The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2007 > October
October 2007
Review: Peachtree Modern Opera’s ‘Little Women’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OPERA REVIEW Mark Adamo’s “Little Women.” Peachtree Modern Opera. Attended Tuesday. Repeat performances: 8 p.m. Friday; 3 p.m. Sunday. $10. Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, 118 Second Ave., Decatur. www.peachtreemodernopera.org.
Peachtree Modern Opera, which is presenting its debut production this week, was started by a group of young women, all singers with local connections, to create more professional opportunities.
To kick things off, they chose Mark Adamo’s “Little Women,” an immensely popular opera not previously seen in Atlanta. Of the founders, three have starring roles and the fourth, Kathryne MacKenzie Susong, has become the new company’s general director.
Adamo is a gifted composer, and in “Little Women,” his first opera — I attended the 1998 world premiere, in Houston — he already demonstrates his gifts. Here, the major loss is the orchestra, replaced by a piano and a percussionist. Kristine Bengtson played the piano with virtuosity and conducted from the keyboard.
In Adamo’s score, each major character has her own distinct sound universe, and the spoken parts are underlined by a spiky modernist sound with considerable originality. Perhaps no other recent opera has so many memorable arias and ensembles, the kind you can hum the next day. At times there is a “Broadway with an edge” sound, but Adamo comes closer to creating his own sound than most of his peers.
Unfortunately, this sophisticated score is lavished on a text based on Louisa May Alcott’s sentimental novel for adolescent girls, of four sisters coming of age in New England during the Civil War. It’s a bit sappy for me; maybe it’s a girl thing.
The paradox of “Little Women” is that, while it calls for a large cast of young women, the roles are hard to cast. This problem was not solved here, though most performances were honorable. In the anchor role of Jo, Elizabeth Cooper Pettitt gave a solid performance. She has a distinctive voice with significant vibrato and excellent diction.
The other sisters — Maria McDaniel Dikin, Emily Parrott and Jocelyn Rose Glicklich — showed promise, struggling at times with Adamo’s demands. Jenny Lynn Heidtman turned in a scene-stealing performance as Aunt Cecilia, with a large voice and excellent dramatic skills.
Gerald Yarbray, a young baritone, showed considerable promise as John Brooke, who marries Meg. His large voice has nice color and intonation, and he is a charismatic figure on stage. The same goes for Jeffery David Gibb, who portrayed Jo’s friend Baehr. A work in progress, like much of the cast, he seems destined for bigger things.
The stage direction (Katherine Newton) was generally excellent, though it sometimes got carried away with the slapstick. Singers from Grady High served as the chorus. The company is already planning its next production, for spring.
Artistic Pumpkins
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Think your pumpkin is a work of art? Check out this original design by Omar Richardson, a graduate student in printmaking at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. Richardson raffled off the pumpkin at a show of his woodcuts and prints at shopSCAD. Proceeds go to a school in the Bahamas, where RIchardson is from.
I also enjoyed these pumpkins, carved by architects at Kenneth Lynch & Associates for an office contest. Radio host Clark Howard was among the judges who chose the winner: Marilyn, by project architect Bryan Busch.
Project architect David Robertson daringly included his boss’ eyes in this pumpkin titled “Redneck.”
Here is a mixed-vegetable piece by project architect Steve Ivey. (Note the earring.)
Finally, there’s something serene about this deep sea pumpkin by assistant Kate Davidson.
Happy Halloween!
Permalink | | Categories: Visual arts
Highrisemania
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Museum of Design Atlanta’s benefit tour of the penthouses at Colony House, one of two residential towers at Colony Square, showed off high-design interiors and spectacular city views.
It also highlighted an important site in the history of Atlanta’s urbanity.
Before there was Aqua and the Mansion, before there was the Metropolitan or Midtown Lofts, before “mixed-use” was a developer’s mantra, there was Colony Square.
Built in 1969, designed by Jova/Daniels/Busby, Architects, the complex was the first such development in the South. The project has had its ups and downs, though the residential towers always attracted diehard urbanites.
Now that Midtown has flowered and Atlanta has caught up with the concept and the concrete and glass modernism, it’s a hot again. The hotel will become a W. Hopefully, the retail will get more sophisticated, too.
Still hip at 38 years old. That’s a pretty good track record.
Permalink | |
Public Art
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Public art has an unimpressive history in Atlanta, a victim of low budgets, low aspirations and low priorities. Hope I’m wrong, but that’s why I think Bill Gignilliat has about as much hope of succeeding in his crusade to get the city to fulfill its public-art obligations as Don Quixote.
