Coraline

The showing of Coraline in 3-D at the Metreon this evening was packed, though I spotted only one kid. It is a strange movie for sure, having much of the macabre atmosphere of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. It's a complex mix of stop-motion puppet animation & CG. The grotesque character designs & detailed settings are the best things in the movie. I enjoyed many of the bizarre set pieces, such as the musical number featuring an aging & buxom Botticelli angel performing for an audience of scottie dogs.

The plot feels arbitrary. I was never sure what the rules of this particular world were supposed to be. Many elements, such as the 3 ghost children, came out of nowhere. I have not read the original Neil Gaiman story, but someone would seem to have mother issues. Mothers in the movie are either neglecting or controlling, but never actually mothering. The heroine, though not a pleasant character, is at least courageous.

If you see this, be patient enough to sit through the credit roll. There is a short but very cool piece of animation tacked on at the very end. It looks like it may have been part of a test that never made it into the final film.

Alek Shrader's Schwabacher Recital

Schwabacher Debut Recital
Sun February 8, 2009 5:30 pm
Temple Emanu-El's Martin Meyer Sanctuary

ALEK SHRADER, Tenor
John Parr, Piano

Benjamin Britten:
Ca' the yowes
The foggy, foggy dew
The last rose of summer

Robert Schumann:
Dichterliebe op. 48

Henri Duparc:
L'invitation au voyage
Extase
Chanson triste

Franz Liszt:
Drie Lieder aus Schiller's Wilhelm Tell:
Der Fischerknabe
Der Hirt
Der Alpenjäger

Vincenzo Bellini: Per pietà, bell'idol mio
Gaetano Donizetti: Occhio nero incendiator
Gioacchino Rossini: La danza

I was impressed by Mr. Shrader's scene in the Adler Fellows concert, so I glady came back for more. He offered a mostly serious program of songs in English, German, French & Italian. There were several strange minutes before his entrance when the house lights kept going up & down, as if someone was back there fiddling with the dimmer switch, unable to make up his mind how dark or bright the hall needed to be.

Because of the shape of the venue, there's a large expanse between the audience & the stage. It made me think how scary it must be for a singer, stepping out there in front of all these judgmental people, with no instrument to hide behind.

Mr. Shader, a young & handsome fellow, may have no such fears, however. Although at times his high notes sound a little tight, he hits everything & has an easy stage manner. I liked the wistful & charming character he created for The foggy, foggy dew.

He seems to have a naturally sunny personality, which made the tortured Dichterliebe seem like a bit of an emotional stretch. However, his delivery was not without its stormy moments. I enjoyed hearing the Lizst songs with their extravagant piano accompaniment. In both the Schumann & Lizst, Mr. Shrader displayed a surprisingly beautiful & strong lower register. Usually we're listening for a tenor's high notes, but I like his low notes in particular.

Mr. Shrader was most comfortable with the brighter Italian songs at the end of the recital, & he definitely loosened up a bit with these. For his 1st encore he walked out with a guitar, sat down on the steps of the stage, & accompanied himself as he sang Ecco Ridente in Cielo from The Barber of Seville. It was awfully endearing. It reminded me that on my way to finding a seat, I was walking behind an older woman & overheard her say, "I'm sitting in the center. There'll be eye candy here."

Up Coming: Alexander String Quartet

While we're on the subject of free concerts, the Morrison Artists Series is presenting the Alexander String Quartet on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 3 pm at SF State. The program looks great: Haydn, Bartok & Shostakovich. I've already been to two very different programs in this fine free series.

Clarinet Crazy

Friday February 6, 2009 - 8pm
Herbst Theater

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra
Benjamin Simon, Conductor

Dimitri Ashkenazy, Clarinet
Sonos Handbell Ensemble

J.C. Bach: Cembalo Concerto in B-flat Major, Op. 13 No. 4 (Arranged for Handbell Ensemble & Orchestra by James Meredith)
Richard Festinger: Clarinet Concerto [world premier]
Copland: Clarinet Concerto
Mahler: Adagietto for Harp and Strings

Still on the search for cheap seats, I decided to check out the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, which offers free concerts. I didn't know what to expect, but I feared a mob scene, so I arrived at Herbst at 7:05pm. There were about 40 people in line ahead of me, but it was all very civilized. The doors opened at 7:15pm, & I easily found a seat right in the center of the auditorium. The hall gradually filled up over the next 45 minutes. There were scattered free seats by the start of the program, so even if you arrived close to the start time, you could probably squeeze in.

For those of us who got there early, Benjamin Simon, the music director, came out at 7:30pm & gave a friendly 20 minute talk about the program, which certainly had variety. It opened with the Sonos Handbell Ensemble replacing a cembalo in a concerto by J.C. Bach. The handbell choir was arrayed behind the orchestra, & it was quite a scene back there, as the busy players scrambled for bells & flicked them at the air. Instead of clanging, the bells make a pleasantly soft & rounded sound. The more I thought about it, the more the whole concept of a handbell choir seemed unworkable & downright goofy, but there it was operating smoothly.

This was followed by the the world premier of Festinger's Equinox. It's a clarinet concerto in one continuous movement about 20 minutes long. Before the performance, Mr. Simon gave a brief tour of the piece & asked the orchestra & soloist to play musical examples. He demonstrated how it evolves out of a chord built up by the orchestra at the very start. The piece is mysterious, atonal & inconclusive, with many slow, sustained passages for the clarinet. Festinger himself was attending a retrospective of his work at SF State, so he was unfortunately unable to be at the premiere of this work.

The soloist was Dimitri Ashkenazy, who I had never even heard of before. His bio indicates that he is nearly 40, but he manages to look & act like an awkward teenager who has never been on a concert stage before. However, he is a secure performer, with a very even tone & good dynamic control. His pianissimo playing in the Festinger was impressive.

After intermission the Sonos Handbell Ensemble offered us an encore of Summertime & There's a boat dat's leavin' soon for New York from Porgy & Bess. I'm not sure that the Adagietto from Mahler 5 works quite as well with only 17 players plus harp, but it's a great piece to represent the Romantic Era on this varied program. It gave us a chance to hear how the orchestra's sound is anchored by the sturdy & musical playing of concertmaster Robin Sharp & bassist Michael Taddei. The lower strings play especially well together.

Mr. Ashkenazy came back for the Copland Clarinet Concerto, which I had never heard before. It is characteristically Copland sounding, especially in the wide spaces of the lyrical opening. It's also clearly inspired by both jazz & Stravinsky. It's a fun piece, a crowd-pleaser, & Mr. Ashkenazy dispatched it with ease.

This may have been a free event, but there was no skimping on musical values. Mr. Ashkenazy gave us 2 flashy encores in which his playing was much freer. The 1st was a splashy number with a Spanish flavor. Mr. Ashkenazy's rapid-fire playing sometimes made it sound like there were 2 clarinets on stage. He announced the 2nd encore as an excerpt from Artie Shaw's Clarinet Concerto. He showed off some beautiful high notes & then executed an outrageously long slide that got the audience whooping. It was a great way to leave us.

SFMOMA Artists Gallery at Fort Mason

I tagged along with a friend who was on a mission to check out a gallery opening at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery at Fort Mason. The works I liked the most were Ari Salomon's photographic panoramas of scenes of urban Japan. Mr. Salomon creates them by digitally stitching together photos taken on a rotating tripod. The coolest ones have the panorama extending vertically instead of horizontally, so the view starts at your feet, goes up overhead, then back down on the view that would be behind you.

Chancellor's Concert Series

Chancellor's Concert Series
Date: 2/5/09
Time: 12noon-1pm
Location: Cole Hall, 513 Parnassus Avenue

Peter Wyrick, cello
June Choi Oh, piano

Rachmaninoff: Sonata in G Minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19

Inspired by Alex Ross's recent Cheap Seats column, I went to the UCSF campus today to catch one of their free lunch time chamber music concerts. UCSF is quite a bustling place, & Cole Hall turns out to be a pretty good chamber music venue. It has very steep stadium-style seating. The sound is probably better the higher up you go. The auditorium seats several hundred, but I would say that there were only about 60 people in attendance, mostly either old retired folks or UC employees.

The program began with a poetry reading. Today's poem was "Psalm" by George Oppen. I'm not a poetry fan myself, but this was an undeniably civilized way to begin a program. The performers on the series come mostly from the San Francisco Symphony & the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, so what we got was a fairly clean, professional read-through of the Rachmaninoff Sonata. I enjoyed the slow andante movement the most. The program was over by 12:50pm.

