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March 2008
Soprano Kate Royal’s Atlanta Debut
RECITAL REVIEW Soprano Kate Royal and pianist Roger Vignoles. Friday at Spivey Hall, www.spiveyhall.org.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
English soprano Kate Royal arrived in Atlanta for her U.S. recital debut Friday evening, the opening salvo in her all-but-inevitable conquest of America.
Inevitable? Almost no one on this side of the pond has heard, of yet heard of, the appealing 28-year-old, who’s already a star in Britain. Her debut CD — “Kate Royal” on EMI — was well received among opera specialists, although it didn’t gain much attention in the wider world.
Yet Royal arrives as an almost-complete package, where her only serious shortcoming happens to be the one thing that American audiences don’t seem to miss from a singer’s arsenal: a crisp, theatrical sense of words and language.
Streams of lustrous sound is what Royal offers in abundance. It’s an oaky, buttery-smooth voice, a glass of the best Chardonnay in the world — a taste that will appeal to many, even as it leaves others craving more complexity and nuance from their pleasures.
Partnered by British pianist Roger Vignoles, she took the stage Friday in a pale grey dress, a sort of slender, floor-length tunic that brought to life a Greek maiden statue from the Acropolis. She’s positioning herself as a “classic” on many levels.
Their opening set of Spanish songs, by Joaquin Rodrigo (his “Four Love Madrigals”) and Enrique Granados (“The Maiden and the Nightingale”), set the mood for the evening: Royal’s phrasing is shapely and always lovely. Her acting helped communicate the message, whether by clenching a fist in fury at her cheating lover or by gently swaying as she remembers the poplars in the breeze in Seville.
Yet almost everything arrived at one slight remove from the audience. Smoothness came at the expense of communicating, with her voice, an involvement with the texts.
In Claude Debussy’s “Five Baudelaire Poems,” Vignoles stretched out the Steinway (Spivey’s piano named Emilie) to symphonic proportions. His playing was ardent, a little cerebral, plump with personality, His approach felt more like a stimulating conversation with the singer than filling out the harmonies in accompaniment.
Royal was at her radiant best, magnificent in fact, in five melodies from Joseph Canteloube’s “Songs of the Auvergne,” in part because these earthy, folk-inspired tunes are sung in a vowel-heavy Romance language with veiled emotional content.
Richard Strauss loved the soprano voice and seemed to have written with Royal’s in mind. The natural strengths of her instrument lie where Strauss asks it to linger, creating a wistful beauty to a song like “Epheu” (“Ivy”). Still, for all the poignant gorgeousness of her singing, something essential was missing.
As an encore, they offered Delibes’ gypsy-fired “Les Filles des Cadix” — wonderful and charismatic, and yet with a sense of the wild held in reserve.
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All about Audra
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After just one song, Audra McDonald confessed that she was having a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” — just like Alexander in the children’s book.
Looking lovely in a long black coat and pants and shimmering lip gloss, the Broadway chanteuse told her Sunday audience at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center that she had been plagued with problems after her Saturday performance in Savannah.
The car that took her from hotel to her plane was late. When she got to the airport, her reservation had vanished from the computer and she had to buy a new ticket. And, worst of all, she recently had her wisdom teeth removed and her “dry sockets” were killing her.
Ouch.
When McDonald wasn’t complaining and sharing anecdotes about her “quick karma” — she says her social faux pas seem to catch up with her quickly — the quadruple Tony Award-winning diva showered her audience with about 75 minutes worth of vintage and contemporary show tunes.
She introduced her Garland-esque interpretation of Harold Arlen’s “The Man That Got Away” by joking that she was a “gay man trapped inside a black woman’s body.” She re-lived the embarassment of choosing Jerome Kern’s “Bill” for a tribute to Bill Cosby, cringing at the lyrics: “He can’t play golf or tennis or polo. Or sing a solo, or row. He isn’t half as handsome as dozens of men that I know.”
And she recalled the time she did a sing-a-long version of “I Could Have Danced All Night” at Carnegie Hall and heard her mother’s lilting soprano above the rest of the crowd.
The Juillard-trained McDonald said her 7-year-old daughter, Zoe, is “a little bit of a chatterbox” and can’t stand the sound of her famous mother’s voice. Exact quote: “Mommy, your singing makes my ears cry.”
The star of Atlanta director Kenny Leon’s “A Raisin in the Sun” invoked her political side by saying, “I’m very excited about the changes that are coming” and then singing Steve Marzullo’s “Some Days,” with text by James Baldwin. (“Some days worry. Some days glad. Some days more than make you mad.”)
