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February 2007
ATL Composers Feedback (Part 3)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
Earlier this month, we published two articles on the Atlanta composers scene, which is growing by fits, starts, stops and abundant local talent. Click here to read the first article, which concerned a group of lesser known composers who meet monthly. The second article is a survey of some of the better known composers to keep an ear on.
After the articles were published, several composers sent me their thoughts — part of an ongoing conversation within Atlanta’s classical music community. As always, readers are welcome to add their words — a quick thought or detailed commentary — in the “comments” field at the bottom of the blog post.
Here’s an email sent by Steve Everett, an excellent composer and Emory professor who was mentioned near the top of my survey article. With his permission, I’ve basically removed the “Dear Pierre” and “best regards, Steve” and printed his letter whole, adding some editorial emphasis. It’s a valuable socio-political and cultural essay….read on:
FROM STEVE EVERETT: “I have enjoyed the recent AJC articles about composers in Atlanta and illumination of the concerns involved in the creation and dissemination of their work. I have some thoughts that I wanted to share…Perhaps they can prompt some further discussion of the issues. I apologize for the rambling nature and length of the comments.
As you know, having been a composer and contemporary music performer and producer in Atlanta for over 25 years, this is an issue I frequently contemplate. I appreciate you bringing it into public discussion.
I recall a comment made in 1998 by a prominent San Francisco attorney who had just joined the board of directors for the San Francisco Contemporary Chamber Players after having served as chairman of the board for the SF Opera for many years. I asked him the reason behind his decision to now focus his philanthropic efforts toward new music. He said, ‘It is because of my concern for this city and the quality of life it provides. Having a healthy creative arts community, I have discovered, is vital for a city’s self-understanding of its social fabric and is often a catalyst for its social improvement. San Francisco will never truly be a great American city if it does not support an active community of creative artists and thinkers.’ In the spirit of those comments, the current AJC discussion you are encouraging is most welcome.
I would like to bring up a few issues surrounding the question of why, with so many talented composers, a new music scene in Atlanta has not been able to coalesce. It is relevant to remember how composers have historically functioned in Western societies and how that is different in post-modern America. The use of the term ‘composer’ and its assumptions may be creating some confusion regarding expectations and success. The career title of composer in the West generally evolved out of service to theological institutions and aristocratic patrons associated with monarchies in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. These groups provided the historical foundations for the fairly robust support of contemporary music now found in most major European cities. Similarly the American cities that developed from extensive European immigration during the 18th - 20th centuries have the oldest patronage of classical music in the country and also possess some of the most active new music scenes (New York, Boston, Chicago).
The consequence of a democratic, representative government and the constitutional separation of church and state in the US ensured that the two principal sources of patronage for music in Europe would not flourish particularly well here. As a result, American artistic support developed around new sources: individual contributions and private foundations, with most new music and compositional innovations supported at colleges and universities. This is a very different model from that in Europe, although they are increasingly adopting the American system as their public funds decrease. It is no accident that there is a high concentration of major research universities and conservatories in US cities where there is an active new music scene, i.e. Columbia, NYC, Yale, and Juilliard in New York; Harvard, NEC, Boston Conservatory, Boston College, Berklee, and Brandeis in Boston; Northwestern, University of Chicago, and Univ. of Illinois in Chicago; and other examples.
There are several major Atlanta universities with strong and developing music programs that employ full-time composers (Emory, Ga Tech, GSU, Kennesaw State, Clayton State, and others). Their ability to attract creative thinkers from other parts of the country (faculty and students) and provide a local resource for the development of Atlanta-based composers and artists is a significant factor for the growth of new music in the area.
Because of differences in our country from Europe, being a ‘composer’ is not necessarily limited to the art and liturgical traditions and the term is often applied to anyone who creates and designs sound for any particular use. This can include, but not limited to, numerous forms of media (film, TV, websites, video games) advertising and commercial applications, and entertainment and popular music. There are significant differences in the goals and approaches of composers who create hip-hop, orchestral repertoire, jazz, commercial jingles, experimental computer music, and interactive video games. In most cases, they are called and may refer to themselves all as composers. It should be no surprise that the communities developing around their work are equally as diverse and fractured.
With the increasing cultural diversity of the US and many residents coming from countries other than Western Europe (Latin America, India, East Asia), much of the music of these communities is drawn from aural traditions and folk music that often does not have clearly defined roles for composers. Think of Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘La Pasion segun San Marcos’ performed by the ASO last season, which contained Afro-Cuban drumming, samba, flamenco, conga, mambo, Gregorian chant, and capoeira. Some people questioned whether this work was more assembled than composed. A compositional methodology accepted in many vernacular settings created a bit of a challenge for some when utilized in the classical, symphonic domain.
So, given this historical preface, what does this tell us about the current situation for composition and creative thought in Atlanta? Atlanta has many thriving cultural and musical communities (African-American, Jewish, Hispanic, South and East Asian). There are a substantial number of successful industries in the area with large numbers of employees involved in media research and innovation. The colleges and universities offer a diversity of musical opportunities for study and participation.
We should also not overlook the importance of the dynamic musical presence of Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra programs. His work with the ASO promoting new compositions is critical to the continued growth of the entire musical community. As a comparison, one can observe the dramatic shift that has taken place in the quality and quantity of new music being performed and created in San Francisco and L.A. since Michael Tilson Thomas and Eka-Pekka Salonen became conductors in those cities…
Atlanta has many of the necessary ingredients for a thriving new music scene all ready in place. A robust new music scene often develops from a delicate balance of support from major artistic institutions, research universities, area residents involved in creative and exploratory work, and private and industry philanthropists who believe in the value of this activity. If any one of these participants is not present, the work of creative artists in Atlanta will remain somewhat hidden or ghettoized.
The increasng number of collaborations now taking place among those in the musical institutions, universities, and creative industries in the city is encouraging. It is also positive that there is a sense of inclusiveness towards those with creative interests. If enough small communities of new music and compositional activity begin to grow and flourish, at some point they will collectively merge and be perceived as a healthy Atlanta new music scene, one hopefully reflecting our unique history and culture identity and contributing to our social progress and understanding and to Atlanta’s national reputation as a vibrant, creative, and socially-conscious city.” — Steve Everett
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the Great Richard Goode at Spivey Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Pianist Richard Goode. Sunday at Spivey Hall in Morrow. www.spiveyhall.org.
Like an iPod on shuffle mode, some musicians skip from one historical era or artistic fashion to another — and play everything with a democratic leveling of the repertoire and an equally “authentic” spirit. In classical music, the names are famous: Placido Domingo is a singer who does it; Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist; Simon Rattle a conductor.
Then there’s American pianist Richard Goode, who nowadays seems positively eccentric for sticking to his core aesthetic choices.
A distinguished name on the international concert circuit and a regular visitor to Atlanta, Goode played an exacting, impassioned recital Sunday afternoon at Spivey Hall. And though his repertoire spanned two centuries and across what could have been a range of styles, he held his own approach throughout. You can’t help but love an artist who’s got a story and sticks with it.
He opened with Bach’s G Major Partita No. 5, crisply dispatched despite heavy pedaling. Goode’s goal seemed clear: maintain a singing line at all times, even as the weight of tone and his approach to ornaments sounded more classically elegant than Baroque. There are countless ways to play Bach, of course; for Goode it was Bach filtered through Mozart to get to Brahms.