Corporations haven’t done much better, historically. But, if you accept the reality than tough, troubling work will never find a home in a office lobby, you might agree that there have been promising signs of late.
Ben Carter’s commitment for the his big Buckhead development, starting with a Frank Stella. Cousins’ commissions and permanent gallery at Terminus. Artist Todd Murphy appointed curator for Sovereign condominium tower. Joe Peragine’s video/painting installation for One Glenlake Parkway, which I wrote about on Sunday.
Anything else intriguing going on out there? I’d like to know.
Q & A with Flora Maria Garcia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You can find our interview with the new head of the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition here.
Garcia will be meeting with many artists, arts leaders and businesspeople in the coming months. I’m interested to hear what you think about Garcia and MAACC’s role in the community, either in this blog or email me at ktagami@ajc.com.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Arts venues
REVIEW: ASO with a French Accent
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
American composer Ned Rorem, as bracing a writer as he is stylish a composer, famously divides the musical world, as he perceives it, into two camps: German and French.
Where the former can be heavy, self-consciously “deep” and often overbearing, the latter — he includes himself in this group — is transparent, colorful, cerebral without pretension, more light and vapor than soil and water, cooler in temperature, often gossamer.
That definition came to mind Thursday in Symphony Hall, when the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra offered an evening of French music, the fourth and final program hooked up with the High Museum of Art’s current Louvre and Impressionism exhibitions.
Most of the music here was also danceable: not just set to dance rhythms, but actually meant for choreography and the ballet stage — a very French musical trait, that.
Conductor Robert Spano, who looked more relaxed than he has all season, began with Darius Milhaud’s “La Creation du monde,” a 1923 ballet based on an African creation tale.
It’s often credited as the first concert hall work to adopt jazz attitudes and gestures, and thus helped infuse classical music with yet another fresh and folkish style. (Like George Gershwin, whose “An American in Paris” closed the show, Milhaud was Jewish; it’s not hard to speculate that their “outsider” status in society would open their ears to what was then perceived as a threatening, outsider art form.)
The ASO combo for “La Creation” assembled in a small cluster at stage left, with Spano beating hypnotically in the solemn sections and, elsewhere, letting the individual voices riot to their heart’s delight. Ted Gurch played a sultry sweet alto saxophone; Laura Ardan’s clarinet rang out with spicy appeal; and, most ravishingly, the oboe playing of Elizabeth Koch — the ASO’s newest and youngest member — set the standard for personality and ear-catching beauty.
It was a loaded program. Claude Debussy’s “Danses sacree et profane” stumbled a bit, not in communicating the piece’s Arcadian charms, but in accent. Harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson, as soloist, offered lovely sounds, although there wasn’t much fantasy in her playing — not much air around the notes. It sounded, as Rorem might have observed, more German than French.
Maurice Ravel’s “La Valse,” a big-canvas ballet completed after the guns of World War I went quiet, and his “Valses nobles et sentimentales,” a lesser work from before the war started, sat on either side of intermission.
“La Valse” starts with a naive ballroom dance that slowly unravels, gets a little roughed up. As if standing on the fulcrum of some cosmic see-saw, Spano managed to tip between the forces, back and forth, of light/clarity and the gathering darkness lurking nearby. It wasn’t hard to imagine a French vs. German battle for heart and mind being played out across the ballet score’s 12 minutes.
Spano shaped and sculpted and drove the music to extremes, never letting us lose sight of the opposite pole. It was among the most nuanced, comprehensive performances of the work I’ve ever heard live.
The orchestra delivered Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” as music by a serious Francophile, which put him happily in the Ravel camp. Thus we learned that Gershwin’s 1928 score is less an ancestor to “West Side Story” and more a kindred spirit with “La Valse.”
Here it was Gershwin the colorist, playing with light and shadow, even as his Tin Pan Alley swing — and those blaring automobile horns — came through with raucous joy.
No Respect for Atlanta’s Arts Scene?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do Charleston, San Diego and Santa Fe really have better live theater than Atlanta? So say the cultured readers of Travel + Leisure Magazine, in this recent poll.
Charleston has the Spoleto Festival — for a few weeks each year. San Diego has the well-regarded Old Globe and … what else? Santa Fe, long famous for its visual arts scene, has improved its live theater offerings in recent years. But come on. Our biggest theater, the Alliance, won the regional Tony Award this year. And many of Atlanta’s smaller theater companies — from the Center for Puppetry Arts to 7 Stages to Out of Hand — have been nationally recognized for their innovative, original productions.
Readers also ranked Atlanta’s classical music scene 18th out of 25. So much for Atlanta Symphony Orchestra conductor Robert Spano, who won a Grammy this year for his work on Osvaldo Golijov’s “Ainadamar,” which took the honors for best opera album.
