Rock on, lute dude

"Whatever dude!"

That was the street-screech salutation which greeted lutenist Ronn McFarlane halfway through his opening set of tunes at the Broderick Gallery (on April 27). It came as a cry from First Avenue (from an inebriated twenty-something, most likely) just as the melancholic tones of John Dowland’s "Forlorn Hope Fancy" were beginning to fade.

And with that, Portland welcomed accomplished lute player Ronn McFarlane to town in his local solo recital debut, presented by Classical Millennium. An ill-feeling date required this writer to skip the second half of the program, but if the hour-long first half of Friday’s concert is any indication, McFarlane is a worthy addition to the top ranks of period performance musicians in town.

Trained initially on the classical guitar, McFarlane - lightly bearded and bescpectacled - discovered the lute in 1978 and – just as the burgeoning early music movement in America was gaining ground – quickly ascended the ranks, becoming a member of the well-respected period band, The Baltimore Consort, in 1979.

McFarlane’s recital was notable for diversity of repertoire, expressive playing and an amiable, understated stage presence. McFarlane doesn’t shine on stage the same way some of his more virtuosic-minded lutenist peers – Paul O’Dette or Stephen Stubbs, for example – do, but instead he offered solid, musicianly playing and pleasantly informal spoken commentary on his program

To a set of Anonymous 17th century Scottish tunes, McFarlane brought rhythmic snap, humor and plenty of character. In lute master John Dowland's solo works, McFarlane displayed obvious feeling for the repertoire but a perhaps overly generous sense of rubato: some of Dowland's vibrant inner dialogues became rather faint. And McFarlane's three original compositions merely recycled material that better composers have written 300 years ago, instead of adding to or commenting on it.

Classical Millennium still has some kinks to work out in their series at the Broderick. Instead of choosing to cap the audience size, they've chosen to stuff as many bodies as possible into the small-ish space. Not only was the room ungodly warm by half-time, it was also near impossible to navigate without sacrificing a row-mate's toes. And even only two rows back, it was difficult to make out McFarlane's fingers and face - although in a gallery space where the other clear objective is hawking art, perhaps that was the point.

McFarlane’s most colorful playing came in a brief "Passameze" from early French master Adrian LeRoy. As a sort of pop-song technical etude, McFarlane lavished Beyonce-worthy roulades on LeRoy’s affecting tune.

[As an important aside, I will point out that McFarlane has a devoted following in the bear community: check this out!]

4 dead in Kansas City mall shooting

SER just called to clue me in about a shooting earlier today - in Kansas City. (Reminder: I grew up in suburban Kansas City and spent four transformative years attending Paseo Academy, an urban arts magnet high school in Kansas City's inner core)

This hits a little too close to home. I spent more than a few nights and weekends at the Ward Parkway Mall. I used to meet one of my high school boyfriends, DC, there for dinner (Chili's) and a movie ("The Birdcage" or "The Nutty Professor.")

vacaaaaaay

This Saturday I leave for sixteen days of vacation. New York City, Boston, Providence.

According to my checking account, I currently have a balance of negative $239.90.

Who's excited?!?!?!?!?

Seligmann found guilty of breaking homo hearts

Am I the only person hot for former Duke rape scandal indictee Reade Seligmann?


Woof.



Rawkin some serious Duke-chic court couture.



Those eyes. Those innocent eyes.


Umm, innocence. So tasty.

Maltby and Shire

Inexplicably, I've been in a Maltby and Shire mood.

You know who they are: the semi-famous also-ran composer (David Shire)/lyricist (Richard Maltby) duo team responsible for cult hits like "Baby," the enormous flop musical adaptation of the movie "Big," and the revuesicals "Closer Than Ever" and "Starting Here, Starting Now."

Last night I listened again to the entirety of the original (1977) "Starting Here, Starting Now" cast album - much of it holds up surprisingly well. Also, the album cover art is genius. (see fun-loving trio, above)

Written, like their later and more popular "Closer Than Ever," as a compendium of songs they'd tried out in book musicals that didn't go anywhere or wrote and then stashed away in a file folder, there's some great material: amusing character songs like "Crossword Puzzle," super-peppy ensemble showstoppers like "Pleased with Myself" or "One Step," and odes to partner-swapping ("I Don't Believe It"), seizing the day ("What About Today?") and getting out of the house ("Travel").


There are three great songs:

"Autumn"
A liquid, wistful piano sets the tone - yep, it's another my man's gone now ballad. The lyric doesn't expand or surprise you - the song is titled "Autumn," after all, so it's not a long walk to revelations like "he left in Autumn." But the tune is so affecting and well-crafted that we're more forgiving of a pedantic lyric (as we often are with Maltby and Shire).

There's a nice interplay between the fall of the voice on the repeat of the word "Autumn" and the piano's answer by repeating the two-note motive, except on a hopeful (or once hopeful?) ascent.

... and why do I get goosebumps at that final, too-soon moment: "And though another season's here, I feel the emptiness of Autumn all the year."


"I Don't Remember Christmas"
A macho, funky bossa nova on the electric bass layds down the moment-before: we're in the character's head, a haunted and lonely place. The voice enters on top (very effective), sotto voce. "I was standing in the bedroom, when it suddenly came clear that at last I don't remember that at one time you were here." At the first realization ("I don't remember Christmas and I don't remember you") there's an explosion in his head: the rhythm section enters at full tilt.