The series hosts weekly free events. Oddly, next week's program is the exact same Rachmaninoff Sonata, but with different performers. Up-coming programs that look interesting are a Dvořák Piano Quartet on March 12th & a Jennifer Higdon Piano Trio on March 26th.

Heidi Melton at Hotel Rex

Salon at the Rex
Heidi Melton, soprano
John Parr, piano

Wednesday, February 4, 6:30pm
Hotel Rex

PURCELL (arr. BRITTEN): The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation
BERG: Sieben frühe Lieder
MESSIAEN: Selections from Harawi
DEBUSSY: Trois Chansons de Bilitis
BOLCOM: Toothbrush Time; Waitin'; George

Encore
Weill: My Ship

Having heard Ms. Melton's huge voice at the Adler Fellows Gala, I was a bit scared to hear her in the small salon at Hotel Rex. A lot of people must have had similar fears, as the back of the room filled up before the front rows. The concert was sold out, so the hostess asked us to make room to fit as many as possible inside. She then added that people left outside the room would probably hear Heidi just fine!

Ms. Melton began by saying that, given the venue, she prepared a program that was not just "Mack Truck" singing. She described the Purcell as a mad scene, & indeed it was a strange & somewhat depressing monologue with many different moods, each of which Ms. Melton clearly communicated. After this she stepped aside, popped open the lid of a diet Coke & took a few sips. She joked at the unprofessionalism of this maneuver & called diet Coke a singer's best friend.

The intense Berg songs that followed were for me the core of the program. I felt enveloped by the music. Ms. Melton voice is not just loud. There is something about the sound that is palpable & physical. I feel it through my chest as well as through my ears. When she sings those big, ringing high notes, it never sounds strained. Instead it sounds like she could expand even more.

The 2 Messiaen selections turned out to be a teaser's for Ms. Melton's up-coming recital at Old First Church on March 8th, when she & Mr. Parr will do the complete cycle. Based on what we heard, this should be beautiful & otherworldly experience.

Ms. Melton acted as well as sang her way through the 3 Debussy love songs, creating contrasting moods of youthful love, joyous expectation & quiet acquiescence. In the last set Ms. Melton indulged her self-confessed obsession with cabaret. The surprise here is that cabaret suits her just as well as Strauss & Wagner. The last song, George, was about an opera-loving drag queen who is stabbed to death by a trick while singing "Un bel di". Ms. Melton got the laughs in the right places even for this affectionate & grotesque song. One was left with the impression that Ms. Melton might easily give up opera & become a cabaret singer instead.

Afterward, she did a Q & A with the audience. Mostly people wanted to know where she was going to be singing next & when we would be hearing her Isolde & her Brünnhilde! She admitted that when she did Isolde in the Adlers Fellows Concert, she had never had a more comfortable role. She felt like she could do it all night. But of course these roles are many years off. The professional danger with the big Wagner roles is that once you start doing them, no one wants to hire you for anything else.

It was a rare treat to hear Ms. Melton this evening, in non-operatic repertoire, in this intimate setting, in the presence of others who also feel that this is a special voice. Her mother was in the audience too. I got to exchange a few words of congratulations with her, & she seemed as awestruck as the rest of us.

Ask a Scientist

A year after my 1st failed attempt, I resolved to make it to Ask a Scientist this Tuesday evening. I got to the Axis Cafe at around 5:50pm, 70 minutes before the start time. Even so, most of the table seating was already occupied. But at least I was able to order a sandwich & get an actual chair to sit in. By 6:15 pretty much all the seating was spoken for. There were probably 80 of us inside. The rest ended up in an overflow area outside. Who knew there was such a demand for science talk?

The event started with an 11 minute video produced for KQED about discovery of rocky outcroppings in Sonoma County that were possibly polished smooth by mammoths of the Pleistocene Era. The video includes an interview with Douglas Long, the evening's speaker. The substance of the evening was Mr. Long's PowerPoint slide lecture on the Pleistocene megafauna, the possible man-made cause of their extinction, & a wacky plan to re-populate North America with Pleistocene megafauna near-relatives.

Until 10,000 years ago, North American was home to giant versions of beavers, rodents, bears, tigers & more marvelous mammals now extinct. The horse evolved in North America, spread to Asia & Europe, then went extinct here, only to be re-introduced by the Spaniards. The cause of the extinction of these animals is a controversy, but Mr. Long feels the evidence is good that over-kill by humans was a major factor.

Mr. Long is an outgoing speaker & gave comprehensive answers to the audience questions, despite starting to lose his voice from a cold. He's a man in control of his subject matter. He also brought a cast of a saber tooth tiger skull, an actual mammoth tooth fossil, & some fine Clovis points, which he described as "professionally carved". I handled all the items, &, like everyone else, was especially impressed by the size & the heaviness of the mammoth tooth. Even though it's just a tooth, it instantly makes one feel puny.

The crowd had its expected science geeks, but there was also a fair share of hipsters & couples. One woman passed the time by working on a needle-point frame. Is this a cheap night out? If I decide to attend again, I'll show up even earlier. It's a long time to sit there, but the Axis Cafe is quite pleasant, my turkey sandwich was great & the staff is friendly & service-oriented.

David Denby at Stacey's

I was at Stacey's bookstore today at lunch, along with perhaps 60 other New Yorker magazine fans, to see film critic David Denby talk about Snark, his slim volume critiquing the snide tone that he perceives is taking over American media. I doubt that this book will be on my reading list soon, but I was curious to get a peek at a New Yorker columnist in the flesh.

He singled out the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd as a current example of snarkiness. He feels that she is so pre-occupied with being snarky that she misses the actual story.

He has a lot of fears regarding the Web taking over print-based journalism. He fears the loss of authority, the loss of fairness, the loss of investigative journalism, the loss of privacy, the loss of manners, the loss of accountability. He cited Gresham's Law, meaning that the bad drives out the good. In this, Denby allies himself with those many commentators who are telling us that the Internet is making us worse.

The Stacey's staff is good about keeping these events short so that they can sell books before people start to wander off. Denby, though, clearly would have liked more time to engage with his audience.

Dacher Keltner at the Mechanics' Institute

I was at the Mechanics' Institute this evening for Dacher Keltner's talk about his new book Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. I haven't read it yet, but it looks to me like it's using science to support new-age spiritualism. Professor Keltner's talk, however, was all science. He explained some of his research into the biological & evolutionary sources for "prosocial" emotions. These are the positive emotions that make social interactions rewarding, such as altruism, compassion & love.

Professor Keltner is a likable & funny speaker, projecting an image that is more surfer dude than academic. He's a good spokesman for his own work. Judging by the lively & assenting audience, he already had fans in the crowd. They had good questions for him about what studies have been done in this area, such as the possible use of oxytocin as a medical treatment. It feels like science has finally gotten around to studying emotions. Apparently the mammalian vagus nerve is going to figure importantly in future research.

Dog Cat Rat

"Hey, Dog-Cat-Rat Guy, I've seen you before!" So I heard a young woman while I was walking on Chestnut Street this afternoon. Sure enough, there was a guy sitting in front of a coffee shop, & at his feet lay a dog, & on that dog's back lay a cat, & on that cat's back lay a white rat. As a San Franciscan, I thought I'd seen it all, but this is one for the blog!

Met Orfeo in HD

Met Opera - Live in HD
Saturday, January 24, 2009 (1:00 pm ET)

Orfeo ed Euridice – Gluck

Production: Mark Morris
Conductor: James Levine
Euridice: Danielle de Niese
Amor: Heidi Grant Murphy
Orfeo: Stephanie Blythe

Even this opera, which I would think is a hard sell, was sold out at the Westfield Mall this morning. There was a long line to get in when I arrived at 9:15am for the 10:00am start. The majority of the audience was elderly, & the atmosphere grew distinctly testy as empty seats became harder to find.

The broadcast started with about 15 minutes of backstage chat. I wonder how the Met publicity people felt about Mark Morris trailing a long pink scarf & describing himself as an opera queen? The opera itself was done without an intermission & lasted barely 90 minutes, even including all that ballet music. The production was decidedly modern in approach, starting with the way Levine & the orchestra dug in for every number.

Stephanie Blythe is a singing machine, her voice sounding sturdy & masculine. She gave the impression of having the reserves to keep going indefinitely. Heidi Grant Murphy gave a cute, warbling performance as a cupid in jeans & pink polo shirt. Danielle de Niese's Euridice looked & sounded sultry.