It brings to mind what Sylvie Fortin said to me recently. Fortin is the editor of Art Papers, a prominent contemporary art journal published in Atlanta. She attends many of the world’s major art fairs. “People look at my booth and see ‘Atlanta’ and there’s this body language,” she said. “Sometimes they start laughing. Or they don’t laugh and are really nice and say, ‘Oh, is there a really big art scene in Atlanta?’ ” Fortin is a champion for Atlanta’s visual artists and has put the work of two Georgia artists on her cover. She tells people around the world that, yes, there is a strong arts scene in Atlanta. But why does she have to? What will it take for Atlanta’s arts scene to get some respect?
Childrens’ Art Books
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Childrens’ books can inspire young artists with beautiful illustrations and rich storytelling. They also can teach kids about the arts in a more direct way, by taking them on an adventure in a museum or at the symphony, or by exploring colors or techniques used by certain artists.
There are several good art books for children in the museum shop for the new exhibit at the High Museum of Art, “Inspiring Impressionism: The Impressionists and the Art of the Past.”
But it’s really just a taste of the wide variety of childrens’ books specifically about the arts — many of which have been published in the past few years. There even are board books about contemporary art for toddlers, such as “Andy Warhol’s Colors,” by Susan Goldman Rubin. Legendary dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov collaborated with illustrator Vladimir Radunsky for a new book called “Because …” to encourage kids to nurture their artistic talents. One of my daughter’s favorites is the imaginative “Katie” series by James Mayhew, which includes “Katie and the Mona Lisa” and “Katie Meets the Impressionists.”
You can get more ideas from Reading Rockets, a nonprofit that promotes reading here.
Do you have a favorite childrens’ book about art?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Books
Can a Big Box Store Ever be Archtitecture?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It would seem that the terms “big box store” and “architecture” are mutually exclusive.
Hulking windowless bunkers looming over acres of concrete parking lots — that’s the norm. If owners do make the slightest pretense of prettying them up, the result is something like the hippos in tutus from the Disney movie “Fantasia.”
There is at least one exception. The Target at Atlantic Station.
The building is sleek rectangle rather than a cube, and it angles on the site to play down its length. The entry section is a double-height glass pavilion—which lightens up the mass and permits daylight inside. More windows (imagine that!) on the facade mirror the proportions.
The stacked stone wall at the base creates texture, and spherical red bollards, a play on the Target logo, adds some whimsy. The architect, praised be he or she, stored the parking beneath.
This might be the best building in Atlantic Station. Take a look and tell me what you think.
Atlanta Baroque and French chamber music
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. Sunday at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, in Buckhead. www.atlantabaroque.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s become a blessing and a curse. With the blossoming of Atlanta’s classical music scene, there are too many concerts to choose from on any given weekend. With no coordination on the musicians’ part, an avid listener is forced to attend one ensemble, regret missing the others, and pray that the scheduling gremlins don’t wreak similiar havoc across the season.
Or maybe the colliding calendar is one more sign that Atlantans love unchecked sprawl and will grudgingly accept the resulting performance traffic.
Sunday afternoon was impossibly congested. A partial list starts at Spivey Hall, where the venerable Atlanta Chamber Players offered music off their latest CD; in Roswell, the Michael O’Neal Singers and Atlanta Boy Choir sang a popular contemporary Mass; violinist Christopher Pulgram and harpsichordist Peter Marshall, both Atlanta Symphony musicians, played Bach in Buckhead; also in Roswell, the Chopin Society of Atlanta hosted an eclectic program of Chopin and tango master Astor Piazzolla; celebrity clarinettist Richard Stoltzman performed with the Emory University Chamber Music Society; at Kennesaw State University’s fine new Bailey Center, a faculty ensemble played chamber music by a clutch of today’s hipster composers (Osvaldo Golijov, Jennifer Higdon, Peter Volans).
And at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, I caught the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra cutting loose in a program called “Recreation de Musique,” an elegant collection of instrumental rarities by three composers from the French Baroque.
The opening was rough. Marin Marais’s Second Suite (from his “Pièces en trio” of 1692) includes passages of arcadian delight, intense drama and soulful emotion — at least for those who give in to the music’s cool temperatures and formality. Yet viola da gambist Martha Bishop’s sour intonation and what seemed like everyone’s inadequate preparation — a reminder that Atlanta Baroque musicians rehearse pro bono — tended to overwhelm the occassionally lovely playing.