“Some Days” was McDonald’s second and last encore. The first was “Ain’t It De Truth,” which she said Lena Horne sang in the film “Cabin in the Sky” while bathing in champagne. (The scene was cut.)
“Really, folks. Life is so short and precious,” McDonald said after the anthem to embracing the moment. “Enjoy it.”
If the dazzling soprano hadn’t mentioned her dental issues, no one would have noticed. She hit her peak with Jason Robert Brown’s masterful storytelling song, “Stars and the Moon,” about a woman who marries for material wealth but is never satisfied.
It all made you wish for the day when the notorious perfectionist is mature and secure enough to shrug off comparisons to Streisand, Garland and Barbara Cook and exult in her own gorgeous instrument.
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Best last lines of novels
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The literary journal American Book Review has come up with its list of 100 Best Last Lines from Novels, and like all such lists, it’s a fun time-killer.
Before you look at it, just take a second and think about what might have made the Top 10. I was pleasantly surprised when I started going through the list. Beckett at No. 1? “Bartleby the Scrivener?” And Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” Yes, perfect. Never would have remembered that one.
I’m also grateful for them for including really, really obscure works as well as the usual suspects. “You Bright and Risen Angels” by William T. Vollmann? Anybody? Do I hear crickets?
You can click on the whole list here, but it’s in a pdf format, in case that’s an issue for your browser.
Take a look and report back on what caught your attention.
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Vaulting ambition in Decatur
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back in the ‘80s, various Marvel Comics supervillains were sentenced to a specially designed prison called The Vault.
Venom, Tarantula, Piledriver — they all did their time inside.
Zach Steele, owner of Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, did not know this colorful bit of geek trivia when he hit upon the idea of turning a former bank vault into his store’s new comic book room. And not just comics, but science fiction, fantasy, graphic novels and the popular Japanese genres anime and manga — they’re all inside the cool little room with the massive slab of metal for a door.
Wordsmiths, an independent bookstore, re-opens today on Decatur Square in the former Sun Trust bank building, having moved this week a couple of blocks from its former location on Trinity Street. It’s the building Steele wanted to be in all along, an unusual space for a bookstore with big chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, former loan officers’ offices lining one wall, and the big vault tucked away in the back.
Wordsmiths will continue booking authors for in-store appearances, as well as the odd cooking demontration or concert. One corner of the former bank will have a stage with chairs set up; and the walls are lined with signed posters from past appearances by the likes of Amy Sedaris and Stuart Woods.
Wordsmiths opened last June, and has yet to turn a profit, Steele says, which is the way it goes. “We’re a first year business, so not yet,” says Steele. But the good news, for Wordsmiths, is that “Decatur doesn’t have any big box stores for us to compete with, and there’s a strong literary base here.”
To celebrate the move, Wordsmiths will have an Edible Book Festival Saturday in Decatur Square outside the store. Anyone can make “edible art that has something to do with book shapes or content.” I anticipate bad puns. Anyway, entry is $5 in the amateur division and $25 in the pros, and proceeds go to Literacy Volunteers of Atlanta. Set-up starts at 2:30 p.m., judging at 4 p.m.
You can download the registration form on the website.
Pictured above is Russ Marshalek, Marketing Director of Wordsmiths Books. Photo by Renee’ Hannans Henry/AJC.
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Carnegie Hall, Here We Come
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
Contemporary classical music has evolved into a highly contingent art. The more you’ve heard the stuff, the more attuned your ears will be to the latest offerings.
But that poses a problem for casual concertgoers, who spend their energy purchasing a ticket and expect the music to reach out to them, not the other way around. In recent decades, the wall between living composers and general-interest audiences had grown forbiddingly tall, such that even tuneful, accessible composers were said to dwell in the “new-music ghetto.”
But that barrier is starting to vanish, thanks to composers like Christopher Theofanidis, a 40-year-old Texan who teaches in Baltimore. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra commissioned Theofanidis’ “The Here and Now” and gave its premiere in 2005, then cut a Telarc recording.
Thursday in Symphony Hall, conductor Robert Spano and the ASO and Chorus revisited the oratorio, preparing it for an April 5 concert in Carnegie Hall, a high pressure gig.
The score brims with energy and imagination and communicates directly, seemingly aimed at the first-time listener — contingencies be damned. Theofanidis was inspired by 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, as popularized in the reworkings by Coleman Barks, a former University of Georgia professor.