The stage is dominated by the chorus arrayed on a curved, 3-tiered scaffold in an abstract open space. Each member of the chorus is individually made-up as a different historical personality. I spotted a Lincoln, a Napoleon, a Frederick Douglas, a Marie Antoinette, etc. Mr. Morris explained this by saying the chorus is made up of people who died. Besides singing, the chorus sits or stands or gestures in unison. Below them 20 or so dancers perform the ballet numbers. Each of the dancers is also individually costumed, though in non-specific modern clothes. The dances were fairly abstract, & I did not understand their relationship to the opera's action.

I'd never seen a staging of Orfeo before. It must be challenging to stage it in a large house; its austerity is so at odds with grand opera. Watching the show, I began wondering if the straightforwardness of Gluck's music is actually deceptive. Hades appears to be rather pleasant, & Euridice is so exasperating that I wondered whether Orfeo's life wouldn't be more peaceful without her.

Shotgun's Macbeth

Thursday night I took BART to Berkeley & caught Macbeth presented by the Shotgun Players. Due to word of mouth, it's been playing to sold-out houses, & the run has been extended through next week.

This is a modern dress production with a mostly young cast. I would describe them as being more effective physical actors than verbal actors. Blythe Foster as Lady Macbeth makes her entrance strutting around the stage like one of the Fly Girls & immediately establishes herself as hot, young & over-confident. I'm sure this is only the Lady Macbeth who does a one-handed cartwheel!

The on-stage murders are the most striking parts of the show. They are explicit & gory without overreaching & often have piquant touches of humor. The murder of Duncan, which normally occurs off-stage, is presented here as a dream-like dumb show. Most of the victims are dispatched by a single murderer, played by Kevin Clarke as a remorseless, psychopathic killing machine. The murder of Banquo was graphic enough to make the audience groan.

The supernatural aspect of the play is dropped altogether. The 3 weird sisters are collapsed into a single camp follower scuttling around the action. Macbeth's visions have clearly psychological sources. His 2nd encounter with the witches is replaced by a disjointed scene in which Lady Macbeth ingests various substances, writhes on the floor & mouths the prophecies. This caused one audience member to get an uncontrollable case of the giggles.

The show has a loud sound design of thumping house music, sword clangs, & rumblings that you could feel through the floor. It was better than Sensurround. In the final scene of the play, a bunch of pointed tree trunks emerge horizontally through the back of the set. I'm not sure this idea works.

Shotgun Players looks to be a hardscrabble organization. Just before the 2nd half, there was a drawing for a poster autographed by the cast & a Peet's coupon. After the final bows, the oldest actor in the cast, speaking with a polite English accent, asked us for additional donations. Well, it's hard times, & they say Cressida was a beggar.

Coming Up: Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival has a something-for-everyone program coming up on Valentine's Day at the Castro Theatre. Because of the venue, the audiences & the quality of the films, these are some of the best movie events in the City. I'd like to see all 4 movies, but I have the stamina for only 2 at the most.

It's often more efficient to use the Internet, but this afternoon I bought my tickets at the festival's scrappy little box office on Market Street. I was puzzled about the festival's use of live musical accompaniment for Sunrise, since I know that this movie already has a great soundtrack. As if on cue, Stephen Salmons, the festival's artistic director, appeared from behind a screen, & I had a fascinating discussion with him about silent film music. In the case of Sunrise, it was originally also distributed in a silent version for theaters that were not yet capable of sound. So it is entirely true to the original experience to have someone play an original score to go with it, as Dennis James will most likely do.

If you've never heard Salmons talk before, you should know that he is an awesome speaker & a passionate film geek. It was pretty cool having this chance encounter with him. Sometimes you learn more by not using the Web.

La Rondine in HD

Metropolitan Opera HD Broadcast
La Rondine – Puccini
Originally broadcast Saturday, January 10, 2009 (1:00 pm ET)

Conductor: Marco Armiliato
Production: Nicolas Joël
Angela Gheorghiu, Lisette Oropesa, Roberto Alagna, Marius Brenciu, Samuel Ramey

I really like this opera after seeing the film version of the San Francisco Opera production last year. I'm surprised by how much it moves me. Something about Magda's unworkable attempt to regain a lost moment of her life really gets to me. Maybe it's all about the timing. I doubt I would have had any interest in the story if I had encountered it 10 years ago.

I missed the live broadcast from the Met a couple of weeks back when it was sold out. Instead I made it to the repeat on Wednesday evening. On this second hearing I liked the music of the first 2 acts even more, though I admit the music of the 3rd act is a bit weak. At least the 3rd act has the virtue of being brief where it cannot be good.

This is the same gorgeous production as the one in San Francisco. The cast is different except for Angela Gheorghiu. Before the performance Peter Gelb announced that Gheorghiu was going on in spite of a cold. Her lower notes did sound dry, especially at the start, but otherwise she seemed to do fine. There's definitely an on-stage intimacy between her & her husband Alagna.

Lisette Oropesa & Marius Brenciu were excellent singer-actors as the young lovers Lisette & Prunier. I found myself preferring Brenciu's tenor voice to Alagna's. Brenciu did have a tiny, forgivable break in his voice during Act III. The irony was that during his intermission interview he said that he was being more careful because of the broadcast. Samuel Ramey as Rambaldo looked looked old & sounded wobbly, which added up to a convincing character portrayal.

The repeat broadcasts are not nearly as fun as the live ones, even though it's exactly the same performance. The audience is much sparser & less inclined to applaud & react to the show.

Inauguration Broadcast

At home early in the morning, I saw Dick Cheney on TV being pushed around in a wheelchair like Dr. Strangelove. A little later I joined the crowd at Yerba Buena Gardens to watch the inauguration on 2 jumbotrons. We booed Rick Warren. We chuckled & cheered at the giant bow on Aretha Franklin's hat. We shared a laugh when Obama & Justice Roberts stepped on one another's lines during the swearing-in.

But all I really cared about was Obama's address. I was happily absorbed in it when all at once the jumbotrons went dead, as if someone had pulled the plug on the whole thing. After a couple of minutes I decided that they weren't going to fix it soon, so I bailed & missed maybe half the speech. I'm downloading the MP3 now. I guess that's the digital future: it works, sort of...

American Bach Soloists: Mass in B Minor

Sunday 18 January 2009
7:00 pm
St. Mark's Lutheran Church

American Bach Soloists
Jeffrey Thomas, conductor
Abigail Haynes Lennox, soprano
Ellen Hargis, soprano
Judith Malafronte, alto
Derek Chester, tenor
Joshua Copeland, bass
American Bach Choir

J. S. Bach: Mass in B Minor, BWV 232

I was fore-sighted enough to have had a ticket in hand for this sold-out concert in advance. People tried to buy it off me as I entered the venue! Clearly the American Bach Soloists continue to do a great job developing their audience.

ABS had much larger forces than usual this evening, though still minimal for this large work. The chorus numbered only 27, including the 5 soloists who also participated in the choruses. I've seen them do one-per-part, but here the orchestra included 4 first violins, 3 second violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos & 2 double bass instruments (Violone grosso & Contrabass) for extra weight. I doubt you could give an effective performance with fewer personnel.

It was an evening of music-making without weaknesses. Everything was very clean. The chorus was well-prepared & was the strongest element of the performance. Though small in number, they made a powerful, focused sound. It was easy to hear even the inner voices, especially the steely tenors. The chorus executed a wonderfully dramatic pianissimo at the end of the Crucifixus, which was a highlight of the evening. The soloist were all fine & fluid singers. Derek Chester was a stand-out. His sound is clear & even, & his singing very musical.

The tempos were generally fast, but for the most part avoided sounding too bouncy. This is serious stuff after all! The orchestra does a good job, though one still occasionally hears the performers struggling with those original instruments.

I like the setting for these concerts in a Lutheran church, but the acoustic of St. Marks sounds surprisingly dead to me. It seems like the sound dies away immediately. There is none of the reverberation or aural halo I associate with performances in churches.

The ABS audiences are attentive & appreciative. No one clapped between movements, but there were audible murmurs of approval after several numbers. On the way out of the venue, I received a very nice glossy brochure for the ABS season, along with a free CD containing excerpts from their recordings.

The Glass Cousins

I'm watching an interview with Ira Glass on the Borders site, & he just said that Philip Glass is his cousin. Am I the only one who didn't know this?

