's performance as Wiesler for a long time. His character never betrays any outward emotion, but Mühe must be acting from deep inside, because you can always tell what Wiesler is feeling.

Stuff I should have blogged in November 2006

On the 11th heard the San Francisco Choral Society perform the Mozart C Minor Mass at Calvary Presbyterian. Another of my favorite pieces, & I enjoyed hearing it in this setting with a big community choir.

Gidon Kremer gave an incredible "After Bach" recital at Zellerbach Hall on the 16th. It was all pieces by Bach & 20th century works that related to Bach in some way. He performed with a young pianist & an amazing vibraphone player that I remembered hearing with the Kremerata Baltica. Kremer is one of my favorite performers. His playing makes me feel nervous, but in a good way. This was a program with pieces in widely different styles, yet somehow it all went together perfectly. Highlights of the evening were impressive solos by each performer. Kremer did the Bartok Solo Sonata. The pianist gave a profound intepretation of 2 Bach Choral Preludes. The percussionist Pushkarev performed clever jazz arrangements of 3 Bach Inventions & flirted shamelessly with the audience. I was thinking about this recital for days afterwards.

I checked out the Art of Gaman exhibit at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art. I'd never been to their little space right near Moscone Center. This was an exhibit of arts & crafts done by inmates of the Japanese American Internment camps of WWII. I was especially glad to see Obata's drawings of daily life in camp. It's a compact exhibit, easy to take in within a half hour. It's also very educational & seems geared for school groups. For example, to demonstrate how small the living quarters were, they erected an open room in the center of the exhibit space that has the dimensions of a typical barracks occupied by 1 family. I liked the window display for the exhibit. It is an installation of strings of paper cranes that form the design of the American flag & behind it an evacuation poster.

I saw the latest Aardman/DreamWorks animated feature Flushed Away. I was in a theater with mostly mothers & their young children, & I think I found it funnier than most of the kids. I loved the character Sid & his shirt that seems to be made from Y-fronts. & the Ninja frogs with their mime. But what about those slugs singing "On the dock of the Bay"? Who is this movie really for? Kids aren't going to get that!

The SF Symphony had a really fun holiday subscription concert. They screened Chaplin's City Lights with the orchestra playing the original score live. Darned impressive feat, though in the end I'm not sure that having a live orchestra improves the experience of seeing this most perfect of classic movies.

Thanksgiving weekend I was in Los Angeles, & I dragged my host to the newly refurbished Griffith Park Observatory. Very cool historic building & lots of exhibits, but we both agreed that the planetarium show, which I expected to be the highlight of the visit, was incredibly lame.

I generous acquaintance brought me to Herbst Theatre on the 28th to hear the Rossetti String Quartet's program of Mozart, Debussy & Dvořák. This was an odd act. The members are all tall young men, & they looked like they were trying to be the boy band of string quartets. My concert companion referred to the seemingly muscle-bound violist as "The Boxer". In the 1st half he wore a big gold chain & a shirt unbuttoned at the top. When he came out for the 2nd half, he was wearing a bandana. They each play well, though their individual styles are mismatched.

Stuff I should have blogged in October 2006

October 6th to the 11th, I attended the Ring Cycle at the Orange County Performing Arts Center featuring Gergiev & the Kirov Opera. The orchestra was the real star of the show. It's full of young, amazing musicians. This is one of those orchestra where everyone really plays out. The singers, with the exception of Domingo, were Russian, & all were terrific actors, which really went a long way, because this was the worst staging I'd ever seen for an opera. No director is credited. Apparently there was originally a German production team, but something must have gone horribly wrong, & they dropped out.

I'm a big fan of Gergiev, & he did not disappoint. His conducting is so muscular & exciting. He led a very speedy Ring, especially the Siegfried. None of the singers were Wagnerians in the traditional sense, so it was instructive to hear everything actually sung instead of declaimed or "barked". I was even happy with the two Siegfrieds we heard. Their competent singing & exuberant acting showed me that it is just possible to have a dramatically convincing & even likable Siegfried.

I was astounded by Domingo. He must be in his late 60s, but his singing was so romantic & ardent & his acting so convincing that there was no need to make any concessions for his age.

Incredibly, on one of their days off from Ring pit duties, Gergiev & the Kirov Orchestra gave a concert of Shostakovich Symphonies 6 & 5 across the street in the newly inaugurated Segerstrom Concert Hall. Their performance was strong & exciting. They have some really terrific players. At times I felt like I was hearing one outstanding solo after another. Still I can remember the beautiful harp solo & the piercing trumpet solo.

It is too disconcerting to record that the day after Götterdämmerung I drove to San Diego to spend the afternoon at Legoland marveling at incredible Lego models?

Attended a book event in the Haight on the 21st for the release of Best American Comics 2006 published by Houghton Mifflin. Local artists Justin Hall, John Porcellino & Esther Watson showed slides & talked about their work. It was nice to have something to look at. Comic book authors are not quite the same as literary authors, & it isn't always enough to hear them just talk. Harvey Pekar was also there to talk about editing the collection. As far as I can tell, he is exactly the cranky curmudgeon he appears to be in the American Splendor movie!