Almost every one of its 13 short movements includes a splashy bit of scene painting. Stratospheric violin harmonics illuminate a mention of “the light of the stars.” In the most appealing section, “Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you,” the chorus voices cascade softly downward, as petals carpeting the grass under a cherry tree.
Theofanidis’ command of the orchestra and chorus is often brilliant, yet the Rumi fragments selected by the composer edge towards new-agey mysticism and its accompanying banality. Baritone Nathan Gunn, with a voice as sturdy and tightly grained as a tall old oak, sang the “narrative” interludes, bits of hackneyed folk wisdom. One movement, “The urgency of love,” is a duet for soprano and tenor with a swaying Caribbean rhythm, sung here by the vocally fetching Hila Plitmann and Richard Clement.
If the oratorio’s grandiloquence makes it feels longer than the 30 minutes that actually ticked by, it’s perhaps because everything sounded bunched up and at the surface — expertly crafted music in two (but only two) expansive dimensions.
Still, “The Here and Now” fills a valuable niche. So many modern classics are as challenging as they are rewarding, and thus they don’t help refresh the general-interest concert-hall audiences. Theofanidis’ approach, his ear-catching gestures and pale harmonies, earned a sincere standing ovation. The crowd seems poised to think, “I enjoy contemporary classical music.”
The evening’s two other works, Sibelius’ “Tapiola,” a tone poem on the forest god of Finland, and Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe,” on shepherds, shepherdesses and the age of innocence, celebrate the romantic spirit through the neo-pagan. It wasn’t lost that they are also orchestral show-pieces designed to highlight the ASO’s progress.
In the final years of Sibelius’ creative life, his music turned darkly inward, somehow conveying the cycles of life and death and thus a connection to nature primeval. In Spano’s tense reading, I got the feeling that a gardener gets from scooping out compost for a plot of vegetables, where the thick, airy, intense black soil is rich in nutrients, full of the organic decay that yields new life.
The ASO’s playing of “Daphnis” Thursday was less perfect. For Spano, it’s the sort of music where he excels: sophisticated, emotionally neutral, requiring extreme finesse and a sense of rhythm so taut it allows for supple swaying with the breeze.
The ASO Chorus, prepared by Norman Mackenzie, sang the wordless “oos” and ahs” with the force of personality and nuance fully equal to any instrumental section of the ASO. It’s here the Atlantans will likely dazzle the New Yorkers most.
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‘Tut 2’ on the way?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The AJC reported last fall that the blockbuster exhibition known as “Tut 2” might be coming to Atlanta.
Looks like we’ll find out for sure next Wednesday. The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University just sent out an advisory saying it would make a “landmark announcement” that day and that Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has been invited.
We know that the Carlos Museum had been talking with the exhibitors about bringing Tut 2 to the city-owned Civic Center.
Carlos Museum officials say they can’t talk about the announcement, but word is that “King Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs” will be at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center in Midtown this fall.
To learn more about what’s in this massive exhibition, check out the website.
What do you think? Are you interested in seeing the treasures of King Tut?
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Telling tales in Avondale Estates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A well-run storytelling festival can be a wonderful event, so all good wishes to The Atlanta Storytelling Festival, which makes its debut tonight and runs through Sunday in Avondale Estates. The festival will feature more than 30 area performers who will show how telling stories can be elevated to a performance art.
The weekend will be divided into six 90-minute programs for adults, with themes like Love, Generations and Crossing Boundaries, and four 45-minute programs for children. Among the tellers: Christy Foelsch, Barry Stewart Mann, Wayne Smith, Audrey Galex, and many more.
Performances are at the Academy Theater, 119 Center St., Avondale Estates, which is tucked behind the movie theater. Tickets are $15 per program, $75 for the whole shebang. Details from 404 297-0904 and at the festival’s website.
Meanwhile, up in Marietta…
The Food Network’s Alton Brown is coming to Cobb on Saturday to help the Cobb Library Foundation raise money. Brown’s latest book is”Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run,” about his motorcycle trip along the Mississippi River looking for great American road food. He’ll be at The Walker School, 700 Cobb Parkway, Marietta, talking and signing the book, but fire regulations won’t let him cook anything.
There’s a VIP reception at 11 a.m. ($125) and the regular appearance at 12:30 p.m. ($35). Tickets are nearly sold out, says the foundation’s Donna Espy. You can buy them online or call 770-528-2196.
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All aboard for ‘Avenue Q’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A
Take care that you don’t get your fur caught in the turnstyles as you scramble to the latest scene of comedic bedlam at the Fox Theatre.