Rubik's Cube Competition

I spent a draw-dropping Sunday afternoon at the Exploratorium witnessing much of the San Francisco Open 2009 Rubik's Cube Competition. It was pure, addictive nerd fascination to watch these pros spin the faces of the cubes into place without seeming to even think about it. At a certain point physical dexterity becomes just as important as mental ability. I saw some insane stuff. I little boy who looked to be about 4 or 5 solved his cube in under 3 minutes. Players rapidly aligned the faces of 4x4x4 & 5x5x5 cubes & solved cubes using just one hand. Most incredibly, several people took up the challenge of solving the cube blindfolded. Probably less than 1 out of 3 trials resulted in a successful solve, but I saw one girl study the cube for about 30 seconds, don a blindfold, & successfully solve it within 2 minutes! In the final round, I watched Lucas Garron solve a cube in exactly 10 seconds.

This is definitely a young man's game. The majority of the contestants were teenage boys. In the final rounds, the competitors were all guys, & none looked to be above college age. They got punchier as the competition came to a close. At the end of the final round, Michael Gottlieb played a trick on us by using a specially scrambled cube to make it look like he solved it in less than 4 seconds.

Oberlin Live! from the West Coast

Jan 11, 2009, 7:00PM
Palace of Fine Arts

eighth blackbird
The Prima Trio
Members of the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble

Peter Schickele: Serenade for Three
Frederic Rzewski: Knight, Death and the Devil (2008)
Stephen Hartke: Meanwhile
Steve Reich: Double Sextet (2007)

I wish there were more well-programmed concerts of contemporary music like this. It started with the Prima Trio giving a bright & enthusiastic reading of the Schickele Serenade. It's an audience-friendly work, in 3 short movements, conventional in its tonality. The final movement, a theme & variations, features humorous solos for each player & was definitely reminiscent of Schickele's alter-ego, P.D.Q. Bach. The piece put the audience at ease & in a good mood.

Rzewski's Knight, Death and the Devil requires the 6 players of eighth blackbird plus a string quartet. This is a major work about war. It is in several short, fragmentary movements. Some of the movements sound like folksy songs & dances. Others are discordant, eerie, agitated or even violent. The players are sometimes called upon to make snorts, growls or guttural exhalations. In one theatrical solo, the percussionist smashes plates by hurling them & then transfers the broken chips into a metal bucket. In another movement, he stomps & kicks a metal trash can until it's crushed flat. The piece ends with a sad, introspective & inconclusive piano solo.

I found Knight, Death and the Devil to be an effective depiction of uncertainty, fear & dislocation. According to the program notes, the composer originally conceived this piece to be played while the audience looked at a large projected image of the Albrecht Dürer print of the same name. The print was reproduced in the program, but there was no projection at this performance.

Hartke's Meanwhile is a descriptive piece of exotic colors that often sounds like a gamelon or a kabuki play. The pianist starts the piece by playing Flexatones, which sound like small gongs with variable pitch. The percussionist also played a gong whose pitch he varied by lowering it into a box after he struck it.

The program ended with a Reich piece, requiring 2 ensembles of 6 players each, set up as mirror images of one another. It took a while to set up the stage because all the players needed to be miked. It's in 3 movements, each of them consisting of several sub-sections, clearly marked by musical gear shifts. The instruments enter in pairs or groups of 4. Once the piece starts, it's in non-stop rhythmic motion. The rhythms are hypnotic, & the music doesn't develop so much as simply proceed. One gets the feeling that one wrong entrance could derail the performance. It's also very mechanical & got me wondering how one differentiates between a technical proficient performance versus a great one.

The Invention of Air

I was at Stacy's Bookstore at lunchtime today to hear Steven Johnson talk about his new book, The Invention of Air. It's about the 18th century scientist Joseph Priestly & his influence on the founding fathers of the United States. Priestly settled in Pennsylvania, seeking intellectual freedom after his home in England was burned down by a mob. As one of the most famous scientists of his time, he immediately became embroiled in the political life of the new country.

Mr. Johnson thinks there is a lesson here about Enlightenment Age thinking. Our founding fathers would never think to separate the worlds of politics & science. Instead, they actively engaged with science. Mr. Johnson has a very open mind & is a funny guy as well. The book sounds like an entertaining read. About 50 people were at the Stacey's reading. Mr. Johnson has been twittering his book tour, so I hope the turn-out was good enough for him!

It's hard to believe that Stacey's is closing in a couple of months. To me it always showed the signs of a healthy business: excellent personalized service, well-attended in-store events, lines at the registers, & even a customer loyalty program. I spent a lot of my lunch hours there, & I will miss it.

T.I.C. (trenchcoat in common)

Encore Theatre Company
T.I.C. (trenchcoat in common)
a world premiere play by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
Thursday, January 8
Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center

This crowded & hilarious 100 minute play starts with a teenage blogger. Out of anger & boredom, she reports the behavior of her colorful neighbors, all of them easily recognizable San Francisco caricatures. The high-tech is just a device to pull together a story that is equal parts Rear Window, Tales of the City & sketch comedy. At first I kept trying to figure out what it was really supposed to be about. The alienating effect of the Web? Voyeurism? The gap between our public & private selves? But the plot kept taking so many surprising & ridiculous turns that I gave up & just let myself keep laughing.

The show is really about inappropriate humor & crazy schtick. Very little is off limits: insecure hipsters, gay fathers, pot-smoking hippies, flashers, ax murderers & domestic terrorists all get in on the act. A story arc involving the conflict between the teenage girl & her unlikely father provides just enough emotional weight to ground the play & keep it from becoming just a series of skits.

The cast has a lot of fun. Rebecca White plays a classic disaffected teenager & is at her funniest when she is reacting to the intolerable behavior of the adults around here. I liked Michael Shipley's middle-aged gay preppy, earnest & trying way too hard. I found the character embarrassingly realistic. Liam Vincent gives a delicious performance as the creepily secure exhibitionist Terrence. He made me feel uncomfortable for liking the character so much. I was also impressed by the elaborate sound design that represents computer noises & events going on in the virtual world.

A lot of funny & unexpected revelations occur in these 100 minutes. At times the audience is laughing throughout an entire scene. I went in not knowing much about what was going to happen next. I think this is a good way to enjoy it.

MTT conducts Berg & Brahms

San Francisco Symphony
Fri, Jan 9, 2009 8:00pm
Davies Symphony Hall

Michael Tilson Thomas
conductor

COPLAND: Our Town, Music from the Film Score
BERG: Three Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 6
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68

This concert was billed as "MTT conducts Brahms's First", but I was here for the Berg. However, it took a bit of time to get there & back. The Copland film music sounds very much like film music. A simple, repeated motive in the strings easily established a mood of peacefulness & laziness. It was the most conscientiously conducted piece of the evening.

The Copland lulled us into an only temporary sense of comfort. As if to reassure us, MTT talked for a good 5 minute before the Three Pieces. I fear that he inadvertently used language that disparaged the composition. He described the primordial opening as "noise", then quickly corrected himself, so as not to offend the actual percussion section. He then went on to label the melodic fragments as "flotsam & jetsam" & "aimless", which makes them sound like trash or wreckage. I think the opposite process is happening here; the music is being built up & coalescing.

I found myself in the front row of the orchestra for this concert. This is not an ideal seat, but it did work nicely for the Berg in one way. It allowed me to hear all the string parts, which are easily buried by the heavy brass & percussion orchestration. Technically correct execution of this work must be difficult to pull off, but this performance sounded very straight-forward. An audience member belched perfectly in time with the end of the 2nd movement. Perhaps after a century we can say that the 2nd Viennese School has been a flop with audiences.

With the Brahms, everyone was back on familiar ground. MTT started the 1st movement at an alarmingly fast tempo. Through the whole piece, he seemed to be conducting along with the orchestra, as opposed to being ahead of it. The result was a somewhat loose interpretation with not much dynamic range. Even though I found the evening a bit slack, it was a program of first-rate music. I am looking forward to the Berg/Schubert programs later in the season.

But what I really want to know is, who were those guys with the great mustaches in the left terrace?

Waltz With Bashir

I had no regrets taking time out of this unusually sunny day to catch a matinee of Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir. This is an animated documentary about Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Mr. Folman, a participant in that war, begins by claiming not to remember any of it. In the film he goes on a journey to collect the stories of his old war buddies. He comes to acknowledge his own complicity in the massacre of Palestinian civilians & to recognize his important role as a witness. It's a damning anti-war film & implies that Israel itself may not have learned the lessons of the Holocaust.