Not by accident, that was also the recital’s trajectory. After the Bach partita he slipped into Mozart’s seductive A minor Rondo (K. 511), a 10-minute theme-and-variations where Goode’s understated brilliance and enriching virtuosity — never a glib moment — made this quirky music a small masterpiece.
With the set of Brahms’ seven Fantasies, Op. 116, he finally revealed the core of his being, the hub of his artistic sensibility that informs everything else he plays.
Except for the longish mane of silvery hair, Goode doesn’t look the part of a temperamental artiste. Indeed, in a long “New Yorker” profile in 1992 — reprinted in David Blum’s compulsively readable book “Quintet” — Goode’s mild and finicky off-stage temperament was compared with a librarian’s.
But in the Fantasies’ volatile movements — called capriccios — he was excitable yet controlled, a quiet man with a blazing inferno inside. His sense of balance, proportion and fury was unfiltered, almost frightening. Totally lost within the music, he hummed along, his face flushed, his eyes wild.
For the set’s introspective movements, like the E Major Intermezzo, he found gentle poetry, and let its long graceful tail reach its own twilight. Regular concert goers wait months, maybe years, between performances of this calibre, of this in-the-moment power and authority and vulnerability. (Spivey Hall, the region’s most perfect venue, gets credit for allowing this sort musical intimacy to be possible.)
Unlike the other composers on his program, in Brahms Goode was channeling for the composer, and while it lasted it felt like there could be no other interpretation possible.
Debussy’s Preludes, Book 2, reinforced that notion. Although his playing was loaded with emotion, in the opening “Brouillards” (“Fog”) he seemed more interested in architecture than sensuous atmosphere. In “Ondine” he shaped the music as a solid rather than a fluid — offering Debussy for people who love their Brahms.
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ASO, Emanuel Ax and Music of Rainbows
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra accomplished several of its short term goals Thursday in Symphony Hall.
Preparing for a week-long tour, the ASO and conductor Robert Spano assembled a pleasing, soft-core program that flatters the orchestra, offers an acclaimed recent work, includes the big names — Mozart! Rachmaninoff! Emanuel Ax! — that help sell tickets and won’t upset anyone’s digestion.
That it was magnificently played hits the final agenda point. One performance at a time, the ASO’s is trying to build itself a national audience.
The ASO didn’t commission Christopher Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body,” music of mild and quasi-mystical bearing. But Spano led the world premiere in Houston, in 2000. With the ASO, he recorded the 12-minute work for Telarc.
The piece even won a British classical-music popularity contest, and plenty of other ensembles have played it in recent years — notably regional American orchestras that shy away from any “modern”-sounding music.
Still, Spano and the ASO seem to own the definitive measure of the score. (They have commissioned and recorded another work from the Texas-born Theofanidis, “The Here and Now,” premiered a couple of seasons ago.)
Spano conducts “Rainbow Body” with a lighter touch than before, more attuned to the cosmic hum buried deep within the music. The introduction is a work of magic and many facets, like mirrors in a fun house, disorienting yet loaded with new ways of thinking. But about four minutes into it, the composer splashes big, wholesome tunes across the orchestra, and what seemed unique, private and special becomes conventional and academic and a little kitschy. The big wind-up to the finish is almost trite: not a summation or deepening of what came before but simply a finale that seems louder and heavier for its own sake. Born in 1967, Theofanidis is still a relative young composer but already an incredible craftsman. He’s possibly still finding his own voice.
Unlike the Theofanidis, Mozart’s E-flat Piano Concerto (No. 22) wasn’t ideally polished, although the woodwinds were wonderfully warm, almost sensuous, in the affecting andante movement — another of Mozart’s creations that somehow perfectly balances the clever and the sublime.
Unmistakably, the genuine rapport between piano soloist Ax and Spano’s accompaniment illuminated the concerto. To describe Ax’s playing — beautifully proportioned, elegant, mellow, inviting, at once “correct” and personal — doesn’t catch the pianist’s endearing way of communicating with an audience.
Without pandering or intellectualizing, Ax elevates the dialogue. We could all feel a little more sophisticated and urbane after his performance.
Rachmaninoff’s muscular, uneven, at times engrossing “Symphonic Dances” have become Spano’s calling card. He programmed them on his high-pressure New York Philharmonic debut in 2003, and he had them lovingly, exactingly prepared Thursday.
There are two more performances in Atlanta, followed by the ASO’s winter tour to the grand cities of Florida: six concerts in seven days beginning Monday at Miami’s new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts and with stops in Gainesville, Sarasota and Orlando.
West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center might not give the musicians the same heady thrill as Amsterdam’s venerable Concertgebouw, but tours typically improve an orchestra’s camaraderie and cohesion. Different venues and different acoustics mean the players can’t rely on their own comfortable listening habits.
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Atlanta Opera Chorus Invited to Paris
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
Here’s a press release sent late in the day by the Atlanta Opera. No details yet on who will fund this trip, who’s in the production team, or how some 30 Atlantans will manage to leave their jobs and families for six weeks…..read on:
FROM ATLANTA OPERA:
Atlanta Opera Chorus to join Paris’s Opera-Comique for a new production of Porgy and Bess
Atlanta - February 21, 2007 - The Atlanta Opera is pleased to announce that its esteemed chorus, under the direction of Walter Huff, will travel to Paris in May and June 2008 to participate in a new production of “Porgy and Bess” with the Opera-Comique.
A new administration is taking charge of the famed Opera-Comique - the company that hosted the world premieres of Bizet’s Carmen and Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande - in fall 2007. As a centerpiece of the new team’s first season it will present a new production of Gershwin’s classic work. According to incoming General Director Jerome Deschamps, “This new production of ‘Porgy and Bess’ will be an important event in Europe. The fact that the Atlanta Opera Chorus will be associated with this project makes us even more proud of it!”
The Atlanta Opera presented “Porgy and Bess” in November 2005. The success of these performances and especially that of the chorus was such that the incoming administration in Paris took notice and decided to import a chorus from the Atlanta Opera for the six-week long production.
The production will include ten performances at the Opera-Comique’s home, the beautiful Salle Favart in Paris, as well as three performances in Caen in Normandy, and one in Granada, Spain. The chorus will return to Europe in October 2008 for further performances of the production in Luxembourg.
Atlanta’s 2005 production used a chorus of 40; at these much smaller venues in Europe the production will use a chorus of only 30.
Chorus Master Walter Huff will soon be hearing auditions for the Paris production. Interested singers should submit a CD recording of their singing to the Atlanta Opera no later than April 1, 2007. Mr. Huff will then choose from these submissions whom he will hear in the auditions in April and May. Further information about the auditions may soon be found at www.atlantaopera.org.
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Local Tenor Wins at Met Audition Regionals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
This time last year, tenor Ryan Smith had come back from a three-year hiatus from singing and wowed the crowd at the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions at Spivey Hall — but he left the regionals empty handed.
Sunday afternoon, the 30-year-old Decatur resident opened with the same aria as last year, “E la solita storia del pastore” from Cilea’s “L’Arlesiana,” and walked away with top prize, advancing to the finals in New York City. The Morehouse graduate was accompanied by Atlanta Opera’s highly regarded chorusmaster Walter Huff.