Two “Recreations de musique” by Jean-Marie Leclair — basically a set of dance tunes fit for suppertime — one scored for two prominant violins, the other for two flutes, came off with fewer mishaps and more gusto in interpretation. Each suite closed with musical fireworks: a Chaconne that was a brief tour of the cosmos (with some brilliant fiddling from Martha Perry) and a feisty Tambourin that twirled and pounded with the mania of a drug-fueled rave.
They closed with Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Sonate for Eight Instruments — the major draw of the concert for this listener. The shortest work on the afternoon, the Sonate was also the most varied, virtuosic, energetic and compelling to hear. In the middle there’s short detour, a sort of lyrical “aria” for cello solo (Brent Wissick) that I wish had been repeated as an encore. Fabulous stuff.
Permalink | |
Sylvia McNair opens new Kennesaw State concert hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kennesaw State University has opened a new concert hall, and it’s a beaut. I have a hunch it’ll join Spivey Hall and Emory University’s Schwartz Center as the best in the Atlanta metro area.
The Dr. Bobbie Bailey and Family Performance Center opened its doors Oct. 6 for students and faculty. Saturday night, pops vocalist Sylvia McNair and pianist Ted Taylor were the first celebrity guests on its stage.
Costing just $9 million, the Bailey center includes a 627-seat theater, an orchestra-choir rehearsal room and 1,800-square foot art gallery.
Architect John Abbott, from the local firm of Stevens & Wilkinson Stang & Newdow, designed the exterior to be functionally plain — brown and boxy. The auditorium, as yet unnamed, is what captures the imagination.
It’s a shoebox in shape, a bit narrower at the stage, with a very high ceiling. The seats are laid out asymmetrically, and with strips of blond wood lattice ringing the upper walls, the room feels both serene and modern. One might describe the hall as almost Japanese in style, except there’s plenty of leg room between the seats.
David Kahn of Acoustic Dimensions designed multiple closet-sized chambers and sound-absorbing curtains behind the lattice, to alter the acoustics. In effect, the room appears small and intimate but its actual volume is enormous. It makes for a pleasing environment.
When Kennesaw State dean Joseph Meeks took the stage to introduce the performers and the center’s chief patron, his voice rang out clear and loud, nicely articulated, with warmth — all the basic ingredients for great acoustics.
From the stage he acknowledged Dr. Bailey, a business woman with an honorary degree, who gave $1.75 million as the naming gift, and another quarter million for pianos for the music school. The rest of construction funds came from private, campus and public sources.
Despite these welcoming natural acoustics, McNair and Taylor’s show — part autobiographical cabaret, part “I hate classical music” shtick — was amplified.
Therein lies one woman’s complicated life story, of an ambitious, smart and silvery-toned soprano from Ohio who worked closely with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony and became an opera superstar (a beloved Pamina, Poppea and Tytania) and then suffered a vocal crisis in the late 1990s. Singing full-voiced opera into giant theaters was no longer an option.
So a few years ago she declared her interest in opera dead, retooled her blessed talent and switched to the Great American Songbook for repertoire. Saturday, she took pains to inform the audience, more than once, “I’m having a great time!”
Taylor, a supple accompanist, wrestled with the center’s brand new Steinway 9-foot grand piano, helping to break-in the instrument.
In fetching, witty songs by Cole Porter, Richard Rogers, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Andre Previn and others, McNair’s crisp attention to words, her effortless ability to shape a line and her rather prim delivery turned every number into a tiny romantic aria.
Unlike most cabaret singers, McNair approaches the songs from above; you can hear her disciplined preparation and analysis in every song. It all came together in Harold Arlen’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” offered as a tender confession of vulnerability.
Permalink | |
‘Bach at Leipzig’ at Aurora Theatre
THEATER REVIEW Itamar Moses' “Bach at Leipzig.” Through Oct. 28. Aurora Theatre in Lawrenceville. 678-226-6222, www.auroratheatre.com
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We tend to think of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music as lofty, sublime, perfect — “an argument for the existence of God,” as one Bach scholar recently put it. To his contemporaries, however, Bach was competent but not great.
After he died, no one bothered to save his music; hundreds of his scores were discarded as scrap paper. During his life, when important jobs came open, he had to audition like everyone else — and he wasn’t anybody’s first choice.
That’s the starting premise of “Bach at Leipzig,” Itamar Moses’ charmingly, maddeningly daffy play that wears its cleverness on its sleeve, running through Oct. 28 at Aurora Theatre in Lawrenceville.
In lucid, precision-timed direction by Danielle Mindess, and with a winning cast, the characters carve for themselves rounded personas: None are especially likable, none are forgettable.