The character makes a tenuous list of the "stuff that used to haunt" him: the robe behind the door, the (wince-inducing) sheepskin rug. Then he pulls back suddenly in the B section, to spare accompaniment: "Any sensible man would forget her," he pines. "Forget her, forget her," he repeats, and of course he can't, and he's slammed back into the driving A section rhythms, ending in an outporing of things and emotions and days he doesn't (want to allow himself to) remember, ending on a high note.

It sounds dated - delicously.


"Starting Here, Starting Now"
Just a great song - a memorable tune and one of Maltby's best lyrics: simple without being overly soppy. Perhaps because it's become one of their best-known tunes, we only get a taste of it, right at the top of the show.

Oh, and Barbra Streisand has recorded and performed it about umpteen thousand times.


There is a little lyric that makes me giggle every time, in the short song "I'm a little bit off:"

"For you're a little too close,
And I'm too upset;
I wanna get wet
but not yet, but not yet."

DC / DC - White Bird - Rennie Harris

Tomorrow night: my first foray into hip-hop meets classical dance as Dayton Contemporary Dance Company is in town with "colorography," an evening-length concert of new dances inspired by the great painter, Harlem "visual griot" Jacob Lawrence. The choreographer whose work I'm most interested to see: Rennie Harris, hip-hop dance darling and creator of works like the acclaimed "Rome and Jewels," a hip-hop meets Shakespeare meets "West Side Story" concoction that's been performed the world over.

Here's the preview from WW:


White Bird Flies With Rennis Harris and 07-08 Line-Up
by Stephen Marc Beaudoin
reprinted courtesy of Willamette Week


Rennie Harris, master hip-hop choreographer, doesn’t like the projections of hip-hop culture he sees and hears on TV, radio, the internet. “Hip-hop has evolved, there’s no one way to do it.” If anyone should know this it’s Harris, who has himself evolved from Run-DMC backup dancer to one of the most fascinating dance figures at the intersection of street and theatre dancing.

Harris is one of four dancemakers featured on Dayton Contemporary Dance Company’s program, “colorography: the dances of Jacob Lawrence,” playing one night only at the Schnitz. Harris, who has the street cred from his younger dancing days and the pedigree of choreographing for the likes of Alvin Ailey Company, says that he was approached by DCDC Artistic Director Kevin Ward with an idea: create a new dance based on the paintings of seminal African-American artist Jacob Lawrence. But rather than run into an art gallery to soak in Lawrence’s vivid colors for inspiration, Harris started where he always does: with the movement.

“It’s like when you’re writing and you just see the next word, it’s the same thing with movement phrases,” Harris says by phone from LA. “It became clear that we were reaching for a specific spirit.”

Harris, who’s work has graced both the White Bird and PICA stages previously, will be a familiar dancemaker to Portland by the end of 2007, thanks to the always-enterprising Paul King and Walter Jaffe of White Bird Dance. In the just-announced lineup for their tenth anniversary season in 2007-08, Jaffe and King are not only bringing Harris’ full company – Rennie Harris Puremovement – back to town for three shows December 6-8 at PSU, they’re also bringing a satisfyingly diverse range of international dance work to Portland in what may be their most ambitious season yet.

Among many highlights, King and Jaffe are especially proud of “4x4: the ballet project,” (May 8-9) a new collaboration White Bird has fostered among San Francisco Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Eugene Ballet Company and our own OBT: each company will perform a work not seen here before. They’re also offering some returning favorites in 07-08 – Paul Taylor Dance Company (October 3) and Stephen Petronio Company (March 5) among them – and continuing to scout out the hottest international dancemakers around. After DCDC closes on April 25, King and Jaffe leave for two weeks in Holland, and are bringing The Netherlands’ oldest dance company, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, back to the US after a decade-long absence (April 30).

For hip-hop culture and dance, as for White Bird, Harris says it best: the sky’s the limit.

Dayton Contemporary Dance Company presented by White Bird Dance, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway Ave., 790-2787. 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 25. $19-$43.

listings madness

They cause me no small amount of anguish. They're the Monday night thorn in my side. They have, literally, brought me to tears and, occasionally, caused an overly enthusiastic outburst of laughter.

They're the brief classical music and dance listings I write for Willamette Week and, as such, they're also just part of my job as classical music and dance correspondent there.

Writing listings is not glamorous. At. All. A writer colleague recently referred to it as "the very bottom of the arts journalistic dung-heap." Yeah, thanks. (he spoke from a place of experience, having previously held my position at WW)

But writing listings is, for me, just as challenging, if not more so, than writing the feature or preview piece, which can run anywhere from 350 to 1000+ words. With a feature, there's an easy-to-grasp story or angle (a "nicely wrapped, sweet-smelling package," as Corky St. Clair might say), and if the subject or interview is interesting at all, it kind of writes itself. Writing listings can also be as deeply satisfying - and sometimes leads on a fun musicological scavenger hunt.

Here's an example of a throw-away listing, something I can write in two minutes and be done with:


Choral Arts Ensemble of Portland's contribution to Portland's unofficial weekend-stuffed-with-French-classical-music includes the Faure Requiem and choral works by Debussy and Ravel, as well as those lovable Boulanger sisters, Lili and Nadia.


... fine. It says what it needs to say, then stops. Not especially noteworthy.