Bert and Ernie’s naughty, degenerate, unauthorized and absolutely adorable puppet-cousins have brought their post-collegiate issues about dating, drinking and job-hunting to Atlanta for the first time.
You know these guys. They’re the denizens of the Tony Award-winning musical “Avenue Q,” whose offbeat humor was rapturously received by a bunch of ready-to-be-entertained revelers at Tuesday night’s opening.
It’s shocking. It’s an affront to Muppet lovers everywhere. It’s so much fun.
Nearly five years after arriving on Broadway, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s tunefully subversive score and Jeff Whitty’s quirky book still rank among the smartest and funniest of our time.
An Internet-porn pervert modeled after Cookie Monster. An Asian therapist named Christmas Eve. A bunch of fresh-faced 22-year-olds discovering the joy and pain of first love and pondering the big existential question, “What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?” and its inevitable answer, “It Sucks To Be Me.”
This Broadway Across America-Atlanta production, which runs through Sunday, is simply one of the best musical tours to play the Fox in years — a breezy, ridiculous, occasionally teary free-for-all that outshines the original Broadway version. Which is quite an accomplishment.
Based on a few random comments from first-timers — who weren’t quite sure what to make of the raunchy puppet sex, the Gary Coleman character (played by a woman) and the gay-baiting, race-baiting jokes — maybe “Avenue Q” takes a little getting used to.
Perhaps it’s jolting to see yourself reflected so cannily in the likes of closet-case Rod; over-educated but rudderless Princeton; or sweet, chipper, unlucky-in-love Kate Monster, who wants to start a school for “people of fur.” Maybe the voices that keep telling the shy romantics to get drunk and loosen up are a little too close to home. Have another Long Island Iced Tea!
Anyone who has ever overslept after a one-night stand, wished your fat husband would get a life, lost an apartment or a job or felt primal rage over being abandoned for a slut — then lived to laugh and cry about — will feel pangs of camaraderie and connection with these brightly stitched characters.
Oh, the vicissitudes of modern (puppet) life.
Nicky (David Benoit) suspects Rod (Robert McClure) of being gay and calls him out on it. Kate (Kelli Sawyer) becomes happily smitten with Princeton (McClure), only to have him run off with lascivious Lucy (Sawyer). Christmas Eve (Angela Ai) is frustrated by her inept stand-up comic husband, Brian (Cole Porter), and the fact that she has two master’s degrees but no psychotherapy clients.
Still, no one has the growing pains of Gary Coleman (Carla Renata), who happens to be the superintendent of the cluster of apartment buildings on Avenue Q.
Of this uniformly fine ensemble, Sawyer and McClure are the unrivaled stars. Sawyer has a glorious singing voice and, in the person of cuddly lovelorn Kate, the ability to break your heart. McClure is a remarkably rubber-faced comedian with an endless supply of energy and enthusiasm.
Ai’s Christmas Eve is hysterical — confusing her “r”s and “l”s and getting to wear the ultimate fashion-victim wedding gown. Benoit comes across as an overstuffed plush toy who derives as much hammy pleasure from his own outlandishly broad performances as you will.
Director Jason Moore and set designer Anna Louizos manufacture enough surprises to make this former off-Broadway hit fill up the grandly scaled Fox, and I can’t say enough nice things about Lopez and Marx (who created the concept and wrote music and lyrics). Or librettist Whitty, who I suspect is the nut job behind this riotous material. Or puppet designer Rick Lyon’s fuzzy creatures.
Love it or leave it, “Avenue Q” is in a class unto itself — a renegade musical that captures the impulse of Phi Beta Kappa cut-ups who grew up on “Sesame Street” but never found a way to connect with the sugary smugness of classic musical theater. To paraphrase this bunch of noble, hopeful losers, it would “sucka-sucka-sucka-sucka” to miss it.
THE 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday. 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday. $19-$55. Broadway Across America-Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com
BOTTOM LINE: Bawdy puppets capture the frustrations and triumphs of coming of age — in fur-real fashion.
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See ‘Avenue Q’ review later this morning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Very brief note about the puppet musical, “Avenue Q,” which opened last night at the Fox Theatre.
The adult-rated “Sesame Street” spoof, about a bunch of 22-year-olds trying to make it on the zany outer edge of the big city, is well-nigh perfect. One of the best Broadway tours to play Atlanta in years. I want everyone I know and everyone they know to see it.
My review will appear on this blog a little later this morning.