It is June 1722. Leipzig. The revered Johann Kuhnau, music master of the Thomaskirche, dies at the pipe organ. Georg Philipp Telemann, “the greatest organist in Germany” (Jim Adkins, grandiloquent in his silence), is the favorite to capture the prestigious post.
Meanwhile, six nobodies — Moses concocted this cadre, based somewhat on historical figures; Bach never appears — can’t hope to compete on musical merits, so they scheme, swindle, poison, blackmail and counter-blackmail in hopes of landing the job.
All the wannabes are named either Johann or Georg (a point of comic confusion that never tires the playwright). There’s Lenck (Dan Triandiflou), a con man who hopes to restore his reputation through more trickery. Steindorff (Jeremy Aggers) is the pretty playboy who really wants to be a dancer. Kaufmann (Daniel Burnley) stumbles around in a geriatric fog. Graupner (Larry Davis), more talented than the others, still fears the charismatic Telemann.
One by one, each introduces himself by reciting a letter home before joining the thrust and parry of the others. Thus, all of act one is constructed — as we learn at the start of act two — like a six-voiced fugue in music. (The audience is encouraged to applaud Moses’ brilliance.) Act two’s conceit is a play within a play, another opportunity to weave together six or more threads of verbal mayhem.
On occasion, grand ideas about art and society threaten to lift the wordplay and poppycock to a more cerebral plain. Schott (Al Stilo), the traditionalist, argues that Kuhnau had prized craftsmanship, never innovation: “When you deny the musical principles laid down by our predecessors you risk denying their religious ones as well.”
Fasch (Chris Entweiler), the progressive, counters, “That is preposterous! New music might, in fact, reach those who do not like the work of our predecessors …”
But such chewable exchanges go nowhere, evaporating with the next rim-shot gag.
If “Bach at Leipzig” feels a lot like a Tom Stoppard play — think “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,” about two insignificant characters yanked out of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” — it’s intentional. Although he credits Stoppard as his influence, Moses can’t match his idol’s balance of theatrical artifice with dramatic substance.
Perhaps that explains why there’s hardly any music in this production (Thom Jenkins gets sound design credit), which further reinforces the notion that “Bach at Leipzig” isn’t about the complexities of art and mankind, but merely a crafty play about itself, clever for cleverness’ sake.
Film Love
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta needs more people like Andy Ditzler.
Film Love, a series the singer-songwriter runs at eyedrum, is the best —and often the only —opportunity to see experimental films of all stripe, intelligently presented.
Andy follows his curiosity in planning his screenings. Tonight’s program, which starts at 8 p.m., is the second part of an exploration on the use of still photography in film. It includes Andy Warhol Screen Tests” and “(nostalgia),” Hollis Frampton’s meditation on time, memory and photography. The protagonists are snapshots and a hot plate.
Andy does this and other programs purely for the love of film. Running screenings is the only way to see the films he wanted to see. I asked him if he broke even. He said, “Often…. I like to think of it as a party.”
Party on, Andy.
For more info: eyedrum or frequentsmallmeals
Permalink | |
Nicknames for Atlanta Buildings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What do you see when you look at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre? To me, the three-line design on the front looks like a giant curved E in honor of the company that shelled out $20 million for the naming rights.
One of the architects involved with the design, James. S. Van Duys, told me that his colleagues at Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart and Associates referred to the design as, variously, “the three waves,” “the haircut,” and “the honey bun.” Michael Taormina, the arts center’s managing director, calls it “the mohawk.”
It makes me wonder what people call other well-known buildings in metro Atlanta. What about 1180 Peachtree, the Midtown highrise with flaps on the top that houses King & Spalding and the restaurant Trois? I’ve heard it called the “praying hands” building because of those flaps, but my husband thinks it looks like Dilbert’s bosses’ head.
What are some nicknames you’ve heard for buildings in Atlanta?
Permalink | Comments (54) | Categories: Architecture
Meet Atlanta’s Newest Arts Leader
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flora Maria Garcia, the new head of the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition, starts her new job in a couple of weeks. I caught up with her during a recent home-hunting visit, and wanted to pass along some interesting things I learned about her.
First, some background: Garcia has worked in arts administration for 25 years and has boosted arts funding in several cities. In fact, the same day she announced she was leaving Fort Worth for Atlanta, the Fort Worth City Council approved an additional $630,000 for the arts council she headed. That’s significant because one of the gripes about MAACC is that it hasn’t found new funding for the arts, as many hoped it would.