But this, for an upcoming concert from the PDX new music collective Fear No Music, is something else:


Remember when you were five or six, and mom sent you to piano lessons and demanded you memorize Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier in 24 hours, or no orange Jello for dessert? How about when your elementary music teacher forced you, at ruler-point, to flawlessly sight-read the score to Wozzeck or face time-out? Yeah, well some kids enjoyed that sort of masochistic musical upbringing. Like, for instance, the youngins in Fear No Music’s young composers program. Celebrating their tenth anniversary of training the next generation of John Coriglianos and Jennifer Higdons, their annual concert of new music from these young masters promises aural adventures and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse at what could have been if you hadn’t tossed aside that viola so quickly.


Apropos of nothing: I was walking home (eastbound on Lovejoy), maybe about 5:30 pm, from the WW offices tonight. A cloudless, super pleasant early evening. I approached the intersection of 16th and Lovejoy and noticed a friendly black and gray cat across the street. He (just guessing here as to the sex) noticed me, too, in that sometimes startling way that animals respond to human interest and communication. He quite literally turned my way - and stared. I stopped walking. He began to cross the street toward me, gingerly, just as a race of cars sped by - he had the smarts to wait until the path was clear and, guided by another friendly human, he crossed to my side.

He sidled up beside me and let out a rusty mew, masculine and lonely. I bent down a bit to have a chat.

"Baybee! Ooh, boobums you are the preciousist! You are the thweet widdle mister mister."

He stared up at me, responding with a few kind, rough-hewed mews. I stroked him behind the ears. We continued the chat, becoming fast friends.

And then he rubbed against my leg. I nearly cried.

In the extreme solitude of my new apartment (living solo first time ever, folks), in the confusion of where I'm going and what I'm doing and how it all fits together, in the cloudiness of my head where I'm lost so often, this little animal moved me in a way that few people have recently.

(Yeah yeah, sob sob, wipe your eyes and get on with it, right?)

I named him "Mayor," after the sound of his welcome, and because I imagined him in a much more regal state. Like my new apartment. King of a solo castle, safe from the heartless Pearl District cat-haters.

I walked away, slow and sad. Mayor stared after me.

He's all I've thought of tonight since.

Walk-out at Mike Daisey's show, A.R.T., Cambridge

Acclaimed monologuist Mike Daisey (whom I've not seen but have heard marvelous things about) got the shock of his professional stage life when, during his performance of his original one-man show Invincible Summer on April 19th at Harvard's American Repertory Theatre, 87 members of his audience got up and exited the theatre in one protest-like gesture of defiance against Daisey's interpreted "offensive" language.

Worse even than having a crowd of people exit noisily and hastily in the middle of his show was that one particularly brazen individual approached Daisey on the stage and emptied a bottle of water onto what Daisey has described as the "original of the show outline."

There is a Portland connection here: Daisey performed his "hilarious romp through the corridors of corporate America," 21 Dog Years, at Portland Center Stage in January/February of 2005.

To his credit, Daisey was in the middle of a very fun rant on sex with Paris Hilton and, as the YouTube documentation of the event attests, he handled the walk-out exceptionally, even attempting to engage his protestors in some dialogue on their actions.

Now, it's any patron's right to get up and leave a show at their will. But it's deeply hurtful and downright nasty to disrupt the show in such a way as these patrons did, the guy with the water bottle especially.

Here's the video: you've got to see it to believe it.



Hats off to you, Mike - I know this won't slow you down one sec, and will make you an even stronger artist. Hope to see your work sometime very soon. (perhaps as soon as May 5th in Boston)

if you really wanna earn your man, ya need to learn your man

Just stop whatever you're doing now and watch this.

Courtesy of You Can't Make It Up via Gawker.

from one critic to another

... from my early critical years, an email excerpt from an established colleague who was helping me to find my sea legs:

"The best of the reviews you sent were of the Boston Women's Rainbow Chorus and of Pandora's Vox - you made me want to hear Pandora's Vox in fact.

You get off on the wrong foot with Pandora's Vox, however, with a dreadful opening sentence - "An abundance of beautiful sounds are being poured forth unto the ears of Boston's smart classical music fans'' - you certainly don't encourage the reader to follow you further. Always try to lead with your strongest thought, strongest impression: DON'T try to construct a cheerful "lede'' like the one above - it's the writerly equivalent of a speaker's noisily clearing his throat. Basically you'd have been better off starting with the second paragraph - there's basically no information in the first paragraph and the one hard fact you do offer is one you should probably conceal from an editor. "If only 100 people were present, then why are we writing about it?'' How many times have I heard THAT?

The rest is really pretty good, although on the whole it's a bad idea to go through a program chronologically, piece by piece, as if you're filling out a report card. If the internal logic of the program is chronological, than maybe you could do it, but try to figure out what the internal logic was, what connects to what else: this enables you to discuss the program thematically, to make connections, to write essayistically.

Be a little careful about introducing the first-person "I'' - it should be saved for those occasions when you really need it. The reader knows it's you, and doesn't need to know about your moodswings ("I was prepared for this piece to be a groaner'') or your sophistication ("pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing knowingly''). Instead point out how every listener would recognize himself and his experiences in this piece.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from Virgil Thomson was that if you describe something accurately and precisely enough, you have no need to tack on evaluative adjectives; if the description is accurate, the reader will draw the same conclusions you did.