“We’ve invested a lot in Ryan and we’re thrilled with his progress,” said Atlanta Opera general director Dennis Hanthorn. A member of the opera chorus, Smith had a small but noticible part of “Porgy and Bess” last season — as Crab Man — and sang a solo recital at the Woodruff Arts Center in the fall sponsored by the opera. “Ryan’s got talent and tenacity, and he makes an impression on people,” Hanthorns added. “He’s got the goods for a serious professional career.”
Unlike “American Idol,” Met auditions don’t insure household-name status and a record contract, although a few of today’s opera stars, from Jessye Norman to Renee Fleming, have passed through the competition.
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‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’ finds the Grail: Laugh a lot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
The message of “Monty Python’s Spamalot” is as sweet and affirming as a puppy licking your nose: Always look on the bright side of life.
Helping us look on the bright side, however, requires glitter codpieces, smiley-face umbrellas, a menorah, a can of Spam, a shovel, a rubber chicken and a malfunctioning chandelier — a tiny portion of the sublimely ridiculous prop list for this sublimely ridiculous musical.
Based on the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” “Spamalot” is a send-up of the King Arthur legend done as a send-up of a lavish Broadway musical.
It’s Camelot as Vegas, baby — Lerner and Lowbrow. Find the Grail, sure, but first, bring on the high-kicking chorus girls and a load of plague jokes in a mashup of Ye Olde clichés, modern sensibilities and poke-in-the-eye humor.
You don’t have to know anything about Monty Python to enjoy the show, although it helps. For the uninitiated, it was a British comedy troupe that revolutionized humor in the early ’70s, and there’s no one named Monty Python. But the opening night crowd was very initiated, to the point where a character would merely poke his head out, and the audience would begin cheering before he said a word. They already knew he was a French soldier who was about to start taunting Arthur with nonsequitur insults in an overripe French accent — “Go and boil your bottom, son of a silly person!”
A lot of the humor is more accessible than that, particularly the spoofs of other Broadway shows — “Fiddler on the Roof,” the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Like Mel Brooks’ musical version of “The Producers,” “Spamalot” titillates the audience by constantly flirting with bad taste — one number has some fun with Jewish stereotypes, another has a famously straight literary character announcing he’s gay — but it always stays carefully just inside the mainstream.
The language can be a bit bawdy, so if you’re taking, say, a sixth-grader, you may both have to pretend you’ve never used those words.
The show’s the star here, but the cast is uniformly enjoyable. A tip of the feather-topped helmet (lovely plumage, by the way) should go to Pia Glenn, who brings a double shot of pure Whitney Houston (the old-school version) to her character, the Lady of the Lake, then turns on a dime and lampoons her own diva-tude; and to Michael Siberry, who has to hold everything together with sputtering exasperation as Arthur, the straight man to every one else’s lunacy.
One final note: The road show of “Spamalot” likes to throw in some local references as jokes in each city it plays; that’s still a work in progress here. In a show that skewers everything it touches, they could be a little rougher on our favorite little panda, couldn’t they?
Through March 4. $22-$67. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. ticketmaster.com, 404-817-8700.
THE VERDICT: “Strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government.” But it makes for a fine night of goofy theater.
‘Turned On’ to Music of War and Gloom
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
“Turned On: Electronic Music by Atlanta Composers.” Monday at The Five Spot in Little Five Points. atlantacomposers.blogspot.com
Is the nation on the right track or the wrong track? That’s a question typically asked by pollsters working for news organizations and political parties — not by classical music composers.
Yet artists, in their work, often display an acute sense of the current cultural vibe. They also can be dead-on accurate when it comes to predicting large-scale political trends, whether they mean to or not. (That’s why, historically, when a repressive government seizes control, artists who speak truth to power are the first to go.)
So what’s our cultural mood? Judging by a concert Monday night called “Turned On: Electronic Music by Atlanta Composers” our future is bleak.
Of the 13 “Turned On” composers — many of them younger than 30 — eight offered music fraught with anxiety and gloom. None made overt references to 9/11 or the on-going Iraq war, although militaristic undercurrents ran throughout. I suspect the producers had no political agenda, but heard as a group the alternate title could have been “Apocalypse Soon.”
The outstanding 90 minute show — curated by ambitious and imaginative composers Darren Nelsen and Adam Scott Neal — was a cross section of lesser known local talent. The Five Spot, a dive-bar nightclub in the Little Five Points neighborhood, made an ideal venue: “art” music always benefits from beer and bar chow.
Since none of the music required live performers, Nelsen and Neal ripped all the music onto a DVD and — smart planning — gave everything a visual accompaniment. A few composers created their own videos; Imani Odelia supplied the rest with ambient computer graphics, some of which looked like slowly twirling screen savers.
The musical selections were short, from Nelsen’s one-minute “Slipstream” — of droning rumbles and wispy clouds — to Colin Bragg’s depressing “Aeolus,” more than nine minutes of groaning cosmic dread. Here the composer took the acoustic sounds of an autoharp, processed them through a computer and put us in a tunnel with no light at the other end.
And so it went. Daniel Swilley’s “Shadowed Moon,” based on Pink Floyd’s music, felt at once futuristic, menacing and claustrophobic. Brent Milam’s “Dying Pulsars” successfully evoked a deep space system spinning towards collapse.
Former Atlanta College of Art instructor Don Hassler wrote “weave.7.26.2005” on the day his school was subsumed into another art college. He clearly wasn’t optimistic about the merger.
Past wars inspired several pieces, pointing to the pointlessness of death on a mass scale. Composer-curator Neal’s “In Flanders Fields” twisted a reading of John McCrae’s famous World War 1 poem — poppies blossom in a blood-soaked battlefield — into a sonic stew, both pastoral and monstrous.
In a program note, composer Nicole Randall called her “MW5” an “attempt to identify with my father’s experience in the Vietnam War.” The thick swoosh of chopper blades fly low overhead, like the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Distant gurgles suggest a jungle stream, yet like a scary nightmare where nothing actually happens, the prevailing mood is of stomach-churning foreboding.
Randall’s “MW5” wasn’t the most sophisticated work heard this evening, but it was the most disarming and emotionally frank score of the group. As she learns her craft, Randall could be a composer of substance.
In the “Turned On” context, the most polished and also frightening piece was “Mi.T.-CON 04 #3,” created by Conrad Schnitzel (a founder of the ambient pop group Tangerine Dream) and Michael Thomas Roe. The title simply combines the composer’s names — pronounced “Mighty-Con” — yet sounds more like code for nuclear missiles on high-alert.
Although written in 2004, the music had a 1980s feel, of boppy pop, aerobics videos and leg warmers. If hints of war and gloom seemed encoded within the perky sonic matrix, a listener could interpret a different message: War Will Set You Free. (Like the music, it seemed a mentality from the end-of-Cold-War ’80s.)
The evening’s most appealing works came from a different mindset. Mitchell Turner’s “…black…color…hair…” remixes a folk-song setting by Luciano Berio. The sound was silvery bright, like a Eurythmics pop song, with a lovely aural halo, a steady pulse and layers of shifting sound colors. Fresh, engaging and at times touching, it was the most rewarding piece of the night.
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Feedback on ATL Composers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
Sunday’s AJC Arts&Books included a story on Atlanta composers and, online, a brief survey of some of the city’s brightest composers.
The main story visits the Atlanta Score Study Group, a mostly under-the-radar collective where each composer brought a brief piece of music and the others commented. At that meeting I was an observer and listener, but I did pose one question to the group: why were so few of the pieces they’d submitted “finished” works of art?