It looks like much of the movie was shot in live action, then traced over as animation. The images have a flat look, like comic book illustrations. Animation allows the director to depict the hallucinatory atmosphere of combat & to explore the dynamic & constructed nature of memory. The very effective soundtrack includes angry rock songs, snippets of Bach & Chopin, & original music by Max Richter. I gladly sat through the credits so I could listen to all of a hauntingly beautiful cello piece.

The filmmaker represents the recovery of his experiences by abruptly switching to documentary video footage at the very end. Animation is traditionally associated with fictional narratives. This final video testimony lets us know that there is nothing any less real about the preceding accounts. Given that events in Gaza continue to occupy the news, the film is sadly pertinent. I needed to take a long, quiet walk home afterward.

Ice Cream from Humphry Slocombe

This unseasonably warm Sunday was the perfect day to check out Humphry Slocombe, the new ice cream store at 24th Street & Harrison. There was a line out the door, & apparently it's been like this since it opened just before the New Year. They have done no publicity, but bloggers & foodies quickly spread the word via the Web.

The big attraction here are the special flavors. Once I saw the Guinness gingerbread, my mind was made up. It did indeed have those 2 great tastes, just enough so that you could recognize them, but not so much that it tasted weird. The best-named flavor has got to be secret breakfast -- that would be corn flakes & bourbon! It was not possible for me to pass that one up either. I'm looking forward to trying the foie gras ice cream next time.

Despite the pressure of the long line, the staff was super-friendly, efficient & genuinely thankful for each customer. It was $3.25 for the 2 scoops served in a paper cup. They also have sundaes.

Young Composer Reveals Musical Resolutions

That would be Nico Muhly, with boyishly disheveled hair, on Wall Street Journal Online. I love it when he says he's been writing music for one player plus electronics "for years & years & years". He's like only 26, isn't he? I also like it when his cat has to get in on the action.

The composer looks adorable here, but it's probably a good thing that Beethoven never had to appear on video to answer questions about his new year's resolutions.



Video link here.

Cat gets ride

Yesterday morning I was riding the bus up Fillmore Street. Somewhere between Lombard & Union, everyone on the bus started laughing. I looked up from my book to see why. A man on the sidewalk was walking his dog. The dog had a cat standing on its back. A woman on the bus said to her companion, "I don't know what's funnier, that the dog tolerates it or that the cat tolerates it."

2008 Favorites

I felt very fortunate to be numbered among the small audience for Eugene Brancoveanu's intimate salon recital. András Schiff's Beethoven cycle continues to impress me with its high seriousness. The depth & beauty of Matthias Goerne's Brahms moved me to tears. At the opera, my most exciting moment of the year was standing on the stage just 15 minutes before the curtain went up on L'Elisir D'Amore. Safely on the other side of the curtain, I was thrilled by Susan Graham's Ariodante & by my 1st encounter with Die Tote Stadt, vividly conducted by Donald Runnicles. For sheer fun, both Max Raabe & Time For Three were hard to beat.

This year I also feel very lucky to have made the acquaintance of some wonderfully knowledgeable, entertaining & generous music buffs. They have made a big difference in my concert-going life already.

Bad Muni

Next west-bound Muni buses at the Sutter & Van Ness stop at around 3:40pm this afternoon:

WKCR BachFest

A friend in New York turned me on to Columbia University radio station WKCR & it's annual BachFest. For those of us not in New York, there's a Web stream available on the Web site. It's a nice choice for something that is classical & Christmas-y & not the Messiah or Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride. I'm listening to Glenn Gould play the French Suites right now. Some of the announcers' pronunciations are interesting.

Berkeley Symphony

Berkeley Symphony
Joana Carneiro, conductor

Thursday, December 18, 2008, 8 PM
UC Berkeley Zellerbach Hall

Magnus Lindberg, Chorale
John Adams, Shaker Loops
Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5

It was a treat to attend this concert at the invitation of a friend, especially since I don't think I've heard the Berkeley Symphony before. They sound good & have many enthusiastic players. It was nice to sit in a full house with such a supportive audience. It felt like an event.

Before starting, guest conductor Joana Carneiro spoke about the program, summarizing it as a celebration of masterpieces by great composers. She explained that the Lindberg is based on the Bach chorale Es ist genug. To remind us what this sounds like, she prefaced the performance with a brass quartet playing the chorale straight.

Carneiro does a lot of conducting. She seems to mark every beat & to cue everything. Even for something as square as the chorale, she flapped her arms vigorously. It reminded me of those slow-motion movies of cranes taking to the air.

The Lindberg piece gives us fragments of the chorale surrounded by unmoored harmonies. It was like looking at a fuzzy, constantly shifting landscape. Then suddenly at the very end it clicks into bright, clear focus. Along the way we get some pleasing orchestral colors.

The ensemble was tight for the entire program, especially for the tense & jittery Adams. I can imagine that it is difficult to keep this piece together, & the orchestra looked very proud of its effort at the end. John Adams himself joined them onstage for bows & received a bouquet of big flowers.

The Beethoven came off cleanly, again with precise ensemble, even in those passages where short phrases are passed quickly around the woodwinds. Carneiro took it at a deliberate pace. But of course those Beethoven codas are impossible to resist. The audience gave the symphony a rousing standing ovation at the end. Carneiro got her own bouquet of flowers as well.

This concert was also an audition for Carneiro as the successor to Kent Nagano. She has an eager stage presence. I got the feeling that she was attempting to take charge of as many things as possible. She moves around a lot & has a distinctive way of throwing her arms down, as if to flick water off them. Sometimes she stomps her feet in emphasis. She's certainly something to see in action, cute & a little flirtacious as she dances around the podium. I haven't heard any of the other candidates, but Carneiro would not be a boring pick.

P.S. In the 1st movement of the Beethoven, the bassoon, instead of horns, played the bridge in the recapitulation. Is this an "authentic" reading?

Why music?

Human evolution
Why music?
Dec 18th 2008
The Economist

Time For Three

Time For Three
Morrison Artists Series
College of Creative Arts, SF State
Sunday, December 14, 2008 @ 3 pm

I was back on the SF State campus this rainy afternoon to check out Time For Three, a trio of 2 violins & a double bass. They did a program of about 15 short numbers, lasting about an hour. The opening piece, Wyoming 307, by the bassist Ranaan Meyer, established right away what the group is about. They exist at an intersection of blue grass, jazz & classical performance. The piece moves quickly through many ideas. It may be sustained & hushed or funky & foot-stomping. There are moments requiring tight ensemble as well as places for wild improvisation. The trio communicates the feeling that they are having the most fun just playing together. & of course the feeling is contagious.

The program was a mix of original compositions by Meyer, traditional pieces like Turkey in the Straw, classic songs like Black Bird from the Beatles, & popular classics like the Brahms Hungarian Dance. All of it is just to showcase their playful fiddling & jazzy jamming. Meyer described the group as a "classically trained garage band".

Classical training is apparent in the group's technical proficiency. The bassist Ranaan Meyer is an exceptional musician & an outrageous flirt. He really made that bass sing & dance. I was even more impressed when he thanked a colleague from the SF Symphony for loaning him the instrument. He moved so comfortably over an instrument that he probably never played before!

The 2 violinists are well-paired. Both play like virtuosos. Nicolas Kendall is the slightly more aggressive-sounding of the two. Zachary De Pue's sound is a bit edgier. Zachary also briefly showed off the alarming ability to bow his violin behind his back. Improvisation is something I don't associate with the violin, but I saw no hesitation here. At one point Zachary played the 1st few notes of Jingle Bells, then, on second thought, immediately dropped it.

The group plays with amplification, which may not be necessary. After the 1st set, Zachary had to leave the stage briefly to have his electronics adjusted.

Tf3 was always having a ball on stage, even when telling their corny jokes they knew weren't working. They were fresh, spontaneous & eager to share their music. There was nothing apparently routine about it. At several points, it looked like Meyer was trying to crack up Kendall & nearly succeeding. We happily ate it all up.

Arcadia at SF State

Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Fri, Dec 12 8pm
Studio Theatre, Creative Arts Building
San Francisco State University

I read Tom Stoppard's Arcadia a while back, but I had never seen it before. I was curious to see how it actually works in the theater. The action concerns modern day scholars attempting to reconstruct events that occurred 200 years earlier in an English country house once visited by Lord Byron. Scenes alternate between the 2 time periods. We see how the modern-day interpretation of historical facts must by necessity diverge from the actual events. The audience has to keep track of lots of plot details, since the biggest pay-offs come when we add knowledge from our privileged viewpoint to the scene at hand.

