WHO: Spektral Quartet WHAT: New works by Sky Macklay, David Reminick, and Chris Fisher-Lochhead, plus a Haydn quartet RELEASED: January 2016 LABEL: Sono Luminus
Challenge: I'm going to write this post before my oxtails come out of the pressure cooker in half an hour. For those of you who care: onions, garlic, stock, and red wine (a little bit for the oxtails, a little bit for me 😉). That's it.
Classical music is too damn serious. Have you ever dropped your program during a piece? People will literally look at you as if they want to throw you off a bridge.
Classical music hasn't always been so serious -- you can thank Richard Wagner for that -- but rarely is it overtly funny (barring opera buffa, of course). Haydn had his moments, even Mozart and Beethoven stepped into parody-land once in awhile.
For this album, The Spektral Quartet asked three composers to try their hands at "funny music" with wildly different results. Sky Macklay composed a piece that consists entirely of cadences -- Many Many Cadences as the title so creatively describes. The cadence, of course, functions as a tonal stabilizer. Macklay forces the quartet to hop between cadences with such speed that any sense of stability is lost, even though there is theoretically a "stabilization" every few seconds.
David Reminick chose absurdist poetry as his starting point; The Ancestral Mousetrap requires the quartet to sing a libretto by poet Russell Edson. They sing very well, proving my theory that instrumentalists are sometimes better singers than singers. One of the members sounds like Elvis Costello -- whoever does the bulk of the singing on the 4th movement.
The final premiere on the album, Chris Fisher-Lochhead's Hack, uses the instruments of the quartet to model the sounds produced by standup comedians during their routines. My linguist brain was intrigued. On the album, it doesn't evoke human speech so much, but it's so cool when they map the composition over the comedian's bit. Either way, cool piece.
And then in the middle of all this fun new music came the Haydn "Joke" quartet. I've played it. It's funny. But also, I kind of wish they had commissioned another new piece? I'm not exactly complaining, I'm always in favor of a good performance of a good Haydn quartet. But it also seemed a touch out of place.
Anyway, great album. Go listen. My oxtails are calling.
Woman and "Man" (PC: longtime Kinhaven photographer Rob Davidson)
WHO: Kirsten Sollek, contralto; Daniel Moody, countertenor; Christopher Dylan Herbert, baritone; JACK Quartet; Rachel Dickstein, director; Daniela Candillari, music director WHAT: HANNAH LASH Desire (world premiere) WHERE: Miller Theatre @ Columbia WHEN: October 16, 2019 at 8:00pm
I've been on the board of Yale's undergrad opera company for a couple years now, and I really truly love it. But when programming season comes around, we often hit trouble. There are only so many operas that are a) small enough that they can fit into one of the tiny theaters set aside for student use and b) fit our personnel (see: The Great Tenor Drought of 2017).
So we often end up with operas in one of three categories:
court-commissioned Baroque operas that we can pull off with a combined cast and orchestra of 10 people
edgy 20th-century chamber operas, often psychological thrillers or horror operas
scaled-down productions of classic operas
And I love all that we do. But the thing is...sometimes, it feels like composers always assume that every opera company in existence has infinite money and resources. And increasingly, that is not the case. There's a space in the market for new operas which are compact, minimal, and relevant.
JACK x JACKson Pollock (PC: Rob Davidson)
Luckily, Columbia has identified that void in the repertoire, and is filling it steadily, year by year, with their Chamber Opera Commissioning Initiative. Established in 2017, Desire is their second project; their first show, Missy Mazzoli's Proving Up, met great critical success when it premiered last year. But Columbia has had a long history with chamber opera, premiering works of Britten and Virgil Thomson in the 1940's; more recently, they staged U.S. premieres of works by Olga Neuwirth and Iannis Xenakis.
Unlike much of the modern opera I've seen last year (sorry to @ you again, Chunky, but it was bound to happen sooner or later), Desire didn't feel like it had an overwhelming number of moving parts. The plot was straightforward, if cryptic; the movement onstage was slow and deliberate; it felt weirdly comfortable in the best of all possible ways. This opera seemed to strive towards profundity rather than outright experimentalism, a goal which it met with flying colors.