I heard Midori play the Britten Violin Concerto with the San Francisco Symphony on the 25th. Her playing was as moving & exciting as always & showed off her gasp-inducing technique: Passages very high up, double stopped harmonics, left-hand pizzicato, left-hand pizzicato plus artificial harmonics...The piece doesn't miss a trick. Every time I hear her play a concerto, that piece instantly becomes my favorite violin concerto.

Sat in the dress circle at the San Francisco Opera for Tristan on the 27th. Runnicles was the star of this show. He lead a fluid & tender interpretation, & the orchestra played beautifully for him. I was disappointed by the aimless staging. The only directorial idea occurred at the very end when the already "dead" Tristan got up, walked over to Isolde & embraced her as the lights went down. I guess this is one way to give the story an uplifting ending, but the moment was unprepared for. I had high expectations for Christine Brewer's Isolde, but both she & the tenor Thomas Moser seemed to conserving their voices throughout the entire evening. It felt like they were singing with only a fraction of their true powers.

Saw the Silent Theatre Company's Lulu at the Victoria Theatre on the 28th. This was very cool. It was a staging of Wedekind's Lulu, inspired by the Louise Brooks movie. There was no dialog. Instead, the young & athletic cast mimed the action in the style of a silent movie. The costumes & settings were all various shades of white, black or gray, & the actors faces were painted silver. A pianist at the side of the stage provided a driving musical accompaniment that was in a modern jazz idiom that evoked the 1920s. They even had inter-titles that were projected above the proscenium. In fact, I think I spent a lot of time marveling at the precision of the timing of these titles. There would be a black-out on stage, the actors would freeze, & the titles would appear, all at the same time. & sometimes there were a lot of titles within a scene!

They had a very convincing Lulu who exuded a feeling of sex & flesh. The whole production had a strong physicality to it. The characters danced with each other, tussled with each other, made love to each other, abused each other. Lulu's murder was a visceral horror. Best of all, the cast seemed to be having a lot of fun. When the audience left the theater, they were waiting outside on the sidewalk to thank us for coming! At that moment I noticed a school bus, painted with signs for the show, parked in front of the theater. Did they tour with that bus?

On Halloween night, I had an orchestra seat for the SF Opera's revival The Barber of Seville. I'd seen this production when it premiered a few years ago, & I thought it would be fun to see that big, spinning 2-story house again. I'm a sucker for spectacle like that. I'm also a sucker for Nathan Gunn & his athletic stage presence. This time around I was impressed by the singing of a young baritone called Eugene Brancoveanu in 2 small roles.

Conservatory Baroque Ensemble

This past Saturday evening there were probably too many choices for things to do in the City: The Chinese New Year's Parade, the last performance of John Adam's A Flowering Tree at the Symphony, a city-wide scavenger hunt starting at the Embarcadero. For my fun I dropped into the Conservatory of Music's new concert hall to hear a chamber-sized performance of Handel's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day & the Bach Magnificat done by the Conservatory's students. The new space is very comfortable & ideal for small ensembles. When I heard the official opening concert with the full Conservatory Orchestra, at times it seemed like actually too much sound.

The performance was along the lines of John Eliot Gardiner's performance practice: A small but focused chorus of 18 with about the same number of instrumentalists. I'd never heard the Handel before, & I really enjoyed this piece. It's so Baroque. Every number has a different, distinct mood, with different instrumental accompaniments. I especially liked hearing the guitar accompanying one of the arias.

Of course the Magnificat is such a magnificent piece, it's always good to get a chance to hear it.

Murray Perahia at Davies Hall

Monday night I sat in the 1st tier of Davies Hall to hear Murray Perahia's very classical recital program: Bach Partita No. 2, Beethoven Sonata No. 15, Schumann Fantasiestücke Op. 12 & Chopin Ballade No. 4. I'd never heard him before, although I see his name on dozens of recordings every time I am shopping for CDs. He is a very technical performer. Everything is incredibly crisp, even & clear. He has an amazing portamento. I was impressed by his controlled technique & classical restraint, but I wasn't very moved by the recital. He made everything sound almost too even. There isn't much difference between the way he plays Bach & the way he plays Chopin. I enjoyed his Schumann Fantasiestücke, though. The wild contrasts of mood came across very well in his playing. But overall I was more impressed by his technique than his musicality.

The hall was nearly full, including the terrace seating, so Perahia clearly has a following. He got a very warm response from the audience the moment he stepped on stage. He is one of those performers that needs very little preparation time. He walks on stage, bows briskly, sits down, & starts playing. At the end of the program he got an immediate standing ovation. He returned twice to play Chopin encores.

A Flowering Tree at Davies Hall

I was very excited to be at the U.S. premier of John Adams new opera on March 1st at Davies Hall with the SF Symphony. Alex Ross has already given a perceptive account of the premier production in Vienna. The SF performance got the same soloists, conductor & director. Having the conductor at the podium made it even more of an occasion. This was one of those few times when at the first hearing of a serious work, I found it accessible & interesting & wanted to hear it again.

The work is supposedly inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute, though in this production it was a mix of cultural traditions: American minimalism music, Tamil love poetry, Javanese ceremonial dance, & more. It has a libretto that is in English for the soloists & in Spanish for the chorus. The music had a lot of ethereal orchestral colors & evoked Debussy, Stravinsky & Wagner, especially his Parsifal. The 2nd act even opens with a parody of the overture to the Ring. The critics are also
hearing major references to Sibelius, but I don't know his symphonies well enough to get these.