Garcia was born in Cuba and came to the U.S. with her family at age 7. She trained as a painter and photographer and has degrees in art and business. Her former husband and the father of her two grown children is a professional artist. You can view his work here. She is clearly very interested in contemporary art. One of her first stops in Atlanta was The Contemporary, where she was impressed with the the artists’ workspaces and the galleries. Her significant other is landscape architect and urban planner James Toal, who plans to stay in Fort Worth but visit Atlanta often.
She says she was “aggressively recruited,” and finally agreed to come here in part because she believes in Mayor Franklin’s ability to get things done and is confident the mayor is committed to finding the $10 million for the arts she has promised. Garcia said Atlanta is “a community that is poised to do great things in the arts but hasn’t had the wherewithal yet.”
Garcia describes herself as an urban dweller who wants to be close to where things are happening in the arts. She plans to live in a loft and has narrowed her search to Midtown, Cabbagetown and Castleberry Hill.
I’ll provide a link to a full Q&A with Garcia soon (watch this space). In the meantime, what are your concerns about the arts in Atlanta? What would you like to see Garcia accomplish here?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Arts venues
You Art What You Eat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Placemat art, the brainwave of former Atlantan Jason Fulford, is a creative take on public art.
He has reproduced photographs by 40 artists on paper mats to be used by 14 or so area restaurants this month.
If you don’t like it, you can throw it away. If you do, just don’t spill, and you might have something suitable for framing.
Atlanta Celebrates Photography, which commissioned Fulford, has a list of participating artists, restaurants and a map on its website: www.acpinfo.org
CONCERT REVIEW: Elysium, an Evening’s Delight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Elysium Chamber Orchestra and Chorus. Saturday at Morningside Presbyterian Church. www.elysiumchamber.org
Small ensembles are the life-blood of Atlanta’s classical music scene, and fortunately they seem to be growing in number. One of the newest is Elysium, which combines a professional chamber orchestra with a mid-sized chorus.
The group’s second concert, heard Saturday at Morningside Presbyterian Church, included two works for strings and two for the whole ensemble with chorus.
The most obscure item was Mendelssohn’s “Sinfonia in B Minor,” one of a suite of string symphonies he composed between the ages of 12 and 14. P. David Hancock, one of the group’s two conductors, led them in a lush romantic reading, darkly balanced towards the lower strings. The effect was not so much to kill off the good cheer of the piece as to add a measure of wistfulness.
The same approach worked nicely for Elgar’s “Serenade for Strings,” one of the composer’s earliest but most popular works.
Bach’s Cantata No. 140 brought in the full orchestra, the chorus, and a new conductor. It was fun to hear the orchestra switch gears, as Alan Raines took them back to something closer to an early-music playing style, brisk and crisp.
But most of the attention shifted to the chorus, whose sound filled the room nicely. This is not an amateur ensemble. They sing as one, with round tones and excellent focus. This cantata is a nice test for everyone, despite being one of Bach’s most popular and enduring works. It’s based on a hymn, “Sleepers Awake,” known to most churchgoers. But with Bach, the familiar music is woven into a wonderfully complicated tapestry, as soloists recite from the Song of Solomon and sing verses as arias with the chorus responding.
The evening’s big number was Mozart’s “Solemn Vespers,” again for the full ensemble. Composed for the Archbishop of Salzburg, who liked things short, it packs a lot into a small package. It isn’t really very solemn, and much of it is energetic.
Mozart loved his sopranos, and they always got the juicy parts. Good for us, because our soprano was Arietha Lockhart, an Atlanta singer who is emerging on the national scene. Lockhart’s voice is ideal for this kind of music. She has a sweet, clear sound with little vibrato, a bit similar to that of a boy soprano. With near perfect intonation and control, she sounds remarkably like the late Arleen Auger, who had a cult following in this repertoire.
A young tenor, Cullen Gandy, was one of the delights of the evening, soaring over the orchestra in his solo bits. Bass-baritone Stephen Ozcomert has a heftier sound, though he seemed a bit careless about pitch. Desiree Maira performed nicely in a smaller role for mezzo-soprano. At times, you wished the soloists hadn’t been so buried in their scores. It would have been nice to see their faces.
As is the custom here, each piece was introduced with a chat. Apparently, Atlantans can’t simply be trusted to read program notes.
Permalink | |
Video Art
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’ve got a harmonic convergence going on here.
Spelman College Museum, The Contemporary and Kiang Gallery are all showing videos by New York duo Bradley McCallum and Jaqueline Tarry.
CUT, their video at Spelman, records the interracial couple ritually cutting each other’s hair with a straight razor. Set to the sound of the razor at work, the piece is an excruciating combination of sex and menace. It is one of the most compelling works I’ve seen in a long time.