All of the motion that was taken out of the staging was siphoned into the complex string-quartet score. There was never a moment when Hannah Lash left the room unfilled, whether by scuttling exchanges, insane leaping figures (yes, I saw that time when the cellist had to leap a full foot and a half up his fingerboard), or lilting nods to the passion-waltzes of high romantic opera.
In isolation, the pacing of the libretto (written by the composer) remained largely the same throughout -- the sentence length, structure, and syntax barely varied throughout. But Lash's plain words were brought to life by the virtuosic vocal lines; the composer altered the rhythmic elements of the music to impart a broad emotional palette into the text. In a way, it was reverse text painting: the music seemed to determine the meaning of the text, rather than vice versa.
The three-person cast was headed by contralto Kirsten Sollek as a woman who existed in two worlds: a dark gray bedroom and a shimmering mystery-garden. Though contraltos are rarely main characters, here it seemed right, her rich, chesty mid-range nestling squarely between the shrill countertenor of the garden inhabitant (designated in the program as a man, but his costume suggesting, in the wise words of my date, "more of an origami Transformer") and the concerned baritone of the woman's husband.
The final showdown (PC: Rob Davidson)
Daniel Moody's voice was exactly what I wanted out of a new-music countertenor, bright and full of forward-propelling vibrato. Christopher Dylan Herbert (see my review of him from this summer) filled his sweet voice with a surging sense of bewilderment and discomfort. And the seemingly-superhuman JACK Quartet....I simply don't think there are words. The amount of collective brainpower, acuity, and passion they bring to these treacherous new scores never fails to amaze. And yet, through the complex ebbs and flows of the music, they always maintain the most incredible sense of calm, as if they are incapable of making a mistake.
This production was genius. I can only hope it comes back around during my lifetime. Any regional new music ensemble would (or at least should) jump at the chance to stage this show -- I know I'd make the trek to see it again.
Is this selfie terrible? Yes. Does it have (most) of Dashon Burton it it? Also yes.
Also, first person to comment "Nice glasses," gets a kick in the shins.
(left to right: baroque cellist Alice Robbins; Dashon Burton; soprano Michele Kennedy; a fraction of my face)
This is going to be really quick because I'm putting off a problem set that I haven't started (eek!) which is due tomorrow (double eek!).
Remember prisoner of the state (concert 11 of 50 from this summer)? Remember how I mentioned that my job got me into a rehearsal meant for "classical music influencers"? Well, I didn't mention that it was a rehearsal where the covers were singing instead of the main cast. And Eric Owens's cover was Yale grad and Roomful of Teeth member Dashon Burton.
Frankly, I thought he was as good as Owens, if not better. I got to tell him that tonight. And now he thinks I'm an influencer because I was at that rehearsal. So what the hell, let's keep up the façade.
Anyway, tonight the nascent Kaleidoscope vocal octet (nonet, actually, because one of their members was missing) had their second performance ever. I've mentioned a few of the singers here before, most notably Enrico Lagasca, the bass over whom I fawned in concert #13's Cavalieri. Plus Grammy-winning tenor Karim Sulayman, fantastic countertenor Reginald Mobley, early soprano (and my voice teacher because I'm the luckiest person EVER) Sherezade Panthaki, the list goes on, all-star after all-star. Their mission is to celebrate diversity in the classical music world.
Kaleidoscope did a workshop-concert, so they only sang for about 20 minutes. Bach, Caroline Shaw (*sigh*), and a premiere by absent member Jonathan Woody.
But from those 20 minutes, I can safely say they're going to be big. Like, really big. Music with a mission is more powerful, more important, more relatable. And Kaleidoscope isn't just people who can sing. It's people who can articulate a noble cause through music.
They don't have any recordings -- this is only their second concert, after all -- but keep an eye (and an ear) out. This won't be the last you hear of Kaleidoscope.
WHO: New York City Opera WHAT:Stonewall, music by Iain Bell, libretto by Mark Campbell WHERE: Rose Theater @ Jazz at Lincoln Center WHEN: June 22, 2019 at 2:00pm
I am so glad that the NY City Opera decided that this project needed to be a part of their season. It's almost like they picked up the slack for all of the organizations whose seasons had already ended. And, from what I gather, this wasn't a Stonewall50 one-off -- I think the City Opera has a pride concert every year (at least there was one last year and there will be one next year).