The Women's Rainbow Coalition sets up a useful distinction between political and artistic aims, but repeats this rather than explaining it, making it clear,and using it purposefully. You can point out the good things this group does and stands for, which is a different issue from how well they sing.

Third paragraph is a tangled up mess of miscellaneous information and opinion that you need to sort out and prioritize. The graph ends with a "pious hope'' - a habit of yours. Break it. It is not your business to tell performers and institutions how they ought to have done something; it is your job to tell the reader what they did and how they did it and what it made you think about."

buttasshumprumpbacksidetrunkmussy

Thursday night for Portland queers means one thing: Booty.

Not only as in "on the hunt for some..." but also as in "Portland's Thursday night queer hotspot," with cheap drinks and eats, alterna-queers of all stripes and a feel-good vibe at Acme in SE PDX. (it's also where I met SER way back in December, on my first visit there)

Heading out to Booty tonight, with a WW photographer in tow, to get shots for WW's FINDER mag, which hits the stands this June.

Speaking of rear ends, I'd like to bring your attention to Johnny McGovern's - dba The Gay Pimp - new video (he comes out with about one new vid a year), called "For the fellas," which includes inspired song lyrics like:

"I don't care if people stare /
Gonna put my pretty hand down in your underwear.
Sittin' on your face, lick my panty lace...
Come back to my hotel room /
Your face in my mussy /
boom boom boom. (repeat 3 times)
My mussy's on fire /
Them other ho's? Liars!"

In case you missed the "mussy" reference, the word etymology goes something like this: man + pussy = mussy. (or maybe it's a contraction, like "m'ussy"???) As the term "manpussy" has become declasse in gay circles, apparently the contracted "mussy" has replaced it. In essence, the singer is inviting the listener to place his face between his manly butt cheeks. What the singer is evoking with "boom boom boom" is, uh, open to interpretation.

Enjoy.

Das Grab

... I continue to imagine Schubert as music-theatre. (as I do with John Dowland, Virgil Thomson, John Cage, Satie, others) I hope to put these imaginations to the stage/hall/public as I begin work with my new men's quartet, which I've founded and begun rehearsing with three first-rate male singers in Portland. More on that soon.

On the iPod shuffle today, Schubert's male chorus, "Das Grab," surfaced - I'd never noted it before. I found it incredibly moving in that utterly simple Schubertian way, especially in light of the tragedy at Virginia Tech.


Das Grab ist tief und stille,
Und schauderhaft sein Rand,
Es deckt mit schwarzer Hülle
Ein unbekanntes Land.

Verlaßne Bräute ringen
Umsonst die Hände wund;
Der Waise Klagen dringen
Nicht in der Tiefe Grund.

Doch sonst an keinem Orte
Wohnt die ersehnte Ruh;
Nur durch die dunkle Pforte
Geht man der Heimat zu.

text by Johann Gaudenz Freiherr von Salis-Seewis (1762-1834)


The grave is deep and silent,
and dreadful is its edge;
it covers with black shrouds
an unknown land.

Forsaken brides struggle
in vain with bloodied hands;
the lamenting of orphans
cannot penetrate its depths.

Yet in no other place
can one find the sought-for rest;
only through this dark gate
does one finally reach Home.

- English translation by Emily Ezust

almost de-lovely

Attended an hour-long rehearsal yesterday by Christopher Stowell's Oregon Ballet Theatre at their rehearsal hall in SE Portland. They're working on Stowell's "Eyes On You" from 2005, set to ten swell Cole Porter songs ("My Heart Belongs to Daddy," "Begin the Beguine," "Anything Goes," seven others) alternately sung and played live (PDX-based Pamela South, soprano, with guest pianist) and heard on recordings.

With thirty minutes of Cole Porter as your sexy, witty soundscape, how could you go wrong? Well, I'll say it here and again in print: I was stunned at how bland and predictable the choreography and dancing were. Stowell went "Americana" in "Eyes on You" the same way his dad (Kent Stowell) did with his recent underwhelming "Through Eden's Gates." (set to other classic American music, William Bolcom's rags). More on both works soon.

Also this week: an interview with hip-hop choreographer Rennie Harris, apropos of his work being performed in town by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (White Bird, presenting).

Strangely (to me): while walking with SER through the calm brush and waterways of pocket-size Tanner Springs Park, I noted, perched on the sidewalk, a caucasian girl, age 23 maybe, practicing some aggressive hip-hop moves like she was prepping an audition for "So You Think You Can Dance."

Silk Road to Stumptown

Hearing Wu Man play a concert with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in the late 90's was a highlight of my college years in Boston. She's swinging by Portland this Thursday, April 19 - courtesy of Chamber Music Northwest - for a concert in collaboration with a young-ish string quartet, the Daedalus.

This would get published in the WW, except for that little thing called "conflict of interest." (I work a part-time consultant job for CMNW)


Everything Old is New Again:
Wu Man Brings the Silk Road to Stumptown
by Stephen Marc Beaudoin

Strange as it seems, it actually makes some sense that Wu Man doesn’t own an iPod. No pimped-out MP3 player for this modern classical virtuoso – she’s still rockin’ the Walkman.

That’s not entirely surprising, because working modern magic on an old-school instrument is Wu Man’s stock-in-trade. As the most renowned contemporary musician on the 2000-year-old Chinese lute, the pipa, Wu Man is frequently at the intersection of old and new, east and west, tradition and innovation.

