From the Canyons to the What?

On Sunday Corey and I attended a performance of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra sponsored by the University Musical Society. The program was a single piece: Olivier Messiaen's "From the Canyons to the Stars..."

First, a little background: Messiaen (French, 1098-1992) wrote this piece as the result of a comission to commemorate the 200th anniversary of American independence. He wasn't crazy about cities, so the piece is mostly inspired by the red-rock formations in Utah. He was also deeply spiritual which is said to be reflected in his work.

Corey loves this piece and we were really excited to attend a live performance by a professional orchestra. The Hamburg Symphony had specially commissioned a film to go along with their performance. Great, right? Artistic collaboration, a visual representation of this ethereal piece...I'm still riding a high from Einstein on the Beach, so this multimedia experience should be more brain-candy, right?

The performance was great. The piece is amazing and the soloists were incredible. The piece heavily features solo piano, almost to the point of being a concerto, and Francesco Tristano played with such sensitivity, and flowed perfectly from a part of the orchestra to becoming the orchestra as the movements changed. I wish I had more to say about the music, but the film was so GD distracting that I couldn't fully concentrate on it.

Now, I really did try to give the film a chance, I really did want to like it; but in the end, the emperor had no clothes. It's difficult to describe in words, but at the risk of sounding pedestrian, it was boring and had nothing to do with the music. It contained just about every "art film" cliche I (in my limited knowledge) can think of: midgets, old guys, shots of birds in a landfill, people in animal masks, footage of people eating followed by footage of the empty table, a car fire, the same group of people walking through various fields, there were even Blair Witch-style stick figures in a forest with mounted cow skulls.

So during the concert I was bored. (The way my brain is wired, it's difficult for me to tune out the visual in favor of sounds, and if I shut my eyes, I will start to doze off.) It was not until after, when I had a chance to read the program notes, that I became downright pissed.

(The program notes I am about to quote were written by Daniel Kuhnel. The film itself was by Daniel Landau.)

"Clearly Messiean's 100-minute composition is strong enough to be heard purely as a piece of music. However, the intellectual complexity of the work (a part of its beauty) is not fully apparent through listening alone."

Excuse me? This is what I hear: this piece is good, but it's SO much better with this thing we added. One couldn't possibly understand this piece without being visually spoon-fed. (Which might be okay, if the content of the film had ANYTHING to do with the content of this heavily programmatic piece.) It's not as if people can't research the composer and the piece and do a little reading before the show.

"The 12 movements of the music serve as a key to Landau's interpretation of Messiaen's work. The film is a visual narrative in which a metaphoric voyage of discovery unfolds..."

If someone can explain to me the logic behind a movement called "The orioles" being represented by the floating corpse of a pregnant woman, I will apologize for this whole post.

"The opening scenes were filmed at the Dead Sea...where the main characters embark on a journey of survival taking the audience from the breath-taking mountain landscapes of the Judean desert to heavily industrialized modern Europe."

Interesting choices to represent a piece written about specific national parks in America which are mentioned by name in the titles of the FREAKING movements.

That said, I might not hate the film if I saw it independently of the piece. It's like how I say that good music does what it sets out to do, everything else is just a matter of taste. The same can be said of any art form. I honestly believe that this film fails to be a adequate visual representation of Messiaen's work. I felt like I was witnessing two completely different works of art happening simultaneously, which, after seeing Einstein (artistic collaboration at its very best) was a HUGE let-down.

Opera Date 2: Einstein on the Beach

Corey and I were lucky enough to get tickets for Einstein on the Beach this past weekend. For those unaware, it is a defining work of avant-garde opera originally produced in 1976. Since then, there have only been two other short runs of the show in New York in '84 and '92. This incarnation was overseen by the original designer, Robert Wilson, composer, Phillip Glass, and choreographed by original featured dancer, Lucinda Childs. The opera is meant to be abstract, with no explicit narrative. Wilson compared it to the operatic equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting.

Corey is a huge fan of Phillip Glass, so this show had been on his radar for months, but as it drew nearer, we, and the city of Ann Arbor, learned just how big of a deal this performance was. This was the first time this show had been preformed in the U.S. outside of New York. Due to production costs and the length of the piece (4.5 hours) the runs are very short, most lasting only a weekend before picking up to tour Europe.

The previous weekend, we attended a lecture by Wilson, Glass and Childs to give us more background on the piece. The big take away for me was the idea that this was a very deliberate piece. Even though it lasted 4.5 hours, these artists were meticulous with every detail of this show. Every artistic choice was made to complement the whole, never would one medium overpower another.

After hearing all the hype for so long, I was expecting a life-changing experience, and I got one, just not in the way I thought I would. I expected this big, mind-blowing production, but very early on I realized that was not the spirit of the show. For example, the first scene is twenty minutes of three slowly repeating notes while two actors move slowly to desks and remain seated in silence.

A big theme in the piece is the passage of time. It's 4.5 hours, so they have a lot to work with, and some scenes seem to go on forever; but every time I found myself losing interest, I remembered the lecture and how very particular the designers were. I would ask myself why it felt so long, and what was happening in that moment that made it necessary to suspend it. I think about traditional opera, and how a very long aria usually contains a very short idea that is suspended over several minutes because the idea/emotion is so important or intense ("I love her" "I'm going to kill myself" "I'm dying"). In almost every scene in EOTB, there is some set piece that indicates the passage of time, usually a clock (though not always spinning clockwise) or a moon going through its phases.