To be sure, it’s my personal bias. The medium is not the message, and the goal should be to write interesting, creative music — not music that strictly mimics received ideas and techniques.
Yet many of the pieces heard at the meeting were MIDI syntho-orchestral soundfiles, where the composer pretends that he or she is writing for a symphony orchestra but the sounds are made by a computer’s Musical Instrument Digital Interface program. At best, when these programs are instructed to copy a lush romantic orchestra they instead make cheezy noises; if you cock your ear just right you can imagine what it’s supposed to sound like. More often the results are simply inadequate and, worse, unmusical.
These AJC articles tried to raise the question — without offering answers — of Why is there so much local talent and yet a scene never seems to coalesce?
I have several hypotheses, based on several years of listening. The first is that many Atlanta composers seem to reference someplace else, be it Hollywood or Madison Ave or some 19th century aesthetic. Drawing from the ATL’s dynamic hip-hop scene, for example, isn’t necessarily the answer for a “classical” composer, although masters from Rameau and Bach to Schubert and Mahler to William Bolcom and Osvaldo Golijov refracted their local dance tunes into their own music and thus kept current with their culture. It’s a modest proposal, as Jonathan Swift would say.
Another answer may be this: almost all of our local composers are somehow apart from the artistic free-for-all. Either they’re in academia, which boasts a lot of talent but historically hasn’t been the best place for community-wide integration, or else they’re supported by Atlanta’s abundant commercial-music opportunities — e.g. Turner Broadcasting and the Cartoon Network and for video games and countless advertising and media companies — which stiffles most people’s native creativity and art. Advertising is often at (or near) the cutting edge, but it’s just as likely that if you’ve been co-opted by the man for a paycheck, you can’t break free and think free when it comes to composing your “art” music. No one wishes a musician to live in poverty, but everyone hopes to hear a composer’s inner integrity and artistic substance.
Is this BS? You tell me.
At the study-score session there was enormous talent, but — this seemed to speak to the community as a whole — it seemed poorly harnessed to make good music. At the session, I asked everyone to send me whatever thoughts they cared to share. Here’s an extremely thoughtful note from composer Billy Payne:
I was at the score study group the other day … and wanted to answer your question about why things sounded the way they did.
I myself was a Theory/Composition major in college but upon graduation needed to make money. No one tells you how to actually make money as a composer. Even now, I’m not sure where to find work or what to charge for services. I got my foot in the door doing arrangements and orchestrations for churches. I’ve enjoyed doing that greatly over the last several years, but recently have been burdened to get back into doing more original things.
On my website, you’ll find several different things… I find most of my original things currently come from small, one shot things around town. (Like the stuff for Chick-fil-A or Cheatham Hill.) I’m not sure how to get my music or my name out to do larger things, hence why I was attending the composers group meeting the other night.
To answer your question… I think it’s important for a composer to write what they hear in their head. When I was in college, the Yamaha DX-7 came out. We got our hands on one and was amazed at the different sounds it came with. I can remember one of my peers saying “I could write a song for each of these sounds.” Unfortunately, I think most of us from a classically trained/book learned background are taught that the orchestra as a whole is the composer’s instrument.
So when we write, we do so for the large ensemble. The bad news being that we may or may not have the opportunity to ever hear it performed live, and at best, can only rely on computer/synthesizer reproductions. After a while, we get used to hearing these. That’s not good, as there is still a big difference in what live musicians sound like verses a fabricated production, not to mention the feedback you get from live musicians.
As a composer, I want my music out there. The piece I submitted [at the meeting] I originally wrote as a piano piece, and then orchestrated it with the tools I had available on my computer … if we do the “composer night” thing again, I’d submit something different. I now think the end process is not getting the notes on paper, but getting the sound into the air from live musicians. (The exception being if you’ve intentionally written an electronic piece.) —- Billy Payne
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Concertmasters, Cats, Composers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
On concertmasters, cats and composers.
Former Atlanta Symphony concertmaster William Preucil, often described as the most effective orchestral leader in the country, took the top job with the impeccable Cleveland Orchestra a dozen years ago. In recent months what had been whispers about the violinist’s leadership and ethics are being amplified by his own colleagues into a full scale scandal.
The Cleveland Scene, an alt-weekly, writes: “Now, as the consequences of Preucil’s arrogance mount, some within the orchestra are wondering: Will the man who was supposed to save the orchestra end up destroying it?” Click here to read the full article.
On the fluffier side, a YouTube video shows a cat named Nora who is a reasonably good pianist and composer. The paws-on-keys technique isn’t perfect, but the animal’s compositional voice is sure, in a miniaturist and Minimalist style. I hear echoes of two composers: Hungarian master Gyorgy Kurtag, where a great C minor Symphony is compressed to just a few bittersweet notes, and American composer Morton Feldman, of serene pools of sound-color.
Cats and composers have a serious and imbedded history, of course. I’ve seen photographs of Erik Satie and Claude Debussy with their cats. In the past couple of years, at-home portraits of American composers Tobias Picker and Charles Wuorinen have included their cats on their laps.
Composing music, like writing fiction, is largely an act inside your own head, and the feline-style ability to shift from social to solitary is necessary for the artist’s productivity. Are composers moody like cats? If the world is divided into cat lovers and dog lovers, why do classical composers seems to fall into the former category? This is one of the deep mysteries of creativity and art.
And speaking of solitary artists, be on the lookout this Sunday when the AJC’s Arts&Books section will run two articles on Atlanta composers. Many of the folks mentioned in the articles sent us pictures of themselves, as requested, although none that I saw included the composer with his or her cat.
The stories are already up on ajc,com. The main story is called “Alone Together, Local Composers Find Unity” and the second is a brief survey of some of the city’s brightest composers.
On Monday this darn ajc.com “blog” system will re-open for readers’ comments. I’ll also post some of the comments sent me by local composers but which arrived too late to make our print deadline. All told, it’s an interesting, talented, unexpectedly robust group.
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Spoleto 2007 to honor Menotti
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
We’ve written quite a bit about the death of Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian-born, American-educated composer-director-impresario.
Not surprisingly, the festival he founded in Charleston, S.C. will dedicate the 2007 summer to him.
Here’s an open letter from Spoleto Festival USA’s artistic directors:
February 13, 2007
Dear Friend of the Festival,
All of us associated with Spoleto Festival USA are saddened by the death of Gian Carlo Menotti, who passed away on February 1, 2007.
Some thirty years ago, Mr. Menotti founded Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston as the “new world” counterpart to the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. In his opening statement in the very first Spoleto Festival USA program, Mr. Menotti remarked, “Just as the composer - without being able to define ‘inspiration’ - knows when he is inspired, I knew that Charleston would be the town of my choice as soon as I set foot in it, and Charleston, with its enchantment, will confirm to the beholder the wisdom of this choice.”
His vision was for the festival to be “fertile ground for the young with new ideas and a dignified home for the masters.” We embraced his vision and Charleston lived up to his expectations as the perfect setting for the festival. All of the artists and all of the members of the audience, board and staff since 1977 have in some way benefited from his inspiration.
During the festival this year, we plan to celebrate the life of Gian Carlo Menotti. Please continue to check www.spoletousa.org for additional programming if you would like to join us in remembering this remarkable composer and friend of the arts and artists.