Growing up as “a big little star” of the pipa in the Chinese provinces, Wu Man spent her formative years in intense private and conservatory training on the instrument in Beijing. “I was sort of a prodigy,” she says. “The pipa is a very popular traditional instrument in China, and people take studying it very seriously.”

At conservatory, she met two composers studying there who have since become her close friends and frequent collaborators: Chen Yi and Zhou Long. After moving to the Boston area in the early 1990’s and beginning to make a name for herself, Wu Man got her first big break: Long was commissioned by the starry Kronos Quartet to write a new work for classical string quartet and pipa, a groudbreaking idea at the time. The work premiered in 1992.

“That was the first pipa with string quartet piece,” Man recalls. “Zhou Long took Chinese opera style, with lots of percussive elements in the string part, and the pipa part is more of a vocal part.” But navigating the east meets west musical waters wasn’t always smooth. “I remember the first rehearsal with Kronos Quartet was quite challenging for both of us,” Wu Man recalls. “There were difficulties in the balance, in the intonation and the dialogue.”

Fifteen years later and Wu Man is revisiting the work with some new colleagues, the up-and-coming Daedalus String Quartet, in a program presented by Chamber Music Northwest (full disclosure: I work part-time for CMNW) mixing east-west composers Zhou Long and Chen Yi, a spate of western classical works from Debussy to Stravinsky, and traditional music for the pipa. Wu Man enjoys this kind of global musical adventure, one that she couldn’t have had in the 1970’s in her native country.

“When I grew up, Western classical music wasn’t popular in China, and today it’s very popular. The globe is getting smaller,” she says, “and we are all closer than we used to be.”

Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Ave., 224-9842. 8 pm Thursday, April 19. $15-$40.

dancing in my underwear

One of the true joys of living alone: having the freedom (from ridicule or weary roommates) to dance in your boxer briefs to Britney Spears. And I bet the workers across the way at Union Station enjoyed the show, too.

I'm living here, that top apartment in the corner building right near the Union Station tower, which means I have a great view of downtown Portland and the NW hills. Even SER agreed, saying the views nearly made it worth the exorbitant rent I'm paying.

Flying solo ain't cheap. I'm grateful not only for SER's help, but also that of Dr. John (who gifted me with a kitchen's worth of utensils, pots and pans, silverware, dishes, appliances, on and on!), Shawn, Juan, CH and so many others.

Happy things: walking distance to all my jobs, to good restaurants and other hangout spots; neighbors on one side only; gym on the premises; opportunity to exercise my dormant (non-existent, some would say) decorating talents.

Less happy things: no dishwasher; will be spending months furnishing the place; paying nearly as much in rent as I was in Boston; adjusting to a solitary living arrangement.

Plan to have housewarming party circa April 30th.

why i love Larry Kramer

I love that Larry Kramer, patron saint of gay activism, pops up every few months to kick gays in the gut and remind us what it means to be alive, to be compassionate and caring people, to consider how our collective strength could be harnessed to better ourselves and our "community."

Last night, unpacking from the move (which went well, thank you, more on that soon; big love to SER), I took a few moments re-reading a passage from his 2004 Cooper Union speech, The Tragedy of Today's Gays:

"I love being gay. I love gay people. I think we’re better than other people. I really do. I think we’re smarter and more talented and more aware: I do, I do, I totally do. And I think we’re more tuned in to what’s happening, tuned into the moment, tuned into our emotions, and other people’s emotions, and we’re better friends. I really do think all these things."

"I know many people look to me for answers. Perhaps that is why many of you are here. You want answers? We’re living in pigshit and its up to each one of us to figure out how to get out of it. You must know that by now. Crystal meth is not an answer. You must know that by now. And quite frankly statistically it is only happening to so few of us that it is hard to get anyone worked up about that problem. Just as it hard to get worked up about a middle-aged man with brains who sero-converts. You want to kill yourself. Go kill yourself. I’m sorry. It takes hard work to behave like an adult. It takes discipline. You want it to be simple. It isn’t simple. Yes it is. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. These are the answers. It takes courage to live. Are you living? Not so I can see it. Gay people are all but invisible to me now. I wish you weren’t. But you are. And I look real hard.

No one likes to be told to grow up. It’s insulting. But these are always the answers. They will always be the answers. The only answers. There will never be any other answers. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. Be proud of yourself. Be proud you are gay. I don’t know why so many find all this so complicated. But then I am 69 years old and have less patience for the many problems I had myself when young. It is one of the privileges of getting old."

impeccable eyebrow dancing

A shameless indulgence, first viewed at a piano bar in Ogunquit, Maine, Summer 2001.

on divas... and anti-divas

I am bored with the term "diva."

As a cultural or verbal weapon, its cut has dulled. We reference the "divas" on American Idol, the "diva behavior" of such and such celebrity and, in classical music, worship at the altar of diva opera celebrities (female, mostly: Wayne Kostenbaum mined this material richly in his fever-pitch screed from the early 1990's, The Queen's Throat).

But these days I wince a little each time I write or say "diva": something tells me that its time has past, that it's fruitless to bother annointing just anyone as a bonafide diva.

Other words that I tire of seeing in print or hearing in the media: "brilliant," "camp" (the Sontag definition), "hipster" (also "hip"), "hot" (a la Paris Hilton).