I went into Stonewall with high hopes, and in some ways, those hopes were wholly fulfilled. The cast was, for the most part, absolutely stellar in both acting and singing. Marc Heller's police chief in particular stood out from the rest, his shrill, yet full Puccini tenor piercing above the percussive mumblings of the police force. As recently-fired teacher Carlos, Brian James Meyer's Spanish rolled off the tongue just as easily as his English, all encased in a sweet, yet fiery baritone. Lisa Chavez was perfectly cast as butch-in-charge Maggie; her agile mezzo seemed incongruous at times, but it was eminently clear that was on purpose.
On the whole, the production, while minimalistic, was stunning. Colored LED lights were hung on the perimeter of the set wall seemingly willy-nilly, both setting the mood and casting an ominous glow on the characters themselves. A few upstage benches created a leveling system that made the chaos that ensued a bit more organized. Choreographer Leonard Foglia executed a complicated vision with military accuracy, both in the dance breaks and the chaos that ensued. The orchestra, conducted by Hartford Symphony music director Carolyn Kuan, also played beautifully, especially considering that the score was in a more "musical theater" style that classical musicians often fail to take seriously.
An early preview
But while the performances and production were praiseworthy, parts of the opera were rife with glaring missteps.
One thing that always strikes me about a Mozart, or Verdi, or even a Strauss libretto is that there's a clear line between what a character says and what a character thinks. Something is left to the imagination -- not everything is said straight out, some plot points are implied, and it's up to the audience how to interpret that. Every person gets something different out of the opera.
Mark Campbell’s libretto tramples that line with reckless abandon. The characters themselves have no character because the libretto forces them to say every word that comes through their head — no filter at all. The result is an ineffective, crowded libretto that tells rather than shows, and characters who end up as personality-less, word-spewing automatons. This was especially glaring in the opening section of the opera, where each role got a five-minute arietta to explain their situation; some were more effectively written than others (Carlos’s firing was well-staged), but any monologue was wordy and altogether too long. It feels as if Campbell wanted to produce identical experiences for every member of the audience, which is not a tenable modus operandi for an opera
And that’s not even touching the issue of stereotypy — it was as if the composer and librettist painted caricatures of every type of LGBTQ+ person that would have existed at the time. And that’s exactly what the LGBTQ+ community has been trying to avoid in the recent past.
So overall, A+ for the nod to Stonewall's 50th anniversary and the pride month. A+ for the performances. A+ for the idea. A+ for the set, and costumes, and lighting.
Welcome to Classical Music Geek's Big Gay Classical Weekend! I saw three concerts last weekend, and only realized after the fact that all of them were queer-themed. And besides which, I'm not going to get to use the hashtag #MyBigGayClassicalWeekend again until they invent time travel to ancient Rome -- as the Romans say, carpe diem.
My lovely date for this concert turned up sick, and I was having some reservations about hiking all the way out to Park Slope to go to a concert alone. Usually, I'm totally fine with going to concerts alone -- it's almost meditative, I find -- but this concert was attached to a mixer and mixing is awkward. Have I mentioned that I'm awkward?
But then my dad made a good point: at a queer-themed chamber music concert, there was practically a 100% chance that I would run into someone I know. Fair enough. I decided to go.
Lo and behold, as soon as I mounted the stairs I ran into someone with whom I went to music camp in 2010 -- we hadn't seen each other since 2013 or so. Absolutely crazy.
The only thing we could think to do after not seeing each other for more
than six years was to take a selfie. Have I mentioned I'm awkward?
And then two minutes later, I heard a familiar voice behind me. Not in the friend's-voice kind of way -- a famous voice. I turn around to queer icon, composer, and youngest-woman-to-ever-win-a-Pulitzer Caroline Shaw, grabbing a drink and chatting with the bartender. Turns out, she was best friends with everyone there.
I did my best to play it cool, even though I really REALLY wanted to accost Caroline Shaw and pathetically fangirl like a 12-year-old-girl meeting One Direction for the first time (dated reference? I don't know, I haven't been up to date on pop culture since my grade's bar mitzvah era). In the end, I chickened out of talking to her at all, even though I had an easy conversation starter because we went to the same music camp when we were younger (about 10 years apart of course) -- Caroline, if you're reading this, the last line of your bio gets me every time. <3 <3 Kinhaven forever
So at this point, I'm just standing there like a bump on a log -- it's not like I KNEW anyone (I didn't officially reunite with my music camp friend until intermission). I must have looked panicked or something, because one of the organizers, soprano Danielle Buonaiuto stormed past, on their way to the drinks table, and then they stopped. In their tracks. And turned around. And started a conversation with me as if they dealt with awkward 20-somethings all day, every day.