Sincerely,
Joseph Flummerfelt Artistic Director for Choral Activities
Emmanuel Villaume The Christel DeHaan Music Director for Opera & Orchestra
Charles Wadsworth The Charles E. and Andrea L. Volpe Artistic Director for Chamber Music
Nigel Redden General Director
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Ready to make nice?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Country radio may not want anything to do with the Dixie Chicks, but the Grammys sure do. The Texas trio won all five categories in which they were nominated, including album of the year. (To read the full list of winners, click here.)
This validation could mean the Chicks might finally be “ready to make nice” … are you?
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Chicks CD ‘instantly classic’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Los Angeles — Long before the Grammys got around to handing out the final award of the night — album of the year — one of the contenders, one-time Atlantan and rocker John Mayer, was already boldly predicting the winner.
It wasn’t his own — and he was right: He picked the Dixie Chicks’ “Taking the Long Way.” Mayer called the Chicks’ record “an almost instantly classic album. … They used great songs as a weapon.”
Soul singer Van Hunt, who won his first Grammy for a performance with Family Affair, wasn’t quite sure how he was going to celebrate his award when he comes home to Atlanta: “I’m going to walk on the beach here first, and then I’ll think about it.”
A somewhat nervous Carrie Underwood greeted the print media while twirling a giant ring on her finger, defending her career launching pad:
The Grammys “kind of proved ‘American Idol’ can transcend the talent-show stereotype,” she said.
Underwood passed, though, on offering her thoughts on the Dixie Chicks’ country album win — despite country music radio turning its back on them. “Next question, please,” she responded. Pressed a little later, she added, “All I can really say is I’m happy for them.”
Rock pioneer Ike Turner, who turned more than a few heads with his unique fashion statement, let onlookers in on where they could get a lavender suit with gold studs just like his: “pawn shop!”
Contemporary gospel singer Kirk Franklin, who won two awards, revealed what he and his wife plan to do for Valentine’s Day: “We’re going to IHOP,” joked the married man of 11 years. “I’ve already made reservations.”
At the pre-telecast ceremony, 66-year-old jazz veteran Al Jarreau offered this moment in his personal Grammy history: “The first time I walked this red carpet, I ran this red carpet!” But “Now I’m kind of eeeeeasing.”
“American Idol” judge Randy Jackson took up (sort of) for fellow judge Simon Cowell, who thought onetime “Idol” contestant and now Oscar nominee Jennifer Hudson wouldn’t go anywhere: “Everyone has selective listening. … She was my wild card pick!”
Actress and longtime activist Ruby Dee, who shared the spoken word album award with President Carter, declined to offer her take on the country’s current political climate: “If I have a flag to wave, it’s going to be on the side of us as human beings.”
Rocker Jonny Lang basically said thanks for, er …
“I don’t consider this album to be as much of a gospel record as the other records in this category,” he remarked after winning the rock or rap gospel album category for “Turn Around.” “I didn’t think it would ever make this category.”
Music icon Tony Bennett graded the Police’s opening performance (“I think Sting really knocked everybody out of their seat”) and offered words of music biz wisdom ( “The best way to learn is to listen to the audience. The marketing people, I mean, I understand. … But when you listen to the audience it will tell you what they like”).
Cleveland rapper Krayzie Bone defended hip-hop mixtape DJs, who have come under legal fire lately, including two prominent Atlanta DJs recently arrested: “Let the DJs do what they’ve been doing. It’s just the way of the music. … To try and make it look like it’s some criminal activity, I don’t understand that.”
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Atlantans take early trophies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlantans are claiming early victories during the Grammys’ pre-show awards ceremony in L.A. And AJC music critic Sonia Murray is on the scene to deliver the good news.
So far, rapper T.I. has claimed two trophies — rap solo performance and rap/sung collaboration for delivering rhymes on Justin Timberlake’s single “My Love.”
Ludacris won the rap song category for his single “Money Maker” which featured Pharrell, while Christian band Third Day picked up a win for best pop/contemporary gospel album.
“Wow, this is amazing. We just walked through the door. Can’t beat that,” said Third Day’s Mac Powell, who yelled out to bandmate Mark Lee. “Mark! Dude! We’re winning a Grammy. You’re missing out. You can’t hold it?!” Lee, who eventually ran onstage, was somewhat occupied when the award was announced.
Other winners with Atlanta and Georgia ties:
• Gnarls Barkley, which includes Atlanta hip-hop star Cee-Lo, won two awards: best Alternative Music Album for “St. Elsewhere,” and best Urban/Alternative Performance for its hits song, “Crazy.”
• Atlantans Johnta Austin and Bryan-Michael Cox shared the best R&B Song award for their work on Mary J. Blige’s hit “Be Without You.”
• Country singer Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland won best Country Collaboration With Vocalswith rocker Bon Jovi for their duet, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”
• The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Robert Spano picked up a Grammy for the best opera recording. He led the ASO Chorus in “Golijov: Ainadamar: Fountain of Tears.”
• Former President Jimmy Carter and actress Ruby Dee and her late husband Ossie Davis tied for the award for best spoken word album.
Check accessAtlanta.com throughout the night for more Grammy wins.
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Serkin Illuminates Stravinsky and Bach
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Saturday in Symphony Hall. www.atlantasymphony.org.
In New York, Carnegie Hall’s “Perspectives” series invites esteemed, idea-driven musicians to curate a group of concerts. It’s an innovative way to present, via music, his or her views on art, philosophy, trends, the performer-audience relationship — in short, a glimpse into how one artist views the world.
Saturday night in Symphony Hall, pianist Peter Serkin — a past “Perspectives” host — gave Atlanta Symphony Orchestra audiences a taste of that sort of intellectual, integrated programming.
Conductor Roberto Abbado was on the podium. Standing behind the raised piano lid for two piano concertos, however, he was partly obscured from view as well as from the music making, since Serkin’s personality and artistic vision dominated the first half.
They opened with Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. Premiered in 1924, it’s a “neo-classical” work where the great modernist Russian found inspiration in 18th century forms, especially the dense, dancing counterpoint of J.S. Bach.
But harking back to antiquated styles — like donning a powdered wig for a costume party — always comes with an agenda and more than a whiff of irony.
For Stravinsky, the neo-classical style allowed him to shove his Russian heritage away — although traces remain — and reinvent himself as an international, “universal” composer, like Bach.
More broadly, the retro approach was a means to clear the air of the humid and indulgent layers of overheated, early 20th century romanticism. It was a chance to restore a precise, knowing, angular and coolly rational approach to music — which, not incidentally, describes Serkin’s style of piano playing.
The Stravinsky seemed heavy with deep cultural meaning no less than its companion piece on the concert, Bach’s Piano Concerto in D minor, transcribed from a harpsichord work.
Serkin played his own edition (with additions from pianist-scholar Robert Levin) which fit nicely into his modernist musical world view.
First we heard Stravinsky filtered through the lens of Bach, followed by Bach as Stravinsky might have played him — crisp, austere, a little impersonal, cut with the sharp knife of modernism.
Even some of Serkin’s performance attitudes and quirks were on full display, “Perspectives” style.
Although he clearly had both concertos under his fingers and rarely glanced up from the keyboard, he played from the full orchestral score. A page turner flipped Serkin’s pages, in synch with Abbado turning his own score. It’s more than just a metaphor to say they were on the same page throughout these beautifully realized concertos.