Stoppard further flatters us by loading up the play with heady topics like the aesthetics of the Enlightenment vs. the Romantic Era, Newtonian physics, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics & non-linear mathematics. Besides being almost too clever, it's also very funny. It's a play for nerds & about nerds.

This student production was competent & satisfying, especially considering the length & complexity of the work. There was a nice feeling of all the actors working toward the same goal. In the last scene, characters from the 2 time periods mingle without interacting. This is one of those things that on the page looks completely confusing to me. However, here it was easily comprehensible & effective. I liked Anthony Cirimele, who played Bernard Nightingale as a champion nerd. Will Hand was equally convincing as the computer geek Valentine Coverly. I liked the way he spoke. He was the one actor that made me think the play might just possibly be set in England. For some reason, they made the decision not to use accents, which I never got used to, since the diction of the text is so British.

The studio space is nice & close-up, with the audience on 3 sides of the acting area. I like seeing plays in such a small space. I sat right down in front & was nearly part of the action when Septimus Hodge & Lady Croom made love on the prop desk just inches from my seat.

The audience was an unusual mix of students & older people. An older couple across the aisle from me fell asleep frequently, & the man snored a few times. I thought for sure they would bail at the intermission, but they stayed for the whole show. Afterward, I noticed Bernard & Valentine hopping on the same late night bus as me going home.

Alisa Weilerstein Recital

Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Inon Barnatan, piano

Thursday, December 11, 8pm
Herbst Theatre

BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 5 in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2
KODÁLY: Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8
CHOPIN: Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60
OSVALDO GOLIJOV: Omaramor
CHOPIN: Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 65

I had not heard of Weilerstein before. Judging by the small talk of people around me at Herbst on Thursday night, she has a lot of fans. After reading her bio, I see that she is a seasoned performer at only 26.

During the opening Beethoven Sonata she exchanged a lot of glances with her accompanist, & they both looked like they were doing a lot, though I'm not sure I heard as much as I saw. Weilerstein does make big sound, & her high notes are exceptionally powerful. She has a strong left hand.

The Kodály Sonata was the centerpiece of the program. It's a long work & is a severe test of cello technique. It has a ton of left hand pizzicato, harmonics, double-stops, you name it. Weilerstein confidently tackled it from memory. She's a wildly physical performer, & she gives the appearance of being possessed by the music instead of being in control of it. She can be a rough player, & she muscled her way through the piece. It all sounded anguished & doleful, though I think there are more moods than that in it. It was well-received by the audience, with shouts of "Brava!" & a few people standing.

She had a similarly bluff approach to the Golijov piece, also for solo cello. The composer's notes indicate that the piece takes its inspiration from the tango, but I didn't get any sense of the dance from Weilerstein's fast & loud interpretation.

I guess I have my doubts from a musical point of view. Yet these were not poor performances. For me the duo just felt very packaged. The main impression I have of her accompanist is that he looked slim & chic.

As an encore, the duo reprised the slow movement from the Chopin Sonata.

War Requiem

Derek Jarman Film Series at the SF MOMA
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Phyllis Wattis Theater
1:00 p.m.

I went to one of the last of SF MOMA's Derek Jarman screenings to see his War Requiem. Except for a prologue featuring the last appearance of Laurence Olivier, this is basically a music video of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The soundtrack is the 1963 Decca studio recording led by the composer himself.

The text of the War Requiem is a complicated interweaving of the traditional Latin text with poems of Wilfred Owen. Jarman illustrates each musical section with a scenario, which may be a dramatic scene relating to the text or a more abstract commentary. As in the other Jarman movies I've seen, there is a loose, episodic narrative framed by the death of the main character, in this case the poet Wilfred Owen himself. Tilda Swinton appears as a frontline nurse.

The opening Requiem aeternam includes a symbolic scene of the nurse mourning the young dead poet. She lets out what must be a piercing scream, her mouth open wide, but we only ever hear the musical sound track. A following segment depicts Owen & his friend in training, & it looks like a conventional flashback.

A detailed narrative accompanies the Dies irae. Owen comes upon an initially benign encounter between his friend & a German soldier. However it ends with Owen killing the German soldier who in turn kills the friend, who ends up impaled on a tangle of barbed wire. There are no innocent combatants here.

The climax of the Britten work is the Libera me. In the movie it is accompanied by a gory montage of documentary footage of war killings, climaxing with an atomic bomb explosion. The Strange Meeting section follows the poem closely. We see the dream in which Owen explores an underground chamber & meets the German soldier he killed.

The final chorus is illustrated by Christian iconography & a recreation of the Piero della Francesca painting of the Resurrection of Christ. It's quite a literal depiction of the text. The tone is somber, reverential & ritualistic.

The movie is an interesting experiment. I feel that Jarman is always admirably respectful of the meaning & intent of the Britten work. Jarman has his own very artificial & idiosyncratic aesthetic, but he is at least always true to his own style, & I always feel that he has thought things through. At the same time I find it hard to imagine that he is anything more than a marginal artistic figure now. There were about 25 of us at the museum showing, & I none of the other screenings I went to seemed that much more enthusiastically attended.

Derek Jarman's Edward II

Derek Jarman Film Series at the SF MOMA
Thu 4 Dec 7pm

This is supposedly Jarman's most accessible movie. However, I still went to this screening with a little trepidation, since I don't happen to like the Marlowe play on which it's based. I was also anticipating a gory movie, which it is (though no more so than its source).

The movie is similar to Caravaggio in style & structure. It all appears to be shot in a cavernous concrete soundstage. Many of the set-ups have an artificial, tableaux-like look. The play unfolds as a series of flashbacks framed by Edward sitting in a dungeon with Lightborn, his sexy executioner. Jarman mixes & matches lines of the original text & makes heavy use of post-modern anachronism.

Jarman does tell the basics of the story: Edward's infatuation with Gaveston to the neglect of all else, the aligning & re-aligning of allegiances, & the rapid plot reversals. The biggest change Jarman makes to the original is at the end. After we witness Edward's grisly death, we get another ending in which the executioner throws the offending hot poker into water & kisses Edward. Either version may be a dream. I think this is Jarman's way of suggesting an alternative to the universally nasty conduct of all the characters.

There's definitely an angry-gay-man feel to the movie. In the opening scene, Gaveston reads Edward's fateful letter while 2 naked men make out in his bed. In the big sentimental moment, Edward & Gaveston slow dance in their pajamas to Annie Lenox singing Cole Porter's Every Time We Say Goodbye. When Gaveston is banished, he walks a gauntlet of middle-aged men representing the establishment who contemptuously spit on him. The macho military man Mortimer also enjoys being humiliated by a dominatrix in drag. Edward's forced abdication sparks a gay rights protest.

However, the movie may not have aged well. The only thing that really grabbed my attention was Tilda Swinton's tightly contained performance as Queen Isabella. She looks & behaves like a creature from another planet.

The SF MOMA projected a very old print, which no doubt saw the rounds of the art houses back in the day. There were about 20 of us in attendance.

Faust HD Broadcast

The Metropolitan Opera HD Live
La Damnation de Faust
Hector Berlioz
Wed, Dec 3

Conductor, James Levine
Production, Robert Lepage

FAUST Marcello Giordani
MÉPHISTOPHÉLÈS John Relyea
BRANDER Patrick Carfizzi
MARGUERITE Susan Graham

I missed the original live broadcast which was supposedly sold-out in San Francisco, but I really wanted to check this one out. I finally made it to the re-broadcast last week. I'm a sucker for a spectacle, so this production worked for me. The show opens with a stunning image of the aging Faust high up on a wall of books that fills the height & width of the stage. Only after we've taken this in for several seconds does the orchestra enter. It was clear that the visual would take precedence over the musical.

I'm not sure that Damnation is really a narrative opera, & I think that this production does a good job dealing with its episodic, pageant-like structure. For every episode, director Robert Lepage had some sort of scenic magic involving dancers, acrobats & interactive video projections. & you can forget about gravity. Performers appear to drop into a lake & swirl gently underwater. Soldiers march straight up the vertical face of the set, & demonic creatures scamper like lizards across it. I'm sure it's even more fun seeing these stunts live.

I was so fascinated by the visual that I had to keep reminding myself to listen to the music. Whenever I did, I was rewarded by the Met orchestra's beautiful playing & Levine's expansive conducting. He made it seem like they could keep the music flowing effortlessly like that forever.