The music is based on repeating, pulsing, vibrating rhythms & tonal harmonies. Scattered among the constantly moving orchestral background are melodic solos, sometimes for unusual instruments. In particular there were solos performed beautifully by Barantschik & by the trumpet. But there were also striking solos for bass clarinet, bassoon (in a very high register), contrabasson, French horn & recorder. I had expected some electronic instruments, but Adams uses a traditional orchestra, with the addition of lots of percussion & 2 recorders.

Despite being in Davies Hall & having the Orchestra cover 3/4 of the stage, the evening was quite theatrical. It started when the chorus entered the terrace. Instead of black concert dress, each chorus member wore a different brightly colored shirt or blouse. The over-all effect was pretty & very festive. Musically the chorus turns out to be very important. They have some of the best music in the opera. The lively & boisterous choruses are the 1st things that really catch your attention.

Most of the action took place on three roughly circular platforms, painted like the insides of a geode, on the right of the stage. There was also a platform at terrace height in the back left corner of the stage. It was a small space, though, & it was a little scary to watch the male dancer up there as he went through intricate moves balancing on one leg or doing a momentary one-handed hand-stand.

There were 3 singers, one acting as a narrator, the 2 others portraying the lovers of the story. They shared the stage with 3 dancers from Indonesia. I think that part of the concept was to have something on stage that countered the restless movement of the music. So these dancers performed in what is apparently a traditional Javanese dance style that moves very slowly & deliberately. The women seemed incapable of making an awkward or ungraceful motion. They often gave the feeling that they were moving underwater. It was very mesmerizing to watch.

The singers were great & very well matched. The soprano Jessica Rivera sang particularly beautifully & expressively. She was also a great actress. Even when she had to roll around on the stage intertwined with the dancer to represent Kumudha as a stump, she managed to sing wonderfully. It was a complete performance.

I'm not a fan of Peter Sellars as a director, & this staging was typical of his style. He always keeps you very busy trying to keep track of what is happening on stage. There were many moments when I couldn't decide what I wanted to focus on. At other times the staging just looked really awkward, as when he had the large tenor bent over the small male dancer to represent the Prince's misery.

I'm not sure what to make of the story yet. It was a sadistic fairy tale. It doesn't have a conflict in the classical sense, though there is an over-all arc having to do with loss, suffering & reunion.

Reminiscent of Dr. Atomic, it ends spectacularly with an extended orchestral crescendo depicting Kumudha's final transformation. For a moment there is a major chord, then there is a long suspension in the chorus & orchestra, & finally only the notes of a major triad sounding. This was followed by a loud & enthusiastic ovation that was clearly for Adams, though he modestly refused to take a solo bow during the curtain calls.

Travesties at ACT

I caught the Sunday matinee of Tom Stoppard's 1974 Travesties at ACT. I'm not a big fan of ACT, but curiosity about the play got the better of me. The play is pretty crazy. It's a debate about the role of the artist in society in the form of a theatrical farce. It seems like to get anything out of it, the audience has to be very familiar with The Importance of Being Ernest, James Joyce's Ulysses, Shakespeare, Dada, the history of the Russian Revolution & World War I. & I'm sure there were other ideas in there that went right over my head!

The production was somewhat abstract. It starts with a completely blank, white stage. Props & sets fly in, glide in from the wings or rise from the below. From time to time a large circular map of Europe slides along suspended from the procenium. The library has book shelves floating in space at improbable angles & upside-down. Cartoon sound effects might accompany a bit of business. I'm not sure that this struck the right note, though. I suppose that this all reflects the highly artificial construction of the play, but I wonder if it would have been more interesting to stage it as if it were in fact a traditional farce. Then there would be the tension between the apparently conventional trappings of a drawing room comedy & the highly charged political & philosophical themes of the play.

Whenever I go to an ACT show, I'm struck by how the audience seems somewhat elderly. I also find myself wishing the performances were crisper. It's like I want to tell the actors, "Wake up! There are people out here!"

Dawn Upshaw at the SF Symphony

On Saturday night I was at Davies Hall to hear Dawn Upshaw. She sang an atonal song cycle called Time Cycle by Lukas Foss. I'd never heard her before, & I was at this performance with a friend who is huge fan of hers. She has a very easy-going, down-to-earth stage presence & a very pleasant, even voice, so it is easy to see what her appeal is all about. With unfamiliar music like these songs, the only comment I can make about this performance is that she sang absolutely everything, & this went a long way towards selling the songs. The piece itself is not obviously lyrical & has the disjointed lines characteristic of serial music, but Upshaw made everything sustained & connected. It never came out declamatory or sounding like sprechstimme, which is another way that the songs could have been delivered.

The rest of the program consisted of Michael Tilson Thomas conducting Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini Overture & Brahms 4. I like MTT's programming, but as usual I did not find him a very interesting conductor. He wanted a lot of sound for the Berlioz, but the brasses were too loud & covered the strings whenever the played. I've heard MTT conduct Brahms 4 before, & I think his loud opening for the 2nd movement completely strikes the wrong mood.