I'm thinking of all this today because of some upcoming performances by a newish opera company in Portland that is decidedly anti-diva or, perhaps, POST-diva (oooooh): Opera Theater Oregon, and their travelling troupe, the Cavalcade of Beautiful Losers. There's a first-shot preview of their work in this Wednesday's WW.

The Cavalcade is a young-and-hungry opera misfits collective in residence at the Someday Lounge, featuring some of Portland's best young voices in mashed-up, knocked-over, punch-drunk opera meets vaudeville revuesicals. They're running this thing on a shoestring and have some damn interesting programs up their sleeve (including a few film plus live music events this summer at the Someday with, according to OTO Artistic Director Katie Taylor, a rare screening of DeMille's 70-minute "Carmen").

The preview comes out Wednesday; I'll link to it once it's published. [SMB: it's out now - see hyperlink] Oh yeah, the shot above is from the Cavalcade's current offering, a rollicking, surprisingly smart show called "Will Kill for Vaudeville." I guarantee it's the only time you'll see Handel's "Where e'er you walk" (Semele) performed as a bump-n-grind Gypsy Rose Lee tease.

looking forward / looking back

So I've packed an additional four or five boxes in the last few hours, and thrown away several trash bags' worth of pack-rat odds and ends: copied music (for shame!), letters, press clippings, programs, etc etc.

In the process, uncovered one of my journals (of which I kept several, handwritten, from about 1999 to 2003), dating from 2001/2002. An excerpt that is typical of much of the tone (and themes) from that year of my life:


February 2, 2002: [I would have been 22 years old, SMB]

"So I'm feeling better, which is not to say I'm feeling great. Reading Living and Dying in 4/4 Time. A good read. Keeps my mind off me.

Depressed most of today. Tricked with a guy named... hmm... Tony? Tony - 38 year old, I believe - said he was a painter/photographer/handyman. Nice guy.

Who are my friends? David, Claire, Cindy, Ashley, some others...

I think I need an anti-depressant - though in Paul Gallotta's diary he talks about their adverse affects.

This week may have been an all-time record for dramatic events... oh, and Friday G. had an abortion. Not that that directly affects me, but...

Tomorrow I really begin diet and exercise. Sick of how I'm looking (+ feeling)... if I could just be cute and feel good w/out using...

Tried to pick up a guy at AA tonight - unsuccessfully (either he's not interested or he really had to be up early...)

At this rate I'm getting just over 3 hours of sleep b4 King's Chapel tomorrow morning... oh boy.

How I hate my body."

Things change, but they don't.

three things

1. I move to a new apartment, downtown Portland near Union Station, in less than 48 hours. I have packed exactly two boxes.

2. SER (my boyfriend) and I took off Friday/Saturday for not quite 24 hours of frolicking at Mt. Hood, Hood River and the Columbia Gorge. Two words: fucking gorgeousness.

3. Today was Easter. I ate a Cadbury cream egg and sang two services at Trinity.

I heart hate mail

Listen, I don't have illusions about the grandiosity of my position as a contributing arts writer for the second largest paper in the fine state of Oregon. Firstly, I'm barely more than a freelancer - no cushy full-time staff position for me. Secondly, I'm in Oregon. That is all.

But I do take what I do seriously, if by seriously I mean this: I care about what I write about, I think about what (and who) I write about, and I try to combine a healthy love of what I do with a healthy irreverence and measured insouciance.

This is all a windy introduction to the first installment of what I plan to be a weekly (Saturdays) forum for choice selections, present and past, from my email or snail mail inbox. Love letters, rants, raves and assorted interesting or mundane things.

I thought it would be appropriate to start with the most recent gem that's come across my desk. The following letter came addressed to me at WW, on 3 single spaced pages in 12 point font, with no signature or return address, in response to a 100-word micro-review I offered of a Portland production of the evergreen "Grease."

Thus sent anonymously, I feel entirely comfortable quoting that letter here. Hold on.


"i am a member of the grease company - tho not a performer, per se...

i wanted to give you some feedback on your review. i hope that in your young life as a creative artist you take seriously your obligation as a critic. i hope you want to get better at it...
what is your intent?... is it to encourage/warn the consumer?... or is it to hurt someone's feelings by being shallow and cruel?
you said corey brunish was the worst danny ever. [SMB note: in fact I said no such thing. I did say this: "Corey Brunish evaporates as the first ever Danny with zero sex appeal."] have you seen them all? really? over the last 35 years? wow. but wait: since the show has been around longer than you have, that doesn't seem possible.

... brunish came up with the concept for the reunion show and provided the financing as well...

the fact that you singled out 2 gay members of the cast for praise and then bashed two hetero actors makes you look like you are prejudiced... [SMB note: how the *&$# would I know who was queer, bi, straight, etc in the cast? why would that matter to me?] certainly you know what prejudice feels like. do you like the way it feels?
... have you heard the word "karma"? you have? well then, you have something to look forward to, don't you?

... i and everyone i know will not be among your readers. and by the way, good job on losing at least a 4 advertisers [sic] who side with me and the grease company on this one... so as i said, best of luck, wherever you end up in life. and i sincerely mean that - i want you to be happy - lord knows there are enuf [sic] bitter gay people in the world.

peace and love dude."

... This is but a short selection. My reaction? Shock, initially (it's probably one of the most audacious letters about my writing I've ever received), and then I just had to laugh at it (with it?), especially its vaguely homophobic overtones.

A gay media mafia? Come on "dude."