Have I mentioned I'm awkward?
Already giddy at Danielle's random act of kindness, I went into the concert room and geared up for what turned out to be one of the best nights of music I've seen this summer.
The program consisted of an eclectic mix of "whatever we feel like." New music, old music, big music, small music, it was just all, in some way or another, LGBTQ+ related. And everything on the concert was tremendous -- so much so that, instead of the highlight reel I usually give right about now, I'm just going to run through a bit of everything.
Cellist and ChamberQUEER founder Andrew Yee's recompositions featured prominently on the program. First was a quilted pastiche of Caroline Shaw's greatest hits (coupled with quilted clips of people talking about their quilting habits -- get it?), followed later in the program by a couple of Schubert songs that Yee had arranged. Originally for four cellos, the songs were performed here by the ChamberQUEER founders in quartet (Buonaiuto, Yee, baritone Brian Mummert, and cellist Julia Biber). The arrangements perfectly preserved Schubert's harmonic framework while adding a quasi-madrigalistic intimacy that the customary voice-and-piano orchestration could never hope to parallel.
One of Andrew Yee's fawn-worthy Schubert arrangements -- I can't stop thinking about them
Alongside the recompositions stood a couple of more recent compositions. inti figgis-vizueta's charged string quartet love reacts only was impressive, but violist-composer-educator Jessica Meyer's song cycle Space, in Chains, written for viola and soprano after poetry by Laura Kasischke, stole the show. As Meyer so eloquently put it, "It's so nice to have this song cycle owned by someone. And Danielle [Buonaiuto] owns it." Buonaiuto's expert tone-coloring aided her comfortable acting to lend drama to even the most sparse moments of the piece; Meyer's writing explored every possible timbre that the duo could produce (it read a bit like the Holst violin-soprano songs, but on steroids). Oh, and she played her part beautifully as well.
And then for the odds and ends -- turns out most historians agree that Arcangelo Corelli was *probably* a closeted homosexual, so they threw one of his trio sonatas on the program. Handel and Haydn Society concertmaster and all-around badass Aisslinn Nosky played the first part (more on her in a week or so), joined by International Contemporary Ensemble member Jen Curtis, harpsichordist Kevin Devine, and Biber playing baroque cello. The interpretation was witty and whimsy, full of spontaneity and those little smirks that chamber musicians make to each other onstage. And then, Nosky, Curtis, Meyer, Yee, and Biber teamed up for British suffragette Ethel Smyth's string quintet. The piece was lovely, but more memorable was the tangible electricity that was running through the room. The energy was contagious.
At this point, I'd been wearing the same shit-eating grin for the entire concert. My face muscles started to seize up, but I couldn't stop smiling. Oh well, at least it was for a good cause.
And, naturally, what better way to end a pride concert than with a Pauline Oliveros audience-participatory piece? It's really been a trend this summer -- either this is part of NYC new music culture, or I'm just really lucky.
It was around this time that I decided I was going to grow a pair and talk to Caroline Shaw after the concert! It was around two minutes later that I decided that wasn't actually going to happen. My mother boo'd me when I told her that I chickened out. Have I mentioned I'm awkward?
This was another one of those concerts where I don't feel like I can do it justice in words. I've been to a lot of concerts this summer, guys. And I've been to a lot of concerts with a lot of young people in the audience, and I've been to a lot of concerts with a lot of queer people in the audience. But this concert? This concert made me feel like I found my people. When I left (instead of going out for drinks, because I'm 20½ and I have a conscience), my heart was full.
With any luck, the ChamberQUEER organizers and performers will be reading this -- I want to personally thank them for creating such an open and hospitable musical environment. I encourage each and every one of you to attend ChamberQUEER's community events during the year, and (hopefully!) their second season next summer.
And, just so that this post will show up next time she googles herself (we all do it, don't lie), I just wanted to say her name one more time: Caroline Shaw.