Voices of Kurdistan

On Friday night, went to Cowell Theater, Fort Mason for a concert of Kurdish music sponsered by the San Francisco World Music Festival. This was the 1st of 3 concerts of Kurdish music. This night featured a singer from Turkey called Aynur. She sang 2 sets, backed by 4 musicians: a violist, a lutist, 2 percussionists. I'm completely unfamiliar with this music, but it seemed to be a combination of folk songs & original songs written in the folk tradition. The songs varied from sorrowful to angry to humorous to defiant. Aynur is a powerful singer who grabs your attention & refuses to let go.

The theater was perhaps less than 3/4 full, but the audience was very enthusiastic. I heard a lot of Turkish spoken in the lobby before the show.

The only thing I really disliked about the performance was that all the musicians were amplified electronically. When Aynur was belting into the microphone, the sound was so loud it was painful. I don't understand why the amplification was necessary. My feeling is that the instruments & her voice are plenty loud enough to be heard in that hall without any artificial amplification.

Quinceañera

Saw this new indie movie at Embarcadeo Cinemas last night. It's an earnest & affectionate portrait of a working class Hispanic family in LA's Echo Park. The movie is nearly plotless & is done in the neo-realist style, with many of the performances apparently by non-professionals. I got the idea from the movie that gays are the "bad guys" in the gentrification of the Echo Park neighborhood.

Super Vision

Last night I attended a performance of Super Vision at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Going in, I didn't know anything about it other than that it looked very high-tech. And indeed this was probably the most high-tech multimedia show I've ever seen. The actors perform between 2 screen which move & have computer generated & real-time images projected on them. The technicians controlling the visual & audio effects sit in darkness on stage, making the process look somewhat transparent. 2 other actors perform to video cameras at the edges of the stage & interact with the "real" characters via their projected performances.

The show was often stunning to watch, but the script was thin. The script raises issues rather than developing characters or a compelling story lines. The only character that came across as a warm human being was the sassy Sri Lankan grandma who appears on a Web cam. Actually I thought the most powerful part of the show was its opening monologue. With the help of the Claritas database, an actor profiled the audience using information gleaned from credit cards used to pay for tickets for the show. This was a truly vivid illustration of the issues of data privacy.

An Inconvenient Truth

Finally saw the Al Gore movie about global warming. It's a film of him delivering his illustrated talk to a studio audience, interspersed with his personal reflections about his family & growing up on is father's ranch. No new information here, though the movie is not the downer that one would expect. The facts are grim, but at least the information is out there. Gore's criticism of the present administration's environmental policy is not stated nearly as strongly as it might have been. Probably he's trying not to offend anyone.

Woman's Will presents 12th Night

Saw Twelfth Night at Dolores Parkin the afternoon. & what a beautiful day to be in the park too. Production was put on by the cleverly named "Woman's Will", which is an all-female company. I didn't feel that having an all-female cast necessarily made for a revelatory production, but this was a very enjoyable performance, regardless of the gender casting. Each character was made distinct, & the action never lagged. The performances were all strong. In particular, the Feste, Samantha Chanse, was an amazingly confident performer.

There was something very solid about the direction. I felt everyone really understood the play & that none of the main themes had been neglected.

It was a completely actor-driven event. You got the feeling that a dozen actors just showed up, pitched their set & got to it. Even the stage manager stepped in to play an officer & supplied stage music.

The main drawback was just that it was outdoors in Dolores Park, so the performance had to compete with traffic noise, a stray dog trotting through the playing area, a birthday party with screaming kids, & even a domestic argument. & unless you are very close & the actor is speaking right in your direction, you can't hear a thing. I was very sorry not to be able to hear Feste's singing.

Iridium Flare 65

Last night I walked out to the Marina Green, found a spot away from street lamps, & was able to see this Iridium Flare as it went by:

Date: 05 Aug
Local time: 21:13:12
Intensity: -2
Alt.: 62°
Azimuth: 93° (E )
Distance to flare center: 24.3 km (W)
Intensity at flare center: -8
satellite: Iridium 65
East of zenith
East of Vega (brightest star near zenith)
West of Milky Way

It looked about as bright as the nearest bright star, which I'm told was Vega. I spotted it for about 8 seconds as it slowly brightened then dimmed.

Anniversary Year

It seems like every month I'm reading about another anniversary celebration for this year.

• Mozart: 350th birthday


• Nikolai Tesla: 150th birthday


• Dmitri Shostakovich: 100th birthday


• Janet Gaynor: 100th birthday


• Rembrandt: 400th birthday


• San Francisco Earthquake & Fire: 100th anniversary


• San Francisco Japantown: 100th anniversary


• Samuel Beckett: 100th birthday


• John Huston: 100th birthday


• George Bernard Shaw: 150th birthday


• Bertolt Brecht: 50th anniversary of his death

Is this really such a big year, or are people just in the mood to commemorate?

Time To Leave (Le Temps qui reste)

This movie by Francois Ozon got mediocre reviews, but it sounded like something I would like, so I went to see it this afternoon. I thought it was beautiful, philosophical, & very French, though if it resembles anything, it is very much like a Bergman film. The main character is often unpleasant. If he wasn't so ridiculously good-looking, it would be pretty hard to identify with him. But the movie does not rely on our liking him. It's about how this very detached, selfish young man arranges things so that he can die feeling that he has made some kind of peace with himself.