Good chat with Guettel

Broadway Across America/Portland Opera is presenting the Adam Guettel-Craig Lucas musical from 2005 that's been getting alot of attention, The Light in the Piazza. I had an enjoyably warm chat with Guettel, whom I'd heard speak about his fascinating show "Floyd Collins" while in college in Boston, for a WW feature (below).

Incidentally, Portland's Stumptown Stages will be presenting "Floyd Collins" this summer - I wonder if Guettel will be returning for at least a peek at the production, or to give a talk?


The Light in the Piazza: this Met-meets-Broadway show is all about lush music
by Stephen Marc Beaudoin
reprinted courtesy of Willamette Week

By his early teens, Adam Guettel was enjoying a career on the operatic stage that would be the envy of any young singer—not to mention adults three times his age. In gigs as a boy soprano at the Metropolitan and New York City operas, Guettel was flexing prodigious musical muscles even before hitting puberty.

A few years and chest hairs later, Guettel's musical interests were maturing—and he wasn't so much interested in assuming the familial mantle of musical theater songwriting (his granddad is Richard "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" Rodgers; Gypsy author Arthur Laurents is his godfather). So Guettel went his own way, soaked up Stravinsky and Stevie Wonder, played in a few rock bands, went to college and, well, a few hit shows and Tony awards later, it looks like he's well positioned to assume that mantle after all.

Guettel (pronounced "gettle"), a '60s child, has always walked the line between opera and musical theater. And with his breakout hit musical The Light in the Piazza, he has composed a gorgeous score that has critics scrambling for the appropriately highfalutin, gushy adjective: "lush—romantic—operatic!" Guettel, somewhat surprisingly, takes issue with that last descriptor.

"I think 'operatic' is a term that is something of a misnomer, in the sense that when most people read that word, they think of opera in the 19th-century terms of it...it implies a kind of cloudiness or melodrama, which we don't do at all."

Piazza is a swoony romantic story by playwright Craig Lucas (based on a novella of the same name by Elizabeth Spencer), whose writing Guettel says allowed his lyrical side to take wing. And he feels this lyrical gift separates his work from that of his peers on Broadway. "Life is a nuanced and multicolored thing, it's not only about screaming at the top of your lungs, which is what much contemporary theater music tends to be," he says, taking a pointed jab at the hyper-amplified jukebox revuesicals so in vogue.

So instead, with a cast of golden-throated actors singing what is one of the most tuneful and lovely Broadway scores to be heard in several seasons, Guettel's come full circle: marrying his love of joyful popular music with a well-pedigreed background.

"When I was young I listened intensely to Stevie Wonder, and I prayed to God that the song 'Golden Lady' would stop skipping on my record player, and in fact, it stopped skipping! I don't mean to sound like a nut," he says, "but my prayers were answered."

Fairytopia

Breakfast will simply never be the same.



Barbie Fairytopia "Printed Fun" Pop Tarts. The delectable flavor? Sparkleberry.



(Check out the extension on that lithe pink-n-green number! Paging OBT!)

Buy them now, and satisfy the little fairy in you.

the iPod shuffle: 4-4-2007

I hit shuffle on the iPod. The following first three songs are offered...

1. Tango-Ballad, from "The Threepenny Opera" - Kurt Weill (1954 Off-Broadway cast recording)

Weill's rat-a-tat swoony tune in Blitzstein's original English adaptation.

Macheath (Scott Merrill) croons:
"There was a time and now it's all gone by
when we two lived together, she and I.
The way we were was just the way to be:
I cared for her, and she took care of me."
(listen for the way he falls off the note on "me," so unaffected, so believing and naive)

Jenny Diver (Lenya herself) answers with her affecting bleat:
"There was a time and now it's all gone by,
when we were poor but happy, he and I.
But when the day would bring no job to me
he'd curse and say, 'how lazy can you be?'
I'll let him huff and puff, I've worked long enough."
(listen for the hint of knowing laughter just before the twist in the last phrase, the way Lenya as Jenny, exhausted from life and having "worked long enough," gives up her voice to speak the concluding thought)


2. Antony O Daly, from "Reincarnations" - Samuel Barber (Samuel Barber: Choral Music recording, Cambridge University Chamber Choir)

The basses drone out Antony's name on a low pedal "E" as the sopranos first, then the tenors and altos layer on the arching lament (Barber knew something about shaping a line).

"Since your limbs were laid out, the stars do not shine, the fish leap not out..." (text by James Stephens)

"For O Daly is dead... For O Daly is dead..." the chorus repeats, ad nauseum, rising ever higher in pitch.

Then the men get the tune as the women sound out the "Antony!" drone. And then the big choral moment - always effective - when the text simply can't contain the emotion and the choir bursts out with one long "ah!" on that plaintive lamenting tune.

"After you there is nothing to do! There is nothing but grief!" The "Reincarnations" cycle may date from 1936-1940, early in Barber's career, but it's a choral masterwork, among his best and most lasting works.


3. Stolen Moments - from the album "Stolen Moments" ("Stolen... and Other Moments," 32 Records, 1997, re-release of 1970's and 80's material on Muse), Mark Murphy

The tune isn't Murphy's, but the original lyric is, and it's become one of his calling cards. You know Murphy's voice the moment it hits: tight and cleanly expressive up top, warm with a bit of fuzz on the edges at the lower end, not afraid to use vibrato freely, impeccable intonation. Virtuosic vocal improvising, but he's too smart to simply show off: he rides his voice in jagged waves to its clarion top then scoops to the basement, backing up and off the beat to end in a joyful near-shout.