The artists tap into the resonance of cutting hair as a metaphor for domination and punishment. Think: Sampson. Holocaust victims. WWII Nazi collaborators. The power see-saw they depict has racial as well as marital resonance.
The piece also relates to ideals of and anxiety about beauty and its relation to race, themes Atlantans D.E. Johnson and Tina Dunkley have made art about.
Might make an interesting theme for a show, if it hasn’t already. Anyone have suggestions of hair-raising art for a (virtual) exhibit ?
Can Bloggers Compete with Critics?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What’s your handle, good buddy?
Are personal blogs today what CB radios were during the Ford Administration — a nifty trend, temporarily popular but, ultimately, the domain of a specialized or fanatical few? The CB craze, for those old enough to remember, left no lasting effect on communication in America, but it hinted at the public’s yearning for a bigger microphone, for the ability to speak to strangers without the limitations that come with direct introductions, the mainstream media or even polite society.
Now personal blogs are often touted as the saviors of democracy, the death of newspapers, the way for the common person to broadcast his or her opinions/thoughts/obsessions/diary to the rest of the world, without filters or spellcheckers or fact-checkers. Blogs are a neutral technological development. It’s what we do with them that might be a good or bad thing.
Here at ATLarts, we’re interested in the intersection of the fine arts (define it as you like), the readers’ direct input and concepts related to spreading information and opinion about the arts.
So the question is, can arts bloggers and the broad reach of the Web do what newspapers have done historically? How important is “local” in all this? Will newspapers need its stable of professional arts critics in the coming years, or will that ground be so thoroughly covered elsewhere online that newspapers (and their own websites) should devote resources instead to news and opinion that’s not available anywhere else? Discuss.
Sex and the Symphony?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When you see a woman’s full, glossy red lips, do you think “symphony”? Maybe you do now if you saw the ads for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s recent sold-out performances of Puccini’s “La Boheme.”
Sex is used to sell classical music, and why not? Many classical musicians are good-looking (there is more than one website devoted to the hottest women in classical music), and there’s a long history of music that stirs passion. Old opera houses even have private rooms behind the boxes where lovers could meet when the music turned their thoughts to earthly pleasures.
The Utah Symphony and Opera is capitalizing on the connection between sex and classical music by, among other things, placing provocative slogans in fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants (“man who takes woman to opera finds pleasure after”), as I learned in this entertaining story. The marketing seems to have helped ticket sales. Similarly, the grand old music label Deutsche Grammophon now signs only top-notch musicians who also look glamorous on the CD cover.
What do you think? Does this kind of marketing matter? Are you more likely to buy a classical CD or attend a concert if the artist is a hottie?
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Classical Music
Cheap seats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta theaters gave away over 2,000 free tickets last week as part of this year’s national Free Night of Theater promotion. The aim is to get more, less affluent and younger people to see a live performance. If you didn’t get a ticket, check out all the other discounts for arts events available here.
Going to see the opera, symphony, musicals and plays can be expensive (my seat for Turandot at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre was $55, by no means the top price) or it can be cheap, or even free. When I was a student and had more time than money, I wish I’d known you could volunteer to be an usher at a theater. You can get last-minute “rush” tickets at a discount for performances by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Alliance Theatre if they’re not sold out. (Call the box office the day of the show for details.) Smaller theaters and music venues sometimes have “pay-what-you-can” nights.
How do you find ways to enjoy the arts without spending a lot of money?
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Arts venues
Love It or Hate it? What’s your take on the new Cobb Centre?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When I reviewed the architecture of the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre last month (see below), reader responses were neck-and-neck, pro and con.
The pros were those who agreed with my disappointed assessment. The cons were enraged, not that I thought the architecture fell short, but that I said something negative about a facility that was so important, that people worked so hard to bring into being.
One reader accused me of eating too many cheetos. Not sure what that meant, perhaps that I was a fat, failed architect who sat behind a desk and said mean things out of spite.
Just for the record, chocolate is my dietary vice. I am not an architect. (I studied art/architecture history). And I sincerely hope that the Cobb Centre, as well as all civic endeavors in my home town, succeeds.
In fact, I consider myself an advocate for the arts. But my job is to be honest, not positive. It doesn’t do the city any favors to promote blindly whatever our institutions produce. That is a sure path to mediocrity. Self-esteem notwithstanding, a goose can accomplish more than a pat on the back.
But enough about me. I’m interested in what you all think of the building and why.
Here’s a reprint of my 9/9/07 review:
Imagine it’s your 10th birthday, with all the attendant excitement about festivities and gifts. Then your friends arrive and hand you a bunch of toys, unwrapped, still in plastic bags. Deprived of the ceremony of untying the bow and ripping off the paper, not to mention the pleasure of anticipation, you would probably not enjoy your party as much, no matter how much you liked the presents.