The movie is somber & deliberately paced. It has no surprises, but every scene provides us with information & has a dramatic purpose. There are terrific actors in every role who give very detailed performances. For instance, there is a small but affecting moment at the end when Romain loses interest in the ice cream he's just bought at the beach. I also really liked the woman who played the waitress who asks for Romain's help.

The movie has 3 very explicit sex scenes, which probably made the movie unrateable. None of them involve what would be considered typical sexual situations, but all of them are visceral, erotic, & revealing of character.

Alex Ross Podcast

Alex Ross, blogger & music critic for The New Yorker, has listened to all the works of Mozart & come up with a nifty podcast about Mozart's bass lines. I hope Mr. Ross does more podcasts. I think he does a great job of getting content about classical music on the Web.

Silent Film Festival

Went a little overboard this weekend & saw 4 programs at the SF Silent Film Festival at the Castro. This year there were a lot of interesting programs, & I had a hard time narrowing down my choices.

Au Bonheur des Dames
This was the best program I saw over the weekend. Made in 1930 in Paris, so it's one of the last silent movies made in France. A beautiful & meticulous film in the classic silent style. Spectacular climactic montage sequence. I enjoyed the documentary street scenes of Paris. Based on a novel by Zola with one of those endings that is so right yet you hate it anyway. Musical accompaniment by the Hot Club of San Francisco, in the style of Django Reinhardt. More or less appropriate to the period & fun to listen to, but they weren't quite up to the emotional range of the movie.

Pandora's Box
I've saw this a long time ago, & I remember being impressed by it, but for some reason this time I wasn't that into it. I mostly found it exhausting. Everyone in the movie spends a lot of time glaring at each other & acting like animals. I noticed that in early scenes a menorah is prominently displayed in Lulu's apartment, & Schigolch has many stereotypically Jewish characeristics. Is this from the Wedekind source?

Musical accompaniment on the organ by Clark Wilson. He evoked the time frame of the movie by referring to the Three Penny Opera & the musical Cabaret. He played very consistently through the 2+ duration of the movie, though I found his playing a little lacking in variety.

Although the show was scheduled to start at 8:20pm, the film didn't start rolling until 9:10. It was sold out, so it took a while to get everyone into the theatre, then there was plenty of borching beforehand. Local artist Bruce Conner gave a rambling, pointless reminiscence of coming from the same town as Louise Brooks.

Amazing Tales from the Archives
Session about issues of film preservation. Appealed to the geek in me. I was interested to learn about the different formats many of the films are preserved in, such as paper prints, the spirograph, & the 3 column 35 mm films for home use. Naturally, everything is being transferred to digital.

The Girl with the Hatbox
Cute Soviet comedy about a perky young girl finding love & mayhem in Moscow. The film moves very deliberately at first, but there are several big comedic pay offs as the action moves into high gear at the end.

Whenever I see a Russian movie, I'm always impressed by the acting, & here the same high level of acting is evident. All the performers are great. I really liked the actor playing Natasha's love interest. He has a very appealing & expressive way of moving, & he's never over the top. I was disturbed to read in the program notes that 10 years after this movie, he ended up in the gulag.

Musical accompaniment was provided by a balalaika ensemble. Appropriate to the film, but for now I've heard as much balalaika music as I care to hear.

Citizen Kane at Union Square

This was fun. Last night, the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation sponsered a showing of Citizen Kane outdoors at Union Square. The starting time was advertised as 8:00pm, but they had to wait for it to get dark, so it didn't start until 8:45pm.

Before the show started, they ran a raffle for DVDs of Citizen Kane, & the projectionist gave a brief talk about how innovative the movie was for its time. The movie was projected from a DVD onto an inflatable screen. Watching them inflate the screen was a bit of a show in itself.

There was a quite a crowd in Union Square, sitting on the ground directly in front of the screen, in chairs set up behind this area, & on the ledges & benches in the square. The audience was very quiet & attentive. I even saw a woman shush 2 women sitting behind her who continued to converse quite audibly several minutes into the movie.

As for Citizen Kane itself, I've seen it before, of course, & I continue to be impressed by its technical brilliance. Its many famous transitions are still stunning. But I'm never much interested in the content of the story itself. The revelations about Kane never seem significant, & I never care about what happens to any of the characters.

4th of July Fireworks

It was actually a clear night tonight, so I went to Fort Mason to view the fireworks show launched off Aquatic Park. Usually the show is completely fogged in, & all you get to see are colorful clouds. But tonight the view was awesome. Besides the popular smiley-face fireworks, there were ones that expanded into cubes!

Titanic Exhibition at the Metreon

I couldn't really tell what the Titanic Exhibition at the Metreon was going to be like, but I decided to take a chance on it. It's not cheap. I paid $27, which was $22 for admission plus $5 for the audio tour. I would say that the experience, while unusual, is overpriced.

For history buffs & the curious, the real attractions of the show are the hundreds of objects retrieved from the wreck. These range from small personal effects like jewelry & toothpaste jars to a huge wall-sized portion of the hull. It's stunning to discover such fragile items as clothing, wallets, paper money & letters survived underwater all that time. Many of the objects are quite eerie to contemplate: A pair of wired-framed glasses; a pocket watch with the face obliterated; a letter from a mother, carried on board by her son; a corked bottle of champagne which appears to have the original liquid still in it.