Susan Graham was a knock-out in her 2nd big scene, singing "D'amour l'ardente flamme" in front of a gigantic real-time projection of her face morphing into flames. I've seen Ms. Graham several times now, & she always comes through with a gripping performance. She must be at the top of her game these days.

I thought it interesting that all the singers claimed to have no idea what was being projected behind them. They are just one element in a complex construction.

We had a couple of unfortunate incidents at the screening. As the broadcast began, a theater announcement on the PA system told us to ignore a false alarm. At the end of the 1st half, a crazy bag lady came in & made quite a bit of noise with her shopping bags. She started yelling at another patron just as the intermission was beginning. Fortunately she decided not to come back after the break.

Adler Fellows Gala Concert

Sat December 6, 2008 8 pm
Conductor, Patrick Summers

Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Giuseppe Verdi
Overture
San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Capriccio, Richard Strauss
“Verraten hab ich meine Gefühle!”
The Countess – Tamara Wapinsky
Flamand – Andrew Bidlack

Usher House, Gordon Getty
“Now you have seen”
Edgar Allen Poe – Andrew Bidlack
Roderick Usher – Kenneth Kellogg

Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner
“Weh, ach wehe, dies zu dulden”
Isolde - Heidi Melton
Brangäne – Daveda Karanas
Men’s Chorus

Samson et Dalila, Camille Saint-Saëns
“Amour! viens aider ma faiblesse”
Dalila - Katherine Tier

Idomeneo, Wolfgang Amdeus Mozart
“D'Oreste, d'Ajace”
Elettra: Tamara Wapinsky

Semele, George Frideric Handel
Act III, Scenes 4 and 5
Semele – Ji Young Yang
Jupiter – Alek Shrader

Cendrillon, Jules Massenet
“Ma pauvre enfant chérie!”
Cendrillon – Daniela Mack
Pandolfe – Kenneth Kellogg

Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss
“Mein Gott! Es war nicht mehr als ein Farce”
The Marschallin – Heidi Melton
Sophie – Ji Young Yang
Octavian – Katharine Tier
Faninal – Kenneth Kellogg

Thanks to an out-of-town subscriber, I had the opportunity to attend the Adler Fellows Gala Concert, which I'd never done before. It's an opera recital with a full pit orchestra but with minimal staging. I thought it was a very enjoyable sampler. The program was heavily German & strangely included no scenes by Italian composers.

The stand-out in the 1st half was absolutely the Tristan scene. Daveda Karanas's 1st dramatic utterance got my attention right away. It was as if the volume of the show had been suddenly turned up several notches. & then Heidi Melton let go with her large, rich voice. Plus she was completely into the character with her acting & expression. I'm convinced she's ready to sing the whole role tomorrow.

Katherine Tier & Tamara Wapinsky were a little less fortunate in their solo numbers, each of them having a problem with a high note. It was a good reminder of just how many risks opera singers take all the time.

I enjoyed the Semele scene that opened the 2nd half. Ji Young Yang has a high, bright voice & a perky stage presence. She looks completely at home on the stage. Alek Shrader has a beautiful smooth sound. I would like to hear him again.

Heidi Melton wowed me again in the Der Rosenkavalier excerpt by sailing right through that Strauss-sized orchestra even as it went to full volume.

The top balcony of the house was completely closed, & I guess I'm surprised that the concert was not better attended. It's not nearly as expensive as a normal opera ticket, & the performances are fine. I like the variety as well. I'd never heard anything from Massenet's Cendrillon before, & now I'm a bit curious.

Oppens Plays Carter

The Complete Elliott Carter Piano Works with a Lecture by Robert Greenberg and Ursula Oppens Performing the Piano Works
Sunday, December 7, 2:30pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum

Elliott Carter Centenary Celebration
Ursula Oppens, piano

90+ (1994)
Retrouvailles (2000)
Two Diversions (1999)
Night Fantasies (1980)
Piano Sonata (1945–46)
Two Thoughts about the Piano
    Intermittences (2005)
    Catenaires (2006)

Even though I am pretty much ignorant of Carter's music, I didn't want to miss out on the Elliott Carter Centenary Celebration entirely. Fortunately for the uneducated like me, the event included a pre-recital lecture by Robert Greenberg. He gave a fairly technical musical analysis of the major works on the program & rooted Carter firmly in a classical context that includes Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt & Copland. He also taught me an impressive new word: pandiatonicism. Think John Adams or the neo-classical Stravinsky.

The major characteristic of Carter's mature style is a sort of higher-order polyphony in which musical counterpoint may occur at many different levels. For example, the 2nd of the Two Diversions has 2 main voices, one of which gets slower while the other speeds up.

But the most obvious manifestation of this polyphony is the monstrous technical difficulty of the works. This is really dense music. Oppens never looked anything other than calm & confident, but she had a lot of notes to play & a lot of events to keep track of, & things often go by very quickly. She moves her hands around the piano very efficiently. Sometimes it looked like she was tossing handfuls of notes down on the keyboard. Unfortunately the venue was not good acoustically for the piano. The audience sits on risers erected in the middle of a big ballroom. It's like being at a high school basketball game. The room is dry, & the piano often sounded buzzy.

Greenberg was good at giving the audience things to listen for right away, & in the shorter pieces I could usually get some sense of the organizing principle. However, I felt completely lost in the longer Night Fantasies that closed the 1st half. I was most at ease with the Piano Sonata, since it could almost be a kind of late-Romantic piece. However, this is an early work that doesn't represent Carter's fully mature style. The final Catenaires was the one piece I had no problem enjoying. It's a galloping run of single notes, in the manner of C.P.E. Bach's Solfeggio, that was exciting, brilliant, breathless & fun.

The audience for this concert was extremely focused & attentive. I saw someone with the music for one of the pieces, following along. Oppens got a big ovation that included some foot-stamping. As an encore, she performed the 1st part of Matribute, a recent work written for James Levine. A wine & dessert reception followed the concert, so I guess Carter throws an OK birthday party.

Language of the Birds

Walking through North Beach around lunch time today, I came upon this art installation at Broadway & Columbus. A plaque on the building says it's by Brian Goggin with Dorka Keehn. It depicts a flock of books taking off to fly around the city. Above are white books, suspended from light posts. Below are words, randomly scattered from the books. I like that it's across the street from City Lights Books, since it makes me want to open a book & start reading.

Hilary Hahn Plays Tchaikovsky

San Francisco Symphony
Fri, Nov 28, 2008 8:00pm
Davies Symphony Hall

James Gaffigan, conductor
Hilary Hahn, violin

Tchaikovsky: Voyevoda, Symphonic Ballad, Opus 78
Tchaikovsky: Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 35
Glinka: Kamarinskaya
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Opus 10

Thanks to an indulgent benefactor, I was able to attend this splashy program of Russian works & to hear Hilary Hahn for the 2nd time in a week. There is no denying her clean & crisp technique. Even her vibrato is very fast & tight. I'm sure that she hit every note in the score. I found her interpretation emotionally cool, however. She obviously had a lot of fans in the hall, & they gave her a standing emotion. In return she gave us an encore, the Sarabande from Bach's Partita #2 in d minor, I believe. It was pristine.

Associate conductor James Gaffigan was visibly busy & hard at work on the podium for this packed program. He's boyish & enthusiastic. At one point during a bouncy portion of the Kamarinksaya, he turned to the audience & yelled something, in Russian, I presume.

I like the way the piano leaps out of the orchestra in the 2nd movement of the Shostakovich. Since Shostakovich was a piano virtuoso himself, I can't help thinking that it's meant to represent him. There are important solos in the final movements for all sections. I liked the nice fat-sounding solos from Barantschik & Grebanier in the last movement. During final bows, even the timpanist got singled out for his exposed drum roll passage.

P.S. Mr. Gaffigan is on this week's NACOcast podcast doing color commentary on the tonality & structure of Beethoven's 1st Symphony.

Short Reads About Music

Bringing improvisation back to classical music:

Making Up the Classics
Wall Street Journal
November 28, 2008

Time for Three, mentioned in the sidebar, will be performing in the Morrison Artists Series at SF State on Sunday, December 14, 2008. These concerts are usually free.