Tickets: 404-817-8700. ticketmaster.com
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Making the Middle East map
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mary Doria Russell has written historical fiction and speculative fiction and been well honored for it. “The Sparrow,” a hybrid of science fiction and religious journey, was one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 books of the year, and “A Thread of Grace,” set during World War II, was nominated for a Pulitzer.
Now she has “Dreamers of the Day,” which is about the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference. In case you missed history class that day, that’s when Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia and a few other Westerners sat down and more or less drew the map of the Middle East that is still causing problems today. So it’s a pretty important event. Russell tells the story through the voice of Agnes Shanklin, an American schoolteacher staying at the hotel where the conference takes place.
I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but Random House has posted Chapter One here.
Russell will read, talk and sign at the Decatur Public Library at 7:15 tonight, with the usual enablers, Georgia Center for the Book and Wordsmiths Books. Could be interesting.
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Shake at the Lake still on for Piedmont Park
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
These days, Piedmont Park is a servant to two masters: the public thirst to use the Midtown greenspace and the need to guard it from unnecessary wear and tear during the drought.
By all accounts, Georgia Shakespeare’s fifth annual Shake at the Lake — performed on the dock of Lake Clara Meere — is off the hook this year. “The Servant of Two Masters,” the classic farce by Spanish master Carlo Goldoni, is expected to go on as planned May 7-11.
Only events with attendance of 50,000 or more are affected by the City of Atlanta policy. 
“By virtue of the fact that Shake on the Lake is a small event of 800 people and has always set up using the dock as the stage, their equipment is on hardscape and the guests sit on the grass or stairs, their event is not affected,” Debbie McCown, CEO and president of the Piedmont Park Conservancy, said in a statement Tuesday.
“We panicked the day the announcement came out in the paper about the cancellation of the biggest events in the park,” Georgia Shakespeare producing artistic director Richard Garner said. “We’ve been told that we classify as one of the smallest events. … Basically, we’re rated for about 1,000 people at a time. They are carefully scheduling those kinds of events so they don’t happen on top of each other, but they’re not cancelling them because of the minimal impact.”
This year, the Peachtree Road Race, Atlanta Pride Festival, Dogwood Festival and the Atlanta Jazz Festival have all been forced to find alternate venues.
Technically, the Shakespeare theater’s permit is still pending. “We feel confident that we will receive that approval,” Georgia Shakespeare publicist Amanda Hughes says. The event is free, but tickets are required. For more information: shakeatthelake.com or 404-264-0020.
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‘When Something Wonderful Ends’ @ Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B -
It may seem a bit of a stretch to blame the end of the world on Barbie’s Dream Car, a plastic, coral-colored Austin-Healey convertible with sporty wire wheels, circa 1961.
But in her amazingly circuitous autobiographical play, “When Something Wonderful Ends,” Sherry Kramer uses a vast collection of Barbie dolls, clothes and accessories to mourn what she sees as the globe’s fatal dependence on crude oil.
Now playing at Actor’s Express, the 90-minute, one-woman show is a meticulously researched, stunningly digressive account of a writer’s journey from the seeming halcyon days of her youth in Springfield, Mo., to the scary realization that the planet has taken a serious wrong turn.
Directed by Freddie Ashley and starring Vicki Ellis Gray, the play finds Sherry packing up her stash of Barbies in her childhood home (designed by Jon Williamson as a kind of riff on a Barbie dollhouse). Her mother has recently died. America is at war. And Sherry’s grief leads her to reflect on religion, politics and the arc of global history from World War II to the present.
As Sherry sees it, America’s fall from grace began with “The Golden Gimmick” of 1950, when the Truman administration created artificially cheap gas by giving tax breaks to the petroleum industry — and became enmeshed in a game of political chess aimed at protecting oil-rich Saudi Arabia from its foes. As the planet runs out of oil, Sherry reasons apocalyptically, “petrochemically addicted countries” will start to behave like drug addicts — committing acts of criminal aggression to get a fix.
Interlacing personal reflections about her Jewish faith with thoughts on her Mom’s favorite confection (Brach’s Hard Cinnamon Candy), Beatles nostalgia and the time she spent at an artist colony where the real-life Barbie (Barbara Handler) once lived, the playwright delivers a bristling but clear-eyed call for change. Seeing a military funeral for a U.S. solider killed in Iraq, her agenda crystalizes with the thought that America might have been better served developing alternative fuels than spending a fortune protecting the Middle East.