The goal of the exhibition is entertainment rather than instruction. Besides the artifacts, there are several life-size walk-through recreations of the interior of the ship. These are like little stage sets, with sound effects & music. We walk through a hallway & view recreations of a dining room, a 1st class stateroom, a 3rd class stateroom & the grand staircase.

As you enter the exhibit, a staff person hands you a boarding card which describes a passenger on board the Titanic. At the end of the exhibition is a wall listing the names of all the passengers, which survived & which perished. You can find out the fate of your passenger.

Naturally, the last room of the exhibit is a small crowded gift shop. The day I went they had a sign announcing that the author of a book about the Titanic was on hand to sign copies of his book. Sure enough, he was there behind a counter at the gift shop, looking like he might possibly be there most days. I didn't see him make any sales, though.

The oddest trinkets on sale in the gift show were crumb-sized pieces of coal from the Titanic, packaged in small vials as jewelry or in a plain plastic bag in a box. I think they were priced from 6 to 16 dollars. According to the exhibition documentation, 1 pound of coal supplied energy to move the ship at full speed for 1 foot.

Marriage of Figaro at SFO

Thursday night I went to a performance of the Marriage of Figaro. At first I was going to pass on it, but it really is my favorite opera, so I paid for an expensive side orchestra ticket at the last minute.

I heard the conductor Roy Goodman lead Rodelinda last year, & I remember really liking his conducting, but every time the orchestra started up my first thought was always that it was too fast. He also had the orchestra doing these original instrument things, like having the strings play straight tones without vibrato & doing terraced dynamics. A flute line or horn line would stick out more. I suppose this made details of the orchestration clear, but it often sounded unblended.

I don't know why, but oddly the last moments of the 2nd act finale were not together. Is Goodman's beat not clear? I couldn't tell why he was having coordination problems. I think the tempos were a problem, though. Not enough room to be expressive with the music.

The cast was very even, & they were all good actors. The Figaro was John Relyea, who is tall, lanky & has an athletic stage presence. He seemed to enjoy hopping over benches or steps on stage. & he has a very big voice. Ruth Ann Swenson as the Countess gave the most musically mature & controlled performance of the evening.

But this was very much an ensemble cast. No one performer or character dominated. The secondary roles were especially good. Dr. Bartolo hammed it up, flirting with the audience at the end of the 3rd act sextet, & Marcellina got applause doing her 4th act recitative about women having to stick together against the tyranny of men. For sure everyone was having fun on stage, & so the audience laughed a lot too, even though the staging wasn't especially clever or funny.

I want to know, why is it that characters always run offstage as soon as they finish their arias? Is this a convention? It seems strange, because it always leaves the audience applauding an empty stage. It robs the audience of a chance to interact with the performer

There is always too much to admire about this opera. On this hearing, I was thinking about the character of the Count. He's not a nice guy. He's predatory, smug & unreasonably possessive. Yet in the last act we see Figaro falling prey to that same kind of jealousy. Figaro, whom we like so much, could just as easily be the Count.

Bigger Than Jesus

Saturday night I saw Rick Miller's Bigger Than Jesus at the Zellerbach Playhouse on the Berkeley Campus. It's a set of performance art pieces about the cult of Jesus, explicitly structured around the parts of the Catholic mass. Not being a Christian myself, I was not much interested in the content of the show. Really I just wanted the chance to see Rick Miller do something again, after I enjoyed his MacHomer so much.

Rick Miller is a very appealing performer, especially when he is in motion, as when he plays the charistmatic evangelist in the "gloria" section. Otherwise, the most impressive thing about the show is its use of live video projections.

Liszt's Dante Symphony

Friday night I went back to the Symphony to hear Conlon conduct Lizst's Dante Symphony, which I'd never heard before. This performance claims to recreate Liszt's original conception, which was to project a magic lantern show along with the music. While the music played, we saw sketches & paintings that were commissioned for the piece. The images were projected onto a pair of screens flanking the orchestra. Along with the images were inter-titles that narrated the program of the symphony. The inter-titles were helpful, I suppose, but Conlon's pre-concert lecture explained the program pretty thoroughly already. In the end I found myself focusing on the music & not the images.

The piece engaged my attention the whole time. It did a good job following the broad emotional arc of The Divine Comedy. The resembance to Wagner was very evident. The middle section kept sounding like it was about to turn into Parsifal. In the Paolo & Francesca section, there was a passage with 2 clarinets playing parallel intervals that reminded me of the 3rd act of Siegfried. Supposedly there is even a Tristan chord in there among the strangely shifting harmonies, but I must have missed it this time around.

I like Conlon's conducting. He is always comfortably ahead of the orchestra, & has a good sense of proportion. All the sections flowed smoothly from one to another. Most importantly, he made sure that everything was phrased & that expressive points were being made. Conlon made a great case for the music, even if I wasn't sold on the multimedia aspect of the performance.

There was a beautiful, very soft bass clarinet solo in the middle section. The boys choirs made a surprising, mystical entrance by singing from the back of the loge section. A solo voice came from another location of the hall, but I wasn't sure from where. No matter, the effect was appropriately ethereal.