The evening’s second half held Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, and here Abbado’s abundant talents were revealed anew: a comprehensive view of Beethoven, abundant instrumental detail clearly articulated, a balance of intensity and thoughtfulness.
Indeed, for long stretches of the third movement scherzo, the ASO played in a lucid frenzy — an exhilarating experience for the audience.
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Grammy Eve
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s enough to make one think that near five-hour plane ride was a figment of the imagination.
Everywhere you turned Saturday night in L.A., there was Atlanta.
Then again, the turning was happening at Atlanta music mogul Jermaine Dupri’s “Atlanta Invasion” party on the infamous Hollywood Boulevard.
So it really should come as no surprise that standing in the general populous line outside of the Pacific Theater was a member of Dupri’s first group - no not Chris Kelly or Chris Smith of Kris Kross - but one of the two in Silk Tymes Leather. At the entrance was southwest Atlanta’s own Oakland transplant, rapper Too Short, waving in his celebrity friends. And just inside where the free drinks and food were flowing were Hot-107.9’s DJ Nabs, V-103’s Tara Thomas and Lil Jon’s business partner Vince Phillips, of BME.
“I can’t believe they are not even charging when they get $600 to get in here,” Short remarked.”$4500 memberships.
“This is usually a private, members-only thing where the party really may not stop until six in the morning,” he added, referencing a line in Dupri and rapper-actor Ludacris’s single “Welcome to Atlanta.”
It was a late night as well over at the hip-hop band the Roots’ annual jam session at the Key Club on Sunset Boulevard.
But the party that was piquing V-103’s Laid Back Black’s interest was over at the House of Blues. Black got a message at Dupri’s party that the King of R&B (at least according to his estranged wife Whitney Houston), Bobby Brown, was performing.
So THAT’S what that rehearsing may have been about the other night…
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Ludacris with a side of Mary J. for brunch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Star power rarely is this subdued.
One hundred or so people were invited to Vanity Fair and Piaget’s brunch for Atlanta rapper-actor Ludacris and R&B dynamo Mary J. Blige Saturday at the Sunset Tower Hotel. And everywhere you turned on the Sunset Terrace there was entertainment might.
Someone who could give you a record deal on the spot (Island Def Jam Music Group chairman Antonio ” L.A.” Reid, his senior exec Shakir Stewart, Warner Music Group’s Kevin Liles). Someone to produce your first hit (Jimmy Jam). Someone to write it (Sean Garrett). Someone who could co-star in your music video to give it some movie or TV industry heft (Terence Howard, Nia Long, Holly Robinson-Peete). Oh yeah - and a whole lot of someones who already have record deals, hit records and accompanying flashy videos (Ne-Yo, Bow Wow).
And yet throughout the two hour-plus gathering over mimosas and made-to-order omelets, everyone was social, nobody was roped off in some VIP section and the conversations were as low-volume and easy-going as the harpist (Mariea Antoinette) who entertained the crowd.
“This is chill as hell,” Ludacris remarked with a champagne flute in his hand.
His co-honoree Blige appeared in the last hour of the event; worn out, perhaps, from partying the night before with Oprah Winfrey, Tom Cruise and Sidney Poitier at a party Will and Jada Smith threw for her.
Hours later Ludacris and Blige were together again at the Staples Center for the final rehearsal of their single “Runaway Love.” Placards on the black folding chairs in the venue marked where the celebs would sit the following evening - Blige and Beyoncé in the prime positions on opposite sides of the center aisle; Oscar nominee Jennifer Hudson just behind Beyoncé; Ludacris behind Blige. “Oooh I’m right behind Justin Timberlake,” cooed R&B veteran Natalie Cole. Also in the audience was Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who thought “Runaway Love” was “pretty cool there.”
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The Day Before the BIG Night
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s day two in the land of hotels with a phone button specifically for tennis reservations, and what a night!
Where to start? How about Center Staging in Burbank, where Atlanta rapper-actor Ludacris is scheduled to rehearse his performance at the Grammys Sunday night of “Runaway Love” with - guess it’s no surprise now - R&B legends Earth, Wind & Fire.
Stage 5 is booked from 5 to 7 p.m., but at start time Ludacris is still en route. He didn’t make it to L.A. until midday Friday. But the space is still occupied with 13 girls from nearby Faithful Central who will join Ludacris, Mary J. Blige and EW&F. The hit song is about struggling young girls dealing with abuse, poverty and pregnancy. But these 13 are teeming with delight as they munch Doritos - “Are we going to get to ride in a limo to the Grammys?!” one squeals. “Ooh I bet Luda is SUPER fine in person!” insists another.
Meanwhile in the hallways of the sprawling venue in the valley, ?uestlove of hip-hop band the Roots is peaking into each door, looking for his groupmates - who are leading a jam session Saturday night from midnight to 4 a.m. . A gentleman keeps going in and out with armfuls of clothes for EW&F’s Verdeen White, as he’s picking out his red carpet gear as well. The late James Brown’s manager Super Frank breezes through with one of his songwriters, revealing that a Brown tribute is planned during the music industry’s biggest night. And in an adjoining space is none other than one-time Atlantan - he doesn’t still live there, right? - Bobby Brown; rehearsing for who know’s what.
At about 6:45 p.m. Ludacris arrives, and jets right into the space EW&F has set up its 13-strong ensemble. Atlanta’s Tai Boogie has reimagined “Runaway Love” for the Grammys ina way that Bailey’s sweet vocals have a stirring, prominent role. After they run through the song twice, Ludacris smiles and says to the smattering of onlookers: “Earth, Wind & Fire, ladies and gentlemen. They sound so beautiful, wouldn’t you agree?”
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You know you’re at the Grammys when …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You know you’re on a plane headed to the Grammy’s when…
Atlanta songwriter Teddy Bishop is on it. Contemporary jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum is on it. So many musicians and DJs are on it, in fact, that AirTran flight attendant Jarrett tells the latecomers to check their bags because the overhead bins are overstuffed with instruments.
You know you’ve arrived at a hotel where a lot of artists/record executives/something are staying when…
There is a line of tinted black SUVs outside your West Hollywood hotel, drivers standing by the door at the ready, and piles of lone black duffle bags in front of the door. Oh yeah, and even though it’s an overcast 67 degrees here, every other person who gets out of those previously-mentioned SUVs has on sunglasses.
Except for Atlanta’s contemporary gospel nominee Byron Cage, that is. (Bless those unpretentious gospel singers.)
You know Georgia artists really do have an impact on the industry nationwide when…
On your way to the Los Angeles Convention Center (adjacent to the Staples Center, where the Grammys will be held), you turn on Power 106 and the song that’s on is the remix of Atlanta’s DJ Unk’s “Walk It Out.” Followed by Atlanta rapper/actor Ludacris and R&B powerhouse Mary J. Blige’s “Runaway Love.” Followed by a commercial Athens’ Bubba Sparxxx does. And wait - guess who just walked into the studio to host the Top 4 at 4? Atlanta rapper Akon.
And finally, you know everything here in Grammy ground zero is not ALL sunglasses and glitz when…
Superstar pop pin-up John Mayer showed up at at the convention center, security-free, to pick up his own tickets for the Grammys. And he didn’t have sunglasses on.
The AJC has landed in L.A. for the Grammys. Stay tuned.