WHO: The Knights; Colin and Eric Jacobsen, directors; Kristina Nicole Miller, narrator and vocals; Nicholas Cords, viola; Alex Sopp, flute; Michael Atkinson, horn WHAT: C. JACOBSEN, E. JACOBSEN, KYLE SANNA Compositions after Walt Whitman; BRITTEN Lachrymae; LISA BIELAWA Fictional Migration; MENDELSSOHN Octet, Op. 20 WHERE: Temple Emanu-El WHEN: June 18, 2019, 7:00pm
"Don't fart."
That's all I can think when I sit in the audience of live-broadcast concerts. A cough is forgivable; a sneeze even more so. But if those WQXR microphones are poised just right, your toot could be the talk of the nine people who still listen to live concerts on the radio.
God, look at me. Potty humor, radio jokes, you'd think I grew up in the 2000's or something.
This concert was the opening of this year's Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, so named for the Naumburg Orchestral Shell in Central Park where they're usually played. However, 114 years of free orchestral concerts can take its toll, and the shell was in dire need of some TLC, so the concerts were moved for this year to the gorgeous (GORGEOUS) Temple Emanu-El on E 65th. Good thing, too -- it was rainy and disgusting while we were standing in the long, long line to get inside.
The Knights are one of the more active independent orchestras in New York City, the kind that starts with friends playing chamber music in someone's living room. This was their tenth consecutive appearance at the Naumburg series, and you could tell they felt right at home. This concert was a dual celebration: first and foremost, they were celebrating the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman's birth. However, they also managed to get their hands on a tremendous Amati viola which was celebrating its 400th birthday -- move over, Whitman!
The full WQXR broadcast from the other night, fart-free!
Though Kristina Nicole Miller was credited in the program as a "narrator," her singing was one of the highlights of the first half. Kyle Sanna's Whitman composition, after a section of Song of Myself, morphed into something of a Disney-meets-modernism situation -- very interesting indeed. Miller would have been right at home as a Belle or Ariel, but her clear understanding of the complex Whitman propelled her far ahead of any Disney aspiration.
Lisa Bielawa's piece took many a cue from composer and amateur ornithologist Olivier Messiaen, weaving birdsong in and out of the gossamer orchestral texture with impressive aptitude -- though Bielawa's birdsongs were not taken from real birds, they were just as convincing as any material Messiaen drew from. Flautist Alex Sopp channeled her inner avian as though she'd been doing it regularly all her life; hornist Michael Atkinson played similarly well, but the gorgeous (GORGEOUS) Temple Emanu-El's acoustics did him a disservice by swallowing him completely.
The Amati came out in the hands of violist Nicholas Cords for Britten's Lachrymae, a piece modeled after John Dowland's 17th-century consort work of the same name. Cords played ridiculously well, from what I could hear of him -- Emanu-El is harsh on all mid-range instruments, not just horns. Too often, modern reinterpretations of early pieces suffer from hypermodernization; Cords and The Knights, under the functional baton of Eric Jacobsen, infused the Lachrymae with almost as much Dowland as Britten.
As for the Mendelssohn -- well, it certainly did the job. Eric Jacobsen pulled out his cello and joined the lively octet with his brother (concertmaster Colin Jacobsen), Nicholas Cords (400-year-old Amati in his hands), and five others from the orchestra. It was great. It was everything you wanted from chamber music. By the time the ensemble played the final E-flat chord, I was fully convinced that a) they had been playing together as an octet for years, and that b) they were all best of friends. Whether either of those were true, who knows, but that's the kind of emotion they exuded, and let me tell you, I couldn't wipe the grin off my face for the rest of the evening.
Free concerts are always worth it, but that doesn't mean that some free concerts aren't better than others. The Knights have impressed once again that not all great music has to come at a great price; some organizations care more about serving their audiences than they do about turning a profit. All musical ensembles want to serve their communities to at least some extent. And I think the Naumburg series has refined that art down to a T.
Stay tuned for the next Naumburg concert on July 10: Venice Baroque Orchestra with Anna Fusek, recorder!
It specifically reminded me of one of those neon candy orange slices -- does that make me a terrible person?
