American Mavericks Finale

Today was the final concert of the American Mavericks Festival in Ann Arbor. The San Francisco Symphony and crew has shipped of for NYC for the final leg of performances.

Overall, I really enjoyed the festival. The programs were exciting, a great balance of "older" maverick works (Ives, Cage, Varese) and brand-new pieces (Bates, Adams, Monk). Some of the pieces were "easier" on the audiences than others, some of the new pieces were disappointing, but it was awesome to experience this festival. Click here for the full listing of the Ann Arbor series.

Maverick Highlights:

Concert 1:
I wrote a whole post on this one. I really dug the Mason Bates piece, but the whole program was great.

Concert 2:
Cage's Song Books induced booing from a member of the audience. It was more of a piece of performance art that just a work of music. I can't really do the piece justice in words, so let's just say that Micheal Tilson Thomas made a smoothie onstage. Literally. It was quite an experience.

The 45-minute intermission was ridiculous. I realize that the Cage had a huge set to tear down, but it should have been better organized and the orchestra should not have taken 15 minutes to get situated. Please be considerate of your audience.

The overall consensus for the John Adams commission Absolute Jest was that it was not his best. It was meant to be a piece of Beethoven quotations, but it lost focus about two-thirds of the way through. (Corey is a big fan of Adams, and he was disappointed in the piece.)

Concert 3:
Three pieces by three really interesting dudes. MTT gave a brief description of each before the piece was performed. In short, Ruggles was a small guy with a huge temper, Feldman was a huge guy with a quiet demeanor, and Ives had a great sense of humor. I particularly love Ives' sense of humor in his music. A Concord Symphony plays with Beethoven's 5th, and throws in a whole bunch of other styles, like hymn, ragtime and march. Your local library should have a recording of this, and I highly recommend it.
Concert 4:
All chamber works performed by members of the SF Symphony. My favorite piece was Lukas Foss' Echoi, a heavily improvised piece for piano, cello, clarinet, and percussion. However, the standout piece was Jacob's Room, a monodrama taken from Morton Subotnick's opera of the same name. The piece calls for a single vocalist to play all of the parts and narrate the story. The story was about a boy during the holocaust. The vocalist used extended techniques to add drama and characterize the emotions of the beaten mother and frightened child.

Corey and I feel very lucky to live in a place where we have the opportunity to attend concerts like this. We came from a town where new music was not performed very much, so we try to go to as many concerts as we can. A friend of mine, who is the wife of one of Corey's colleagues, once commented on how "good" I am about attending concerts. She says she would like to go to more but lacks motivation. My response was that the novelty may soon wear off for me, and I will stop attending so much, but I hope not.