As at the end of this Verdi Requiem, Conlon again sustained a pianissimo ending & held the hall in silence with his upraised left hand for several long seconds after the last notes faded away. He really communicates with this audience.

This concert is part of 6.5 Fridy series. The event begins at 6:30 with a lecture by Conlon. This lasts 40 minutes. Then there is a 20 minute intermission, followed by the symphony, which is 50 minutes in duration. The musicians wear jackets & ties instead of tuxedoes. We were out of the hall by 8:30. Before the performance, I kept worrying about getting hungry during the performance, so I ate a power bar during the intermission. I don't get the purpose of this format.

James Conlon Leads the Verdi Requiem

I've never been a big fan of Verdi, but this past Saturday I heard the performance of the Verdi Requiem that I'd always been waiting for. Impressively, James Conlon conducted the 90 minute concert from memory, firmly in control. That opening pianissimo was done with the unity of purpose that allows 200 musicians to make a softer sound than one person alone could ever achieve.

Besides the always impressive San Francisco Symphony Chorus, we had a powerful quartet of soloists who lifted the level of the performance whenever they sang. The soprano & mezzo were huge-voiced & Wagnerian. The tenor & baritone were commandingly Verdian.

Conlon never let one's attention stray. All the sections were connected & flowed seamlessly together, except for the necessary pause after the Dies Irae. The orchestral textures were always clear, even during the huge climaxes, resulting in a very colorful performance. The approach was more symphonic than operatic, but no less imploring, frightening & thrilling for being so well-proportioned.

At the end of the piece Conlon demonstrated the audience's level of involvement by sustaining our silence with his outstretched left hand for close to a minute. When his arm finally came down, we responded with an immediate standing ovation.

The Maid of Orleans

Went to Friday night's performance of Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans at SFO. David Gockley made his presence known before the start of the performance when his disembodied voice made the turn-off-your-cell-phones announcement & invited us to "enjoy the show."

"The Show" is a vehicle for a powerhouse mezzo, & Dolora Zajick delivers. Her voice is strong & loud & especially thrilling when she's belting out the low notes. This is good old-fashion grand opera & has many lyrical moment as well as a very exciting act III ensemble for the soloists & chorus. There's even a mini-immolation scene at the end, when Joan is burned at the stake to the musical depiction of rapidly flickering flames. In fact it was so stolidly 19th century that I found myself wondering why we are still devoting so much of our attention to these works. The audience just laughs at the romantic cliches.

The staging was somewhat post-modern, but for no apparent reason. The chorus is on stage the whole time dressed as a "Modern-day French audience", witnessing the story of the opera played out on a bare stage-within-a-stage. In the final moments, Joan, tied to the stake, is engulfed by a huge plume of stage smoke. When the smoke clears, she has been replaced by a little girl who walks downstage & raises her arms to the heavens. It's a completely unprepared for moment & is rather eerie.

The supporting cast was even & very good. I enjoyed hearing tenor Sean Pannikar as Joan's rejected suitor. His sound is bright & clear & fluid. It was hard to understand why Joan had no interest in him.

Douglas Coupland at Booksmith

I showed up at Booksmith on Haight Street this evening to see if Douglas Coupland would have anything interesting to say. I bought his latest novel, JPod, last month but only read the 1st 60 pages before deciding to put it down for a while. It just seemed like a rehash of Microserfs. Anyway, his appearance this evening was a total bust. There was an SRO crowd, & things got started late. Mr. Coupland showed up clutching a big box of kleenex with his name drawn on it in fancy letters. He was visibly suffering from a very bad cold & admitted to be "flying high as a kite" on cold medication. So he didn't read, & just 4 people asked questions, which elicited only brief, uninformative answers from him. In less than 10 minutes they moved right on to the signing. One of the people who asked a question received the decorated box of kleenex from Mr. Coupland. I used to be a big fan of Mr. Coupland, but his appearance & the new book are both disappointing.

SF Opera Simulcast

I went by Civic Center last night to see how they were going to do the San Francisco Opera live simulcast of Madama Butterfly. Very high-tech screen setup against the backdrop of City Hall. Lots of people showed up with lawn chairs & warm clothing, but it was way too cold for me to stay for it. Gockley took advantage of the PR event to appear on-stage before the performance to make announcements & thank sponsers. I think this is a great idea, & I admire the hardiness of the people who showed up, but it's just too cold in San Francisco for this!

Drawings at the Legion of Honor

After my morning at the Metreon, I hiked up to the Legion of Honor to see the exhibit of drawings from the Collection of Joseph and Deborah Goldyne. Although the exhibit is divided into genres, like portraits, nature, etc., it is really a collection of individual masterpieces. It was easiest for me to enjoy each drawing on its own without considering how it might fit into some over-all scheme. What impresses me most are the Italian Renaissance drawings. They are so accurate & yet so fluid. How did they learn to draw like that? Can people still draw like that today?

I liked the gesture drawings of Tiepolo & Rembrandt. It's amazing how much character they can record in relatively few, very loose, lines.

I was also impressed by the Corot drawing of the back of heavily clothed peasant woman. This would seem to be an uninteresting view of an uninteresting subject, but he makes you feel that it deserves a lot of attention.