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‘Gatsby’ a major coup for Atlanta Ballet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby” 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday. 7 p.m. Sunday. 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10. 8 p.m. Wed. Feb. 14. Through Feb. 17. $15-$80. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.atlantaballet.com.
It isn’t perfect. There are parts of it that still need major tweaking. But the basics are firmly in place: The Atlanta Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby” is a major coup. The audience at the Fox Theater last night was still on its feet and cheering by the third curtain call; can this really be the sonambulet “Nutcracker” crowd?
For that matter, can these really be the “Nutcracker” dancers?
Yes, and that is one of this troupe’s proudest stocks-in-trade: versatility. Put these willing, youthful bodies in the right choreographic hands and watch what happens, especially when the material teems with some of the most intriguing characters ever to emerge from the pen of F. Scott Fitzgerald. You remember them from high school — Gatsby, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, Nick Carraway, Jordan.
In an interview, Atlanta Ballet artistic director John McFall and his co-choreographer Lauri Stallings commented that these characters were rich in heart and “raw instinct.” As such, said Stallings, “Gatsby,” is the “perfect vehical for this company.”
No argument here. If these dancers have ever looked better on stage, it hasn’t been in the decade this writer has been watching. What Stallings does with quick, bold limb thrusts and herky-jerky head moves is so moving, so direct as to be riveting; each scene has an unmistakable mood about it.
McFall favors the long lyrical line - the romantic pas de deux are clearly his, the ensemble scenes hers. Their styles are different, but they balance and compliment each other — not to mention their dancers — beautifully. Add some gloriously colorful, borrowed-from-Broadway 1920s-style costumes (flapper hats and all), a soundtrack comprised of mostly vintage jazz recordings from the 1920s and ‘30s, and an abundance of positive physical and emotional energy emanating from the stage, and you have in “The Great Gatsby” a proud accomplishment for the Atlanta Ballet and an evening of unabashed, substantive entertainment.
Star-Cross’d Opera Aligns for ‘Romeo et Juliette’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OPERA REVIEW Charles Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette.” Atlanta Opera, at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. Performances repeat Saturday and Sunday. www.atlantaopera.org
You’ve got to admire the Atlanta Opera. For its last production in the drafty, audience-repelling Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, the company could have limped away and pinned its hopes on next season and a shiny new venue in suburban Cobb County.
Instead, with Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette,” which opened Thursday, the company is charging ahead at full power — and doing the best work of its 28-year history.
What has changed in the three years since the opera came under new management? In short: singers who can really sing and conductors who hold the whole show together.
Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova, a lyric coloratura, has the voice, theatricality and charisma of a star, which she’ll likely soon be. (Vocally, she’s a match with megastar-of-the-moment Anna Netrebko, lacking only the kewpie-doll face.)
Petrova has a nuanced instrument, of icy warmth and steely vulnerability. Precise and powerful, she could scale down her voice as a timid girl courted on her balcony, or soar over the full orchestra at the moment when she takes control of her fate, drinking Friar Laurence’s magic voodoo death potion.
Her Romeo, Mexican tenor Fernando del la Mora, held almost as much surface appeal, but that’s all you got. His tone is generally endearing and he moves naturally on stage, but his voice doesn’t convey sharp personality. His Romeo was a boy trapped in a man’s body.
In the middle of the opera, for one show-stealing aria, soprano Isabel Leonard entered as Romeo’s snarky page Stephano — a character not in Shakespeare. Still a student at New York’s Juilliard School, Leonard was here making her U.S. professional opera debut. Her effervescent voice, sparkling across its range, and idiomatic French and disarming manner made her the most perfect Stephano I’ve ever encountered.
Like most of the cast, Hungarian conductor Gregory Vajda was making his Atlanta Opera debut — as well as his U.S. professional opera debut. (Credit general director Dennis Hanthorn and artistic administrator Eric Mitchko for these discoveries.)
Born in 1973, Vajda’s the real thing. Rhythmically alert, he found his own pace for the opera — a bit on the slow and careful side, perhaps, but always taut and flowing. In the pit, he wasn’t the ideal accompanist for the singers, but his sympathy with the stage grew by opera’s end.
With a crafty glint in his eye, Peter Volpe sang Friar Lawrence (and, briefly, the Duke of Verona) with an agreeable Francophone legato — where the tail of one note is smothly connected to the head of another — although the basic sound of his voice was essentially colorless.
The rest of the cast was fine, with memorable performances from Robynne Redman as Juliette’s nurse and Victor Ryan Robertson as Tybalt.
Bernard Uzan’s stage direction was conventional, a little frumpy, mostly effective. He found a few points of gentle humor in the tragedy, too, such as when Romeo flips the pages of the Friar’s bible to hurry along the secret wedding ceremony in Act 3.
Uzan also cut the entire Juliette-Paris wedding scene of Act 4, where the heroine promptly keels over as if dead. This major cut, and a few smaller ones, allowed a three-and-a-quarter hours opera to fit into a tidy three-hour time slot, including two intermissions. There’s some superb music in the snipped nuptial scene, although it also might be dramatically superfluous.
Still, is it provincial and artistically mean-spirited to wield a butcher’s knife on a beloved opera merely so tuxedo’d patrons can get to their apres-opera ball a few minutes sooner?
Operaphiles who follow the company closely may note several previously unremarked changes to this “Romeo.” Petrova, on just a few weeks notice, replaced the originally-contracted Greek soprano Alexia Voulgaridou, who withdrew.
And the sets were to have come from Opera de Montreal. To save money, the Atlanta Opera instead pulled out of storage its own hardware for a 1999 production of Bellini’s R&J opera, “I Capuleti e i Montecchi,” designed by John Michael Deegan and Sarah G. Conly.
That big unit set — a three-story Italianate palazzo enclosing a wide courtyard — looked spiffy and traditional. Perhaps to accommodate the movements of Walter Huff’s large and excellent chorus, the set was positioned too far back to help reflect the singer’s voices into the auditorium.
The costumes, designed by Claude Girard for Montreal, also fit the Renaissance style, with the Capulet clan dressed in elaborate reds and browns and the Montaigus in blues and greens. Symbolically, Romeo wore purple.
And what hasn’t changed for the Atlanta Opera? The civic center, at 4,500-seats, is too large for the lyric arts, and everything performed within its hangar-sized walls lacks theatrical intimacy.
After this run of “Romeo,” the opera will perform a one-night gala May 2 — replacing Handel’s “Orlando” which, despite rumors to the contrary, has not been rescheduled.
After that, the Atlanta Opera says goodbye Midtown, hello Cobb County.
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The Great Gatsby
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It isn’t perfect. There are parts of it that still need major tweaking. But the basics are firmly in place: The Atlanta Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby” is a major coup. The audience at the Fox Theatre on Thursday night was still on its feet and cheering by the third curtain call; can this really be the somnambulate “Nutcracker” crowd?
For that matter, can these really be the “Nutcracker” dancers?
Yes, and that is one of this troupe’s proudest stocks-in-trade: versatility. Put these willing, youthful bodies in the right choreographic hands and watch what happens, especially when the material teems with some of the most intriguing characters ever to emerge from the pen of F. Scott Fitzgerald. You remember them from high school — Gatsby, Daisy, Tom Buchanan, Nick Carraway, Jordan.