Trouble marketing Yundi Li:

Why Yundi Li Got Cut
Wall Street Journal
November 28, 2008

Gilbert Kaplan, dedicated Mahler amateur, is still at it:

Desperately seeking Mahler
The Economist
Nov 27th 2008

The horn is really hard to play:

Blowhard
The Economist
Nov 27th 2008

Practice, Practice
Wall Street Journal
December 1, 2008

Milk

On Black Friday I avoided the shopping hordes but sat in a packed house at the Castro Theatre for the Milk biopic. Even though I & my friends arrived more than half an hour before the show time, we ended up in the back of the balcony. Still, there is no better place to see this movie, right on the block where much of it occurs.

As a San Franciscan I found the movie factual & moving. It's hard not to get emotional seeing Dianne Feinstein's announcement of the assassinations or footage of the famous candlelight memorial march. Even so, I feel like the director kept a cool head & dramatized many sensitive events without sensationalizing them. Sean Penn does a fantastic job depicting Harvey Milk as a man who is determined, capable, happy & brave. Josh Brolin looks just like Dan White & is equally convincing in his portrayal of him as frustrated, repressed, jealous & yet still human.

I don't know if Milk was an opera fan himself, but Tosca plays a prominent role in the soundtrack & in the staging of Milk's death in the film. I was impressed to discover that this is not mere artistic license. SF Opera had a performance of Tosca the weekend before the killings.

A woman in the row in front of me brought her small white dog to the theater, & it sat on her lap for most of the show. After it was over, I wondered aloud if the dog liked the movie, & she assured me that her dog was an out & proud gay pooch.

Coming Up: Sing it Yourself Messiah

San Francisco Sinfonietta Presents
Sing it Yourself Messiah
Davies Symphony Hall
December 14, 2008 - 7:30pm

I participated in one of these many years ago. It's nice to know that music is one of those things where faking it is still an option.

The Legacy of James Simon

While I was at The Legion of Honor yesterday to see Leonardo, I did a quick stroll through their other special exhibit, The State Museums of Berlin and the Legacy of James Simon. This show highlights the patronage of James Simon (1851-1932), an important philanthropist of the era & a German Jew. It's an exhibition of diverse works, spanning cultures & millenia. It's a something-for-everyone show, though it lacks a single artistic theme.

I enjoyed most the 1st two rooms of Egyptian & Babylonian artifacts. I was intrigued by the Babylonian Kudurru, a football-sized black stone covered with cunieform & topped with a band of pictures. I wish there was more wall text explaining it. I was surprised by the presence of Buddhist items collected from the Silk Road. This stuff must have looked very exotic to late 19th century Germans. In the last room, I was charmed by Renoir's portrait In the Summer & both fascinated & disturbed by Luca Giordano's violent & pretty St. Michael.

Leonardo Drawings

Yesterday I made a trip to The Legion of Honor to view Leonardo da Vinci: Drawings from the Biblioteca Reale in Turin. They have 11 drawings plus a slim codex on display. In cases where Leonardo drew on both sides of the sheet, the pages are mounted so that we can see the backs as well. The images include rapid doodles, anatomical studies & finished pieces. As one would expect, the level of observation & detail is very fine. Leonardo's gaze must have been intense. In addition to the artistic images, there are samples of Leonardo's mirror writing & his thoughts about manned flight. Makes one realize how much is possible with the mind, hand & eye.

Bolt

Yes, it's definitely a kid's movie, but I had more fun than I expected seeing Disney's Bolt in 3-D on Tuesday evening. It's got cute characters & a great story that might even say something about the gap between one's self-perception & the reality.

The movie opens with a complex reflection in a store window that gradually becomes transparent to reveal the space inside. The movie is a showcase of these types of elaborate setting & lighting effects. In almost every scene I would spot some detail & be thinking, "Someone had to program that..."

It's also full of great character animation. Everyone's favorite character must be Rhino, the gung-ho hamster, rolling around in his ball, whose dialog is mostly made up of bad movie cliches ("It's a good day to die!"). There's even plenty of life in the realistically designed pigeons & the cartoonish movie studio staff. Actually, the pigeons provide hilarious spot-on parodies of New York, L.A. & Mid-West personalities.

I'm rarely up on the latest movies, so I was surprised by how many previews there were for animated films coming up in the next 6 months:

• The Tale of Despereaux (Universal)
• Ice Age 3 (Blue Sky)
• Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks)
• Coraline (Laika) -- The art looks really interesting, kind of like Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas.
• Up (Pixar)

Origami at MOCA

On Tuesday I visited the Museum of Craft & Folk Art to check out a few more astonishing examples of origami by Robert Lang & Linda Mihara. Their pieces are part of a small exhibition of paper art called The Shape of Things: Paper Traditions and Transformations. The Lang portion includes a diagram of a crease pattern & an example of an intermediate folding stage, but I still don't see how the final product, an exquisite dragonfly, is achieved. Mihara is represented by some of her spheres of interconnected cranes. I've seen instructions on how to create connected cranes, but it's a mystery to me how Mihara gets the cranes to join back on themselves to form 3-dimensional shapes.

Hauschka at Hotel Utah

This is not an event I would have considered attending on my own, so I'm thankful to a friend for inviting me to tag along. I'm unhip enough never to have been to the Hotel Utah, so it was an experience just to get my wrist stamped, to avoid stepping on the dog in the bar, & to catch the attention of the preoccupied bartenders. For once I can say that I was not one of the younger members of the crowd.

The show itself was a mixed bag, offering different types of performers & styles but not making up a cohesive evening of music. It was made even more bizarre by the surprise appearance of violin virtuoso Hilary Hahn, who is doing Tchaikovsky with the Symphony this week.

The line-up started with chamber works performed by musicians from the Magik*Magik Orchestra. Violinist Gloria Justen performed 3 of her own solo compositions. Each piece has a distinct character & allows the soloist to do a certain amount of showing off. Her performance also incorporated electronic effects. An oboe duo performed Ecstatic Dances (originally for 2 flutes) by the Australian composer Ross Edwards. The pieces are meant to evoke the natural landscape of Australia. They make extensive use of musical echoes. A guitar & flute duo performed a Terry Riley elegy called Francesco in Paraiso.

Next up was a lanky guitarist/singer/song-writer called Tom Brosseau who did about half a dozen songs. I have to admit that I couldn't tune into what he was doing, except to notice that all his songs rhyme. There seemed to be a heavy dose of irony going on, but I couldn't be sure. Hilary Hahn made her 1st appearance at this point, accompanying him tentatively.

Ms. Hahn then performed 2 solos. I had never heard her play before, & I almost fell over when she announced she would play Ernst's version of Schubert's Erlkönig. She has a super-clean technique, yet plays with an understated virtuosity. She is also young & cute, & I'll probably never see her so close up again. When she weirdly lost her place in the Ernst, she simply stopped, announced that the piece is not supposed to end that way, then started back on the right track. She followed this with a contrasting slow movement from an Ysaÿe sonata. At this moment one realized how delicate classical music is in performance. Noises coming from the bar easily & careless crushed the still & quiet mood she was trying to create.

Mr. Brousseau, perhaps unwisely, followed Ms. Hahn with a few more of his songs. Hauschka joined him on the piano for one song, as a way to make a transition to the final portion of the show, I suppose.

The show ended with Hauschka playing a set of his own compositions on the prepared piano. He was accompanied on several of them by an ensemble of 2 cellos, 2 violins & 2 oboes, again from the Magik*Magik orchestra. Ms. Hahn joined the ensemble for the final improvisatory number. Apparently Hauschka has his own band, but he was not able to bring them over from Germany.

Hauschka used an upright piano with the front removed & various items duct taped to the strings & soundboard. Otherwise, he played it liked a normal piano. The primary effect was to dampen the instrument, making it sound like a clavichord or an old saloon piano. I was disappointed not to witness any other extended piano techniques. I still remember what fun it was to see Marino Formenti pick up a hammer & use it on a piano.

Hauschka's music is minimalist in style. It's very friendly, with simple ideas that are pleasant to listen to. Development occurs through the repetition of motives. There is something genuine & sweet about both the music & the performer. Hauschka, speaking fine English, acknowledged his cousin in the audience, who had come all the way from their small home town of Ferndorf to see him. Hauschka also expressed his hope to talk with some of us afterward over a beer. & he really meant it.

I do have one big complaint to make about the show. The venue is really tiny, but for some reason the concert was still amplified. This makes no sense to me. Electronic amplification puts an extra layer of technology between the performer & the audience. Though making things louder, it results in the loss of detail. I think there were a lot of things I did not hear because of the unnecessary amplification. Ms. Hahn was the only performer who asked that her mic be cut, & I was so grateful.