Murphy's got to be the most innovative male jazz singer alive today, and he's helped train the next generation, already making an impact (Kurt Elling, Dave Devoe, et al).

Conny Janssen's US debut

My recent review, for WW, of Dutch choreographer Conny Janssen's debut American showing, courtesy of Portland's inimitable White Bird Dance. Also, the preview article is here.

In US Debut, Janssen's "Rebound" Springs To Life
by Stephen Marc Beaudoin
reprinted courtesy of Willamette Week

Conny Janssen’s “Rebound” may have a trampoline center stage, but the most buoyant and affecting moments in this new dance piece have nothing to do with that nonsensical springboard.

In its American debut courtesy of White Bird, Conny Janssen Danst – a Netherlands-based revolving troupe of internationally reared dancers – offered Janssen’s hour-long “Rebound,” from 2005 last weekend at Portland State University's Lincoln Hall. It’s an attractive, densely-packed dance for five men, shot through with an emotionally chilly Nordic current.

As the audience enters the theater, the dancers mill about in a three-quarters enclosed padded white box. Outfitted in hip dressy-casual couture (very Express for Men), the five men inhabit a clinical space void of time, context or history. They could be office workers; they could, as easily, be smartly dressed asylum inmates.

To an all-over-the-map sound score ranging from John Zorn to Aphex Twin, Janssen sends her male dancers gliding, leaping, jumping and bounding across, onto and off of her sterile set. Relationships and conflicts flare up and fizzle, often in only a few minutes – developing character and emotional through-line is the least of Janssen’s interests.

There are many highlights: an elegant duo partnering (mop-top Martijn Kappers and tall Kevin Polak) that, in its unexpected placement of a head between legs or the precipitous balancing of a partner on a back, suggests both a psychological and sexual power play. There is an extraordinary sometimes-quartet to driving thumpa-thumpa music in which, at some point, all five men participate, and here Janssen’s movement language is entirely her own: a rapid-fire series of hip-hop thrusts and pops dissolves into fast-and-angry floor work, which her company executes with thrilling precision.

And then there is, of course, that trampoline, which makes its appearance about two-thirds of the way into the piece. Janssen has said in interviews that she finds men curious about the world they inhabit, and so, when faced with this buoyant new toy, the men take to it like curious monkeys – joyfully exploring the limits of their weightless existence, challenging one another to trampoline duels, all of the rhythmic thuds and skids amplified through floor mics. It goes on for about fifteen minutes, and then Janssen moves on to better material.

To her credit, Janssen has recruited five first-rate dancers for the work, all of whom are up to the technical demands of the piece and are also, as it turns out in the rump-shaking finale, great clowns. Amid a group of exceptional peers, Italian-born Dario Tortorelli – compact with brooding bedroom eyes – stands out for clean technique, infectious enthusiasm and pure theatricality.

Among the bouncing around, physical clowning and pure dance, there is but one moment of respite, and it may be the most exquisite part of Janssen’s dance. Exhausted from their air play, toys put away, the men simply sit down on stage, leaned up against the giant white padded wall upstage center. They cross their arms or jut out their legs. They breathe. And as a Satie-like halo of piano music envelops the auditorium, their eyes look not skybound, but inward.

RIP Philip Brett

Just finished four hours penning 100-word blurbs on 20 upstanding Portland classical music and dance org's for Willamette Week's "Finder" mag, due out mid-June. Fueled by Maker's on the rocks and lukewarm cheese pizza slices.

Was necessary to get out of the house, as the roommate was glued to a creepy Dateline special on "mystery deaths" (an especially sad unattractive young couple, early 20's from Texas, who faked - sort of - the husband's death so they could could collect $100k in life insurance). At least it was a sobering departure from his usual fare: Rachel Ray, the Barefoot Contessa, Brothers and Sisters.

Later tonight, attending Oregon Symphony gay composers program (Barber, Bernstein, Tchaikovsky), tho it's not billed as such. In my quest to stir up conversation, debate, anything among the WW readers, I authored this little ditty. You'll notice a comment from "Charles" on the article - it's none other than Charles Noble, Oregon Symphony violist, who's playing the homo-deluxe program in question. Noble comments on the article here, and this remark of his stood out:

"There was a concert preview in the Willy Week about the fact that all of these composers (on the classical concert) are gay, and that there must be some hidden subtext relating to gayness that links all of them. I’m not sure that you can turn gayness into a monolithic thing, but if this angle gets more butts in seats, then I’m all for the unusual take on our programming..." (bold mine)

I blinked and made a face when I read, and then re-read, that sentence. Gayness... as "a monolithic thing." I'm guessing he meant it in this sense: that gayness is not definable, is not concrete or something you can catch the pulse of. But then, of course, Noble would be wrong.

Also, it's somewhat insulting for Noble, himself a professional musician, to be so utterly dismissive of the tremendous scholarship that has gone into gay and lesbian musicology (I don't make this shit up). Let's not forget Philip Brett and his colleagues quite so soon.

Thank you, Bette Davis

I shall begin this blog - however oddly appropriate it may be - with the first words from Bette Davis' extraordinary autobiography, "The Lonely Life:"

"I have always been driven by some distant music - a battle hymn no doubt - for I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world."

Onward.