In an interview, Atlanta Ballet artistic director John McFall and his co-choreographer Lauri Stallings commented that these characters were rich in heart and “raw instinct.” As such, said Stallings, “Gatsby,” is the “perfect vehical for this company.”
No argument here. If these dancers have ever looked better on stage, it hasn’t been in the decade this writer has been watching. What Stallings does with quick, bold limb thrusts and herky-jerky head moves is so moving, so direct as to be riveting; each scene has an unmistakable mood about it.
McFall favors the long lyrical line - the romantic pas de deux are clearly his, the ensemble scenes hers. Their styles are different, but they balance and complement each other — not to mention their dancers — beautifully. Add some gloriously colorful, borrowed-from-Broadway 1920s-style costumes (flapper hats and all), a soundtrack comprised of mostly vintage jazz recordings from the 1920s and ’30s, and an abundance of positive physical and emotional energy emanating from the stage, and you have in “The Great Gatsby” a proud accomplishment for the Atlanta Ballet and an evening of unabashed, substantive entertainment.
Atlanta Ballet’s “The Great Gatsby” 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday. 7 p.m. Sunday. 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10. 8 p.m. Wed. Feb. 14. Through Feb. 17. $15-$80. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.atlantaballet.com.
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Follow Sonia to the Grammys!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia artists have earned a record number of Grammy nominations this year, giving the AJC 52 reasons (to be exact) to be in Los Angeles for the ceremony.
So, I’m headed there today to party with rapper-actor Ludacris, newly-minted president and longtime mogul Jermaine Dupri, Mary J. Blige, songwriter Bryan-Michael Cox (to name a few); go to the rehearsals before the big show, the invitation-only brunches, and of course, the ceremony itself.
Check back in later today and all weekend to get the latest from L.A.
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Composer, Spoleto founder Menotti is dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL BLOG
We’ve got several items bubbling on the classical-music scene tonight. Unusually, I skipped the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday evening concert — all Mendelssohn, conducted by Nicholas McGegan — and instead attended a first-Thursday-of-each-month meeting of the Atlanta Study Score Group, where local composers gather to play their music and have it discussed. I’m planning to write a survey of the Atlanta’s composer scene, and this group plays a key role.
Did you go to the Atlanta Symphony’s concert? Tell me about it in the comments field below.
And composer-director-librettist-impresario Gian Carlo Menotti has died.
Appreciation Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 - Feb. 1, 2007)
Gian Carlo Menotti, who died Thursday in Monaco, age 95, held a strong presence in Atlanta and over the South.
Winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Menotti was one of the most frequently performed opera composers in these parts, as everywhere in America — especially with students and community-based opera companies. And in 1977 he helped found the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C., one of the most vital and artistically sophisticated multi-arts festivals in the country.
The AP’s Menotti obituary gets a few details wrong, but you can read it here.
With Menotti’s death, there’s now a strong possibility that Spoleto USA and its estranged sibling, the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, may rejoin in some fashion.
A complicated man in his private life, Menotti’s operas were conservative in attitude, clinging to the golden age of Puccini and the Italian verissimo school, of fiery passions, theatrical intimacy and warmly romantic orchestrations. A theme ran through his operas, of the “gifted” individual (i.e the artist) who’s scorned by philistine society.
Menotti’s innovation was in combining lightly sung vocal parts with the natural patterns of American speech, as a sort of lightly sung parlando style that didn’t require deluxe operatic training.
It’s a combination that will likely keep his best operas popular in perpetuity: “The Old Maid and the Thief” (commissioned by NBC radio, premiered in 1939), “The Medium” (1946), “The Consul” (1950), “Amahl and the Night Visitors” (commissioned by NBC television, 1951) and “The Saint of Bleeker Street” (1954).
In recent years, each of these operas had been performed in and around Atlanta, often by Capitol City Opera, a local community troupe.
And for its 30th season, last summer, Spoleto Festival USA continued to maintain much of its founder’s original vision, and did record-breaking box office. It’s a winning formula — now much copied —established by Menotti: multi-disciplinary programming, unflinchingly high-brow artistic standards and cultural tourism in a picturesque setting.
Menotti was born July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, a lake-shore town in northern Italy. His parents were prosperous coffee importers, and music was part of the household. By legend, he started composing operas as a child, and had his first performance when he was 11. He entered the Milan Conservatory at 13.
In 1928, his family now skirting financial troubles, he was recommended to continue his studies at the tuition-free Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Although he retained his Italian passport, Menotti afterwards considered himself an American composer.
At Curtis he met Samuel Barber, a fellow composer and student, and the two soon started a decades-long partnership. They lived in a house called Capricorn, in New York State, traveled the world together and Menotti wrote librettos for Barber’s operas, including “Vanessa.”
After “Bleeker Street,” in ‘54, however, Menotti’s compositional skills started a long slow decline, and by 1958 he’d reinvented himself as an impresario. He founded the Festival of Two Worlds in the Umbrian hill town of Spoleto, Italy, designed to showcase American talent in Europe. It was an enormous success.
By the mid-1970s, the restless Menotti was looking for new projects. He’d met an aspiring actor, split with Barber, sold Capricorn and later adopted the actor as his son, Francis “Chip” Menotti. (Chip later married a member of the Rockefeller family; Menotti gave them his 100-room Scottish castle as a wedding present. The whole episode is — how to put this? — one of the most curious in music history.)
At about the same time, with help from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he’d hoped to launch a festival in Harlem. That plan fell through, but setting up camp in a historic Southern town was seen as a viable option, someplace in need of economic development, with cheap rents and lots of old theaters.
With others doing all the ground work, Menotti blessed the choice of Charleston and took charge of the new festival.
“One of Gian Carlo’s favorite sayings was ‘I don’t want the arts to be the after-dinner mints for the rich,’” recalls Nigel Redden, who joined Spoleto USA in the mid 1980s and is now its general director. “It sounds almost Mao-ist, but Gian Carlo was the opposite of a socialist. He liked to collect people with titles and an aristocratic glow.”
What’s more, Redden continues, “He was incredibly good at reading people, finding their talent and getting them to work for him,” Redden says. “Nothing at the festival moved without his approval, but he could be extremely frustrating to work with. He’d veto a detailed plan outright, then sit and wait for you to come up with another.”
Menotti’s management style and philosophy led to a nasty and well publicized split in 1993. The composer-impresario had said he was tired of wrangling with city officials and his own festival administrators (including Redden).
For his part, Redden recently spoke of Menotti’s extreme reluctance to institutionalize Spoleto USA — rejecting even basic plans for stability like an endowment or buildings. “He preferred to not make commitments till the last minute, he hated being tied down as an artist,” Redden says. “That’s refreshing but for a festival that has to sell advance tickets, also dangerous.”
Still, Redden recalls, “he was the most charming person imaginable to have dinner with, such diversity of interests, the power to think broadly, incredible energy. Even at the worst times, when we were at dagger’s draw over the festival, he was always charming to me.”
Menotti hoped Spoleto USA, no longer under his guidance, would simply go away. He cut all ties between the original Spoleto and Charleston’s version. Along the way, another Menotti Spoleto, in Melbourne, Australia, also grew into a major international arts gathering.
Redden recently spoke of an opening to restore a creative partnership. “I’d love to see the two Spoletos [Italy and Charleston] rejoined in some way sharing opera productions, for example. But that’s something that can be talked about only after Gian Carlo dies. He’d never stand for it.”
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