As Sherry points out about Reform Judaism, there’s no promise of any kind of afterlife. For all we know, this is it. We make the choice —heaven or hell. Phew. And you thought this was just a memory-soaked discourse on John Lennon’s “All You Need is Love” and Barbie outfits with names like “Enchanted Evening.”
While Gray gives a solid reading of the long, intellectually complicated play, her approach relies a bit too much on the crisp efficiency of an infomercial voiceover than the sorrowful reflections of a soul-sick woman. You can’t help but wish for a little more comedic spark, irony and variety in the actress’ movement vocabulary.
At the end of her long and winding road of personal and political discovery, Sherry sheepishly confesses that she drives an SUV. But you get the impression that it will soon be in the same for-sale pile as Barbie’s Dream Car.
A hit at last year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays and smartly timed to this presidential election year, “When Something Wonderful Ends” is about taking responsibility — one vote, one voice and one vehicle at a time.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Sundays. Through April 12. $16-$27. Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 West Marietta St., Suite J-107, Atlanta. 404-607-7469, actors-express.com
Bottom line: A playwright outgrows her Barbie collection, and ruminates on world crisis and responsibility.
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Alice Walker, phenomenon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alice Walker will read from her works at 6 p.m. today at Emory University’s Glenn Memorial Auditorium, 1652 N. Decatur Rd., Atlanta. Admission is $5 for Emory staff and students and $10 for the public, but I will bet you $10 right now that if you show up close to showtime hoping to buy a ticket it will be sold out and you won’t get in.
Walker is the author of numerous novels, including “Meridian” and “The Temple of My Familiar,” collections of short stories and of poetry. But it’s safe to say that her great public acclaim rests almost entirely on the success of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Color Purple.” It’s one of those novels that has become bigger than a novel, with the movie and then the stage musical.
When the happens to a novel — when it becomes a pop culture phenomenon, in other words — is that generally a good thing or a bad thing? Just asking.
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Atlanta composer Alvin Singleton in Conversation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Music Box is an online forum for composers. Its latest issue has editor Frank J. Oteri in conversation with Atlanta’s Alvin Singleton. Click here for the link. It’s from an interview in January at New York’s American Music Center and it’s loaded with interesting ideas. There’s also a video with sound clips.
Oteri starts: I’ve never quite known how to categorize the music of Alvin Singleton. And, after finally sitting down to chat with him about his music after years of knowing him and his compositions, I’m less sure of what to say than ever before. But therein lies my fascination….
FJO: Is Atlanta an exciting place for a composer?
AS: When a place is home you can’t say. It’s like when you live in New York and someone says, “Do you like New York?” You say yes, but then it begs the question. Where else have you lived? Atlanta is a good place to live. I don’t know whether it’s exciting for composers, but I get work done. And I come here [to New York] a lot.
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Big Boi’s Ballet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Ballet has posted a video clip of recent rehearsals for their upcoming show, “Big,” on their homepage. The show features the music of Antwan “Big Boi” Patton — one-half of the multiple Grammy Award-winning, Atlanta-based duo OutKast.
The dancing in the clip is fascinating. You can see references to contemporary hip hop dance styles, and even breakdancing, but this isn’t the funky, precise, overtly athletic dancing you’d expect to see with this type of music. These are classical ballet dancers and their movements are fluid, lighter than air. It will be interesting to see what audiences — especially the many hip hop fans who are sure to attend — think of this unlikely match.
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What if Borders and Barnes & Noble merged?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
According to the Publishers Weekly website, Borders bookstore chain is not doing well financially and could possibly be put up for sale. And one possible buyer could be Barnes & Noble.
Borders has hired J.P. Morgan Securities and Merrill Lynch to help it explore strategic alternatives,” which according to PW may mean a sale. Those options include the possible sale of the company and/or some of its divisions.
B&N has said it would consider acquiring its rival, but there are no current talks. Sales have been soft at both superstores, in part because they sell a lot of music CDs, and in case you hadn’t heard, the CD business is worse than the airline business these days.
The question for fans of bricks-n-mortar bookstores, though: Would it matter? Personally, I have no preference. I think they are both quite fine and quite interchangeable. The big problem would be if they merged and some suit at the top of the company decided to start closing stores. Then it’s a problem.
Am I missing something? Are there problems with a Borders-B&N merger?
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‘Eurydice’ @ Alliance Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A-
Eurydice’s father writes his daughter a letter on the occasion of her marriage to Orpheus. “Cultivate the arts of dancing and small talk,” he says mischievously. And then he pretends to escort her down the aisle, nodding to guests, looking solemn, amused, happy, sad — at times almost choking up with emotion.