WHO: Dalit Hadass Warshaw, composer and piano; Nancy Allen Lundy, soprano; Beth Greenberg, director WHAT:The Letters of Mademoiselle C., by Dalit Hadass Warshaw (world premiere) WHERE: Marc Scorca Hall at the National Opera Center WHEN: June 17, 2019 at 7:00pm
I am an opera nut. We have established this before.
You'd think I would have at least heard of a place called the National Opera Center. Where the organization OPERA AMERICA is based. But I hadn't. My date made fun of me for that one -- rightfully so.
Anyway, the NOC is on the sixth or seventh floor of your average Gramercy office building, above a couple bodegas and a payroll services shop. It looks like a pretty average office lobby until you step into the concert hall. I mean, no office space has a concert hall, but this is probably the weirdest venue I've been in so far. Imagine if you took an orange slice and modeled a concert hall after it -- sort of like if you sliced a cylinder and then sliced those slices in half lengthwise, and then put in a wood paneled floor and a stage and painted the walls blue. Weird.
But my date sent me the Facebook event attached to a message that said, "We're going to this." So it's not like I had much of a choice.
I suppose I should be glad that my friends know to forward me any and all concerts. But hey, I'm an ingrate. That's why I'm going into music criticism.
So, I'm terribly illiterate, and I had only heard the name Camille Claudel once or twice. From what I gathered from the program notes, the performance, and S2E1 of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, she was a sculptor who had an affair with Auguste Rodin and was subsequently committed to an asylum on dubious suspicions that she was mentally ill. That kind of story arc makes for a perfect song cycle, I will concede.
I think her primary instrument is theremin -- what a legend
The program started with three composers that would have been ringing in Claudel's ears: Germaine Tailleferre, Lili Boulanger, and finally a prelude of her dear friend Claude Debussy. Warshaw's performance was sound indeed -- it was almost invocative of jazz in the way that the individual lines were phrased in relation to one another. The product was an interesting interpretation that traded absolute readings of dynamics in favor of a sense of relativity, which was, in my opinion, a novel and refreshing.
And then, as the Debussy ended, soprano Nancy Allen Lundy, as the disheveled Claudel, slowly and trepidly walked down the center aisle of the audience. Onstage were a couple of chairs and a shawl; director Beth Greenberg made the most of a sparse staging.
The music itself was tremendous -- imagine all of the rhythmic uncertainty of Schoenberg or Webern, but with a color palette similar to that of Debussy and ilk. Warshaw played beautifully, not just because it was her piece; she clearly had a stylistic goal in mind, and she executed it beautifully. One would have thought the music emerged straight from a table at Les Deux Magots or another Parisian intellectual haunt.
Lundy's performance had its ups and downs. Her climactic high notes were right on target, impassioned and drenched in a thick coating of manic sorrow. Most of her tessitura, though, was underwhelming; her tone was breathy, and her diction was barely there. One of the movements had a refrain that repeated the word "chisel", which invariably came out as "shizzle" or "jizzle."
Because of the diction issues and the lack of subtitles, I don't think I got as much out of this premiere as I could have. The piece was obviously very well thought-out, and I'd like to see it performed again once it's had the opportunity to go through some stages of performance workshopping -- hopefully, the performers will tour it and give it the chance it really deserves.
West Village churches: fighting homophobia one LGBTQ+ themed concert at a time
WHO: confluss (Amber Evans, soprano & Samuel Zagnit, bass) and Spark Duo (Kate Amrine, trumpet & Ford Fourqurean, clarinet) WHAT: a concert in honor of Pride Month WHERE: Saint John's in the Village WHEN: June 13, 2019 at 7:30pm
I think I said it once in passing, but I'll say it again, louder this time:
HappyPrideMonth!!!!!!!
I love love LOVE being a classical music geek in NYC during pride time. When you go to other cities, their "pride month concerts" center around the composers who lived in a time when being LGBTQ+ was taboo. A lot of Tchaikovsky, a lot of Poulenc, some Britten if you're lucky. Gotta keep those tickets sales high with the *older demographic*.
Thank god NYC has a burgeoning new music scene, because I think I'd die if I only heard Tchaikovsky throughout the entire month of June.
The classical music pride celebration hasn't been spearheaded by any of the larger ensembles in NYC -- their social media accounts show their support, but something about a program of Mahler and Bruckner doesn't scream queer (*ahem* MET ORCHESTRA). So, it's up to the smaller venues to program for the special season.