I was really surprised that I sat through the whole performance (with only a brief potty break). There is no intermission and it is expressed by the directors that the audience is allowed to come and go as they please. When I first heard that, I was prepared to "need" to get up and stretch or something, but I didn't. It was one of those things where, while it's happening it seems to take forever, but once it's over, you're like, "really? that didn't seem that long." My take-away from that, other than experiencing an amazing work of American opera theatre, will be that I will never again feel guilty for sitting through an America's Next Top Model marathon, for I sat through Einstein on the Beach in its entirety and liked it. I will not be ashamed of my reality TV guilty pleasures as long as I retain the ability to appreciate real art.

(For tour details, visit Pomegranate Arts, Inc.)

Etta James 1938-2012

Rest in peace Ms. James.

During Intermission...

Check out what I was up to during my blog hiatus. Before we moved to Michigan, I wrote for Volume One, a local arts and culture magazine in my college town. I still do and occasional story when a lead strikes my fancy. This story is about my dear friend Adam's new band. Check them out at www.mrsleeves.com. You can even download their debut album "Dismayed to Death?" for free! (Fun fact: Adam is the one playing the piano in my background picture.)

If you really like my writing ;), you can check out the archive of articles I've written for Volume One here.

Collage

On Saturday Corey and I attended the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance's Collage concert. It was 30 pieces in 2 hours, one right after the other, no pause for applause until the end. It was pretty cool.

The idea is to create a "collage" of music, juxtaposing styles and themes. There was even a scene from a play without any music. My personal favs were:

Samba Batucada (Traditional, percussion ensemble)
Amazing start to the show. A traditional samba full of energy, and even choreographed (kind of). I have much love for percussion pieces that are also visually entertaining.

Piaf Medley (Eric Sammut, solo marimba)
A medley of three songs by the iconic Edith Piaf. (sidebar: I highly recommend seeing La Vie en Rose if you haven't yet.)

Life with Harold from The Full Monty (David Yazbek, actors w/ rhythm section)
The girl playing Vicki was hilarious and SO good. I normally don't enjoy musical theatre written after the 60s, or over-the-top musical theatre actors, but this was an awesome exception.

Tremors from Trois Morceaux Moroses (Pierre Nezahualcoyotl Derycz, solo cello)
Spoiler Alert: I LOVE solo cello, and bonus, this was a student work!

The Great Train Race (Ian Clarke, solo flute)
This piece was amazing. It was really intense in the parts that conveyed the speed of the wheels and axles of the train, and haunting when the flute imitated the train's whistle. The staging intensified the piece even more. The flutist was front and center on stage with just a tight spot on her, the rest of the hall was completely dark. The reflections of the flute itself were whipping through the hall as she played. It was accidental magic.

Confutatis from Requiem (Verdi, Baritone and orchestra)
Great bari, great orchestra, classic piece.

Wonderland Duets (Raymond Luedeke, two tuba and narrator)
Poetry from Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland) over tuba duets. What's not to like?

Strike Up The Band (Gershwin Bros, jazz ensemble)
This concert was my first time hearing U of M's jazz ensemble. They were really good, but it made me miss hearing Corey play.

O Fortuna from Carmina Burana (Carl Orff, full choir and orchestra)
Yup. I know it's cliched, but I love it. It's kind of an inside joke. To get in on it, click here. (WARNING: You may never be able to listen to this piece with a straight face again.)

Can we talk!?

The recent cell phone alarm scandal at the New York Phil has caused me to channel my inner Joan Rivers: CAN WE TALK about this?

Long story short, some dude's iPhone kept going off during last week's performance of Mahler 9. (For the long version, go here.) His phone keeps ringing, and he refuses to turn it off until Alan Gilbert STOPS THE ORCHESTRA to call him out.

It blows my mind to think that this is still a problem, but I tend to be naive to the levels of rudeness to which people will stoop. Even thinking back on all the times I've been at or in a concert and a phone rang, I am still shocked every time. Even at the lecture I attended today someone's phone rang. REALLY?

Confession

So I have to admit that I'm a bit of a fraud. I've noticed that I'm not super-confident in my ability to write about music, and I realized it's because I don't READ nearly enough about music. So to go along with my resolution to blog more, I resolve to read twice as much. Here are some of the blogs contributing to my growth as a music writer:

1. Arts Beat, NYTimes.com

2. Music News, NPR

3. All Songs Considered, NPR

4. The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross (music critic for The New Yorker)

5. Nico Muhly, composer

Also, Corey is in this awesome class this semester that coincides with a new music festival put on by the San Francisco Orchestra and the spring season of concerts put on my the University Music Society. I plan to attend ALL of the concerts with him and report back. I am particularly excited to see the rarely performed opera Einstein on the Beach by Phillip Glass. (I have a feeling Corey will like it more than Faust.)

I'm Back!!!

I took a hiatus from blogging over the holidays as I was working two jobs. I barely had time to keep my apartment clean, let alone write, but I'm now ready to blog and roll! (Now that my home is liveable again.)

Personally, Corey and I are doing great. We took our first trip back to our hometown since moving to Michigan. We were gone for 10 days, mostly in La Crosse but visited friends in the Twin Cities and spent New Years Eve in Eau Claire. We had a nice lunch with his old Comp professor during the day on NYE and even though Corey and Dr. Wickman did most of the talking, I had a great time. It's cool to catch up and find out what's up with our old classmates.

I haven't been completely slacking off though. I wrote an article about my friend's band for the local arts magazine I used to write for when we lived in Eau Claire. (I will post the link when it's up on their web site. I'd post it here, but there may be copyright issues.)

Also, I've been invited to guest-blog for my friend's beauty blog (not the same friend with the band). So if you are interested in hearing my views on hair products and make-up, I will be posting those links too. :)