As it turns out, this proud papa is dead.
But unlike most denizens of the underworld in Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” his memory hasn’t been washed away by the River of Forgetfulness. His affection for his daughter is indelible — and in Ruhl’s dreamy, hypnotic telling of the classic Greek myth, it’s the unconditional force that elevates the lovers’ dead-end tale to a heightened state of tenderness.
Dedicated to her own late father, Ruhl’s splendidly realized meditation on love, death and memory has washed up on the Alliance Theatre’s Hertz Stage like a lost fragment of time. If the afterlife is half as magical as director Richard Garner’s “Alice in Wonderland”-style playscape of dripping elevators and letters falling from the sky, it will be welcome diversion from the quotidian.
A tad precious and featuring a couple of supporting players whose performances eclipse the work of the dewy Orpheus and Eurydice, this production feels a little uncertain of its mood and tone. But the lovely, haunting work comes pretty close to theatrical triumph. Plus, it’s a perfect coda to Garner’s recent take on Mary Zimmerman’s “Metamorphoses” at Georgia Shakespeare, his home theater.
Ruhl’s contemporary spin on the ancient story may seem deceptively subtle, but the poetry is in fact as intricately structured as Eurydice’s multi-layered wedding skirt. (Costume design is by Miranda Hoffman). Melinda Helfrich’s Eurydice is pure and naive, a little too much in love with the handsome Orpheus (Justin Adams) — as he is with her. Their inability to connect is accentuated by Eurydice’s vapidness and Orpheus’ slight impatience. The opening scene drags, but Helfrich’s performance eventually reveals its awkward beauty.
The comedy gets a lot more interesting (to use our heroine’s favorite word) the minute Eurydice wanders off from her wedding party and bumps into A Nasty Interesting Man (Andrew Benator). The mysterious interloper lives in a high-rise bachelor pad, flashes his teeth like a hungry wolf and has the creepy detachment of Peter Sellers — with just a smidgen of Austin Powers.
Arriving in a netherworld populated by a chorus of stones, Eurydice can’t recall her lover’s name — and mistakes her dad for a bellhop. In a sweet sequence, the father (magnificently played by Chris Kayser) uses a ball of string to map out a sort of hotel bedroom for his complaining daughter. (Kat Conley’s set is an industrial warehouse-style space with a floor edged in stone to signify the river.)
In one of the most delightful turns, Benator appears again as the Lord of the Underworld, a lisping man-child who drives a red tricyle and wears red knickers. This quintessential court jester is a relief from the excruciating sadness of the lovers’ fate.
As delicate as a lyre strung with human hair, “Eurydice” makes gorgeous, newly minted music from a familiar classic. Humming with ideas, laced with poetic images and a graceful movement vocabulary, it’s a play that invites us to ponder the numbered days of our existence, and the endless sleep that awaits us.
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‘Pure Confidence’ @ Theatrical Outfit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B -
In Carlyle Brown’s Civil War period piece, “Pure Confidence,” a whip-smart enslaved jockey named Simon Cato tries to race his way to freedom by virtue of his masterful understanding of horses and men.
Now running at Theatrical Outfit, “Pure Confidence” is a fascinating study of the psychological underpinnings of the ante-bellum South — when wealthy whites deigned to treat their black servants like surrogate family members, piling hypocrisy high with affection.
“I tell my wife all the time, ‘I like that Simon, I love that boy like a son’,” says Colonel Wiley “The Fox” Johnson (James Donadio), cloaking his superficial kindness with enough “n” words to make contemporary audiences squirm.
What the Colonel wants more than bourbon and women in hoop skirts is money. And Simon (Eugene H. Russell IV) knows how to manipulate the master’s greed to his own benefit — buying his wife Caroline (Jade Lambert-Smith) from the Colonel’s wife, Mattie (Marianne Fraulo) before he can win his own emancipation. Eventually, Simon acquires his own horse, enters into business with the Colonel and takes to the derby circuit — without regard to the blindspots of chance.
“Pure Confidence” is a withering meditation on the art of gaming, power and control — or how bondage and freedom pivot on animal instincts of cruelty, fear, survival and, after a twisted fashion, kindness.
But this intimate study of the epic Southern past is far better written than realized in this likeable but seldom galvanizing production by director Gary Yates. More often than not, the level of energy and emotional engagement is more at half trot than full gallop.
Yet even if the show won’t win silver cups and garlands of roses, it gives deep insights into the human impulse to strive for freedom, even when the race has been rigged long in advance.