Saint John's in the Village has a whole series of LGBTQ+ themed concerts, from a 1920s portrait of "Le gai Paris" to lecture-concerts on the role of gay culture in worldwide popular music. This concert featured exclusively works by LGBTQ+ composers, many of which were commissioned by the two ensembles.
The program ran the gamut from (relatively) traditional to (totally) experimental, and some pieces fell off that spectrum entirely. Those included a piece inspired by punk rock legend Kathleen Hanna; a piece, performed by both confluss and Spark, in which the instrumentalists would shout random letters, each of which was associated with an instrumental sound (a musical interpretation of synesthesia, according to the composer); and a series of Sonic Meditations by the late Pauline Oliveros (one of which was interactive -- what is it with me and inadvertently walking into audience participation situations???).
The highlights of the program were far and away the compositions by confluss bassist Sam Zagnit. His diverse background shone brightly throughout, especially in excerpts of his long-form song-cycle-quintet catalogues, whose soprano part contains a theatrical breakdown that could be excerpted straight from a 1960s sitcom (or Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, pick your poison). Soprano Amber Evans proved she is as much actress as singer, which is saying something considering she's one hell of a singer. Zagnit seemed precisely in his element as an aesthetically stoic, but musically expressive foil to the hilarity that ensued from the singer's side.
Spark Duo's program was more subtle than that full-blown episode, though no less interesting. Each player had a solo -- clarinetist Ford Fourqurean played a piece entitled Rhapsody and Groove, which he described as "rhapsodic...then groovy," which seemed rather reductive at first but turned out to be the only apt description for the piece. Trumpeter Kate Amrine's solo made more of a statement in the form of a piece for trumpet and video reel entitled Thoughts and Prayers, which interspersed music with both live and recorded calls to action in the wake of gun violence. Rounding out their half of the program was another Zagnit premiere, this time in a more postmodern vein, but equally enjoyable.
There is a reason why this performance is on the channel "Famous musicians you haven't heard of yet"
If you're not sniffing out these tiny little new music concerts in NYC, then you're doing it wrong. People often moan and groan about how classical music is dying. Wake up and smell the roses: if you want classical music to live on and gain back some of that precious pre-WWII cultural relevance, stop complaining and start supporting the innovators of the future.
"In america, I place my ring on your c*ck where it belongs"
-- Essex Hemphill, from American Wedding
Like, how am I supposed to react to that? Especially when that phrase repeats for ten minutes straight?
When I realized that Dessner's Triptych was a "new way" of looking at the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, I knew I was in for some graphic material. But oddly enough, it didn't bother me. The graphic nature was attenuated by the music that accompanied -- the experience altogether read less as glorification of sexuality and more as an earnest snapshot of the life of another.
Roomful of Teeth occupies a singular niche in the music world: they are the crossover of all types of music. A bold statement, I know, but if you listen closely they really do have a twinge of just about any style you can think of. In this performance alone, they were all over the map: early music (side bar: how amazing would it be if Roomful of Teeth did Monteverdi????), gospel, rock and roll, contemporary classical, spoken word, you name it.
Does someone want to explain to me why Brooklyn has all the best
concert venues? Look at those chandeliers!
And because Roomful of Teeth is a group of young people at the top of their field, they collaborate with a bunch of other young people at the top of their fields. Accompanying Roomful's always impeccable singing were a chamber orchestra conducted by Roomful founder and music director Brad Wells and beautiful lights, set, and video by leading designers in the avant-garde theater world.
A couple of auxiliary vocal soloists joined Roomful of Teeth for this performance. Mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran walked the line between opera and gospel perfectly, her singing passionate and soulful. But the tenor soloist, Isaiah Robinson, takes the cake for this performance. "Tenor" doesn't even begin to describe what he is. I think he's gospel trained, but imagine if you took your average gospel tenor and then eliminated any trace of shouting in the higher registers. He was reaching D's, E's, even an F and a G at one point without any trouble or effort -- I know sopranos who can't do that.
This is one of those pieces that I would advise against listening to if it's ever recorded -- the piece is nothing without the full experience. Without the accompanying video, the stark choreography (complete with iPad-music stands on wheels), the sometimes-blinding lighting design, you would lose much of the effect. I think they're continuing to tour the piece for the next couple months -- catch it if you can!