So it is with adults and culture. Yes, the play, or the opera, is the thing. But the performance hall plays a role, too, and not just in the critical functions of acoustics and sight lines. Its architecture and interior design set the stage, so to speak, for the experience, visually and psychologically.
The venerable Fox Theatre, for example, is a transporting drama in itself. The bright lights of the marquee. The exotic Moorish touches. The palace-courtyard conceit of the hall. By the time the lights go down and the trompe-l’oeil stars come out, the audience is performance-ready.
In planning the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, the officials and architects, Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates, visited a good many halls, and they knew the drill. They clearly considered the arrival sequence as a means to build excitement, the sociability factor of the public spaces and the frisson of glamorous decor.
Unfortunately, the execution goes awry.
On the plus side, the building has a distinctive presence. Its unusual shape —- the dramatic top that swirls upward like a jagged soft-serve cone, the diagonal thrust and asymmetry of the facade —- contrasts with the office buildings and parking decks of its immediate environs. As intended, the shape conveys that this building serves a different function, that it’s not your everyday place.
It’s also a beacon. Drivers on I-75 can see the top. Those motoring along Akers Mill Road get a different view —- a startling assemblage of boxes fanning outward. Next step in the arrival sequence is the view of the unusual trapezoidal facade, whose expansive glass wall telegraphs the activity inside when lit at night.
The lobby itself is a tall but fairly narrow volume. Its tiered construction encourages people-watching and features a great view of the downtown skyline.
Both the lobby and auditorium take their cues from theater traditions in their palette of red and gold, the choice of dark wood and shimmery touches. The geometry determining the patterns of floor and wall panels is a reference to the paths of opening-night klieg lights.
But the result is way over the top. Alabaster panels lit from behind, swirling gold Venetian plaster, boldly patterned carpet in brown, red and purply-blue: The effect of so many materials and moves is that of a woman wearing too much makeup.
The roar of the grease paint, if you will, is announced right at the entrance, where the gold walls spar with the silvery chaos of “The Nine Muses, ” a specially commissioned artwork by Jimmy O’Neal. Oddly, the peekaboo figures in the shiny 28-foot-long piece look more like vaudeville dancers than muses. Neither the surroundings nor the artwork does the other any favors.
The gold chandeliers, whose ribbonlike glass elements erupt like an electrocuted bow, are garish. Like the spikier chandeliers in the ballrooms, they are derivative of Dale Chihuly’s famous glass art. This is fingernails on a chalkboard: A building with “arts” in the title should do better than knockoffs.
The auditorium itself is more restrained, and more successful. Ultimately, though, the place is a disappointment. Despite the thought and all the flourishes, the arts center could be a convention center or a big hotel. It is not great architecture.
Perhaps the architects relied too much on the firm’s commercial experience. Perhaps the clients had limited expectations. Their project is, at least, a bird in the hand; the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s more ambitious design is still a dream. Still, $145 million isn’t peanuts, and the center didn’t need to be on the level of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles to be memorable.
I wonder, wistfully, what an architect like Bostonian William Rawn —- whose credits include Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Concert Hall in Massachusetts and the Music Center at Strathmore in Maryland —- would have done with the project.
Would he have dressed up the parking deck? Would he have found chandeliers of a unique design? Would he have infused the public spaces with a simpler elegance? With personality of their own? The Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre will no doubt serve its purpose. But higher aspirations and a more imaginative design could have made it an enduring work of architecture, too.
Welcome to ATLarts, the new Atlanta Arts Blog!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Welcome to ATLarts, a new daily blog by three Atlanta Journal-Constitution arts writers — Catherine Fox, Kirsten Tagami and Pierre Ruhe.
Cathy is the AJC’s visual arts and architecture critic. Pierre does classical music criticism. Kirsten, a former AJC business reporter, covers the arts from many perspectives.
It’s our philosophy that the arts reflect the vitality of a community — and across metro Atlanta the arts scene is booming, with concerts, galleries and exhibitions, new venues and more involvement at every level. In quality and quantity, Atlanta’s arts scene is scarcely recognizable from just a decade ago. The ascent is steep. But it can be frustrating, too, as ambition doesn’t always match results.
ATLarts will be a community forum of arts and opinion from the AJC’s arts writers and from you. From reader feedback, we know the passion and intelligence is out there, and we know there’s a community waiting to be formed. Hit the comment button and add your voice to the discussion.
So as we try this experiment, let’s get started with a question: What topics and ideas and artists would you like to see in this space?