THE 411: 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Also, 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and 2:30 p.m. March 29. Through March 30. $25. Theatrical Outfit, Balzer Theatre at Herren’s, Downtown. 678-528-1500, theatricaloutfit.org
Bottom Line: Likeable though not an entirely winning show.
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2 very different author appearances
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m still in quick-blog mode this week. Here are a couple of authors I thought you ought to know about:
Atlanta’s Pearl Cleage will discuss and sign her new book “Seen It All And Done the Rest” at 7:30 tonight at the Borders in Buckhead, 3637 Peachtree Road NE.
Jeff Foxworthy, who calls Alpharetta home, will have to go only a couple of miles for an appearance at the Alpharetta Barnes & Noble, 7660 North Point Parkway, at 7 tonight. He’ll be signing his new book of children’s poetry, “Dirt on My Shirt.”
I’m not sure how mobbed Cleage will be, but in the past, Foxworthy’s signings in metro Atlanta have gotten a little crazy, so plan on some serious waiting time. Maybe you could buy a book to read while you stand in line.
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Thoughts on Broadway season: Wicked jukebox stuff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How cool of Broadway Across America-Atlanta to program two of the best juke-box musicals — ever.
I’m talking about “Ain’t Misbehavin’” — that lovely bookless compendium of the tunes of Fats Waller — and “Jersey Boys,” based on the amazing true-life story of Frankie Vallie and The Four Seasons. Both will play the Fox Theatre during the 2008-2009 season, opening in the fall.
These two shows may be about different musical styles and different periods in time. But they are both beautifully stylized pieces of storytelling.
Frankly, I’m tickled that “A Chorus Line” is headed to Atlanta.
And “Wicked,” I must say, has grown on me. The songs “Popular,” “Defying Gravity” and “Thank Goodness” (from “Wicked”) seep slowly into your consciousness and then haunt you.
“Thank Goodness” gets kind of philosophical and profound, even. The lines that get me every time are Glinda’s: “There are bridges you cross/ You didn’t know you crossed/ Until you’ve crossed.” Think about that.
Now tell me: What is your favorite “Wicked Song”?
And who would you like to see play Glinda the Good Witch (originally portrayed by Kristin Chenoweth on Broadway) and Elphaba the evil (created by Idina Menzel on Broadway)?
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Broadway Across America season: ‘Jersey Boys,’ ‘Wicked’ and Ruben Studdard in ‘Ain’t Misbehavin”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“American Idol” alums Ruben Studdard and Frenchie Davis are savin’ their love for the Fox Theatre.
Broadway Across America-Atlanta has booked the 30th anniversary tour of the classic Fats Waller musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’” for November, and the two high-profile “Idol” contestants will star.
“Ruben is one of the ones I actually voted for when I was voting for ‘American Idol,’” Broadway Across America’s Stephanie Parker says of the big-voiced singer from Birmingham. Davis — who was kicked off the Fox television hit in 2003 after nude photos of her surfaced on the Internet — has since appeared in Broadway’s “Rent.”
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” is part of Broadway Across America-Atlanta’s 2008-2009 season, announced Tuesday.
Also headed this way: “Wicked” — the “Wizard of Oz” backstory that’s inspired a manic following for good witch Glinda and her evil green sidekick, Elphaba — will fly back to Atlanta for a four-weekend run. And “Jersey Boys” — the musical biography of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons that won the 2006 Tony Award for best musical — closes the season with a four-week engagement in spring 2009.
Atlanta’s first taste of the “Wicked” hysteria came in 2006, when the show sold out its two-week run before it began. “A lot of people didn’t realize it would sell out so quickly,” Parker says.
Meanwhile, the Broadway Across America regional vice president says Disney’s “Mary Poppins” will be part of the 2009-2010 season.
Fresh off presenting Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre’s first Broadway musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” Parker gave the new venue high marks and says it’s perfect for more intimate offerings. So far, the series has not booked another show at the center.
The full season:
“Wicked” — Oct. 8-Nov. 2
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” — Nov. 18-23.
“A Chorus Line.” The current Broadway revival of the Michael Bennett classic. March 3-8, 2009.
“Happy Days.” “The Fonz” returns in a new musical based on the hit TV show from the ’70s and ’80s. March 31-April 5.
“Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” The Sherman Brothers’ 2005 Broadway take on the children’s story about a flying car. April 21-April 26.
“Jersey Boys.” The universally admired juke-box musical won four Tonys. May 27-June 21.
Ticket info: Season packages are available now. Subscribers are guaranteed seats and may