There is a very striking contour drawing of a chrysanthemum by Mucha. His line is precise & delicate. You get a sense of his sustained observation. I suppose that's something that just about all the drawings have in common: this very sustained sense of focus. & this focus can be completely abstract, as in Bruce Connor's crazy doodle-like drawing.

IMAX Deep Sea 3D

Last Saturday I was actually organized enough to get out of the apartment & get to the Metreon in time to catch a 10:30am showing of this 3D movie. I love visual spectacles like this. Completely thin on content but so much fun to watch. Whoever filmed it must have an obsession about eating, because it was all about sea creatures eating other sea creatures.

And I learned something too. I didn't know that squids could flash different colors or that corals all spawned on the same night each year. I wish there were more of these movies.

Transamerica

Finally saw this last week. It comes highly recommended, but I didn't think it was that good. It's a road movie, & the whole story was both predictable & yet had many implausible & unconvincing moments. I really didn't like its stereotypically negative depiction of gay men as predatory & abusive pederasts.

Gruber's Frankenstein!!

Went to the SF Symphony this Wednesday evening. The conductor was Edwin Outwater, who I haven't heard before. The program started with Danses Sacrée et Profane by Debussy, which turns out to be a short piece for harp & string orchestra. French music doesn't always make much of an impression on me, which was the case here. Outwater seems to conduct with a very clear beat that is easy to follow.

This was followed by Living Toys by Adès. Before the piece, Outwater addressed the audience & explained that the general theme of the next 3 pieces was childhood. He interpreted the abrupt, startling ending of the Adès piece as the intrusion of thoughts of mortality upon the playfulness of youth.

I thought this was the most interesting piece of the evening. There were only 17 players, & everyone was often challenged to play extremely high pitches. In the manner of a lot of modern music, it's very dense. The middle of the piece features a virtuosic trumpet solo with lots of notes & special effects. Sometimes the players performed short passages of rhythmic hand-clapping. The 1st cellist seemed especially good a this.

After more shuffling of chairs on stage for this long 1st half, we heard Bizet's Petit Suite. This was a short series of light, encore-style pieces. I liked the slow movement featuring a duet between the violin & cello.

After intermission came Gruber's Frankenstein!! It's a series of short, sardonic poems about monsters & superheroes performed by the composer himself, micked & sitting on a stool in front of the orchestra. He doesn't really sing. Instead he does a kind of sprechstimme using different voices & vocal effects. Sometimes he just makes non-verbal, non-musical sounds. He spoke the poems in English, though his accent was so heavy he may just as well have done it in German.


Gruber did some acting as well, though he avoided going into a full-blown dramatic perfomance. When he came to the line "this is the long finger", he made a fist & stuck out his middle finger to demonstrate, & I almost wasn't sure whether or not he knew the meaning of this gesture to an American audience.

The music is a pastiche of modern styles, often atonal & reminiscent of Berg & Weill. The orchestra at times plays toy instruments like kazoos, slide whistles & plastic tubes that make a low humming sound when twirled rapidly overhead. At the beginning of the piece, the timpanist blew up & popped 5 paper bags, crumbling each one & tossing it in a different direction. These antics provided fitting accompaniment to the poems & got laughs from the audience.

The piece was a little over half an hour, & I don't think it could have sustained itself for any longer. After it was over, I felt like I wouldn't really care to hear it again. I think that one of the things the piece does is satirize the way monster stories & super hero stories patronize & infantilze their audience. So at one level the piece itself insults us, its audience.

It was not a well-attended concert. I had a seat in the back in the 1st tier, & after the 1st piece I moved to the front row of the section. The only other people in the row were 2 ladies who didn't come back after intermission.

A Number at ACT

This afternoon I attended the matinee performance of Caryl Churchill's A Number at ACT. This is a two-hander that lasts less than 55 minutes & uses the concept of human cloning to explore parenting, sibling rivalry & nature vs. nuture. The play consists of 5 short scenes which are interviews between a father & his cloned sons. The story is told very efficiently, & each scene ends with an abrubt black-out.

In this production, the action plays out in a very small room that seems to be a den or an office & that floats in darkness in the middle of the stage. Our view of the room shows three walls but no windows or doors. As I was looking at this set before the show started, I already started to wonder how the actors were going to get on stage, but this mystery was revealed only at the final curtain call. Between scenes the room itself is plunged in total darkness while light show with scary music plays around the perimeters.

The play is also a showcase for the actor Josh Charles who plays the troubled son & his 2 clones. This production did a very good job differentiating the 3 identical sons by dress, mannerisms, speech & positioning in the room. At the beginning of each scene it was immediately clear which clone we were watching.

I was very engaged by the ideas of the play, its cleverness, its tightness, & its mixture of the sinister with the humorous. Although no violence occurs on stage or is even described, I think it is a very cruel & violent story. One way to summarize it is to say that it is a story about how technology allows a bad father to be even worse. It reminds me of Edward Albee's The Goat in that you immediately want to discuss it after you've seen it.

I stayed for the "informal discussion" following the performance. It was a question-and-answer session, though I wasn't clear on who the guy leading it was. During the discussion he had to explain the plot 3 different times to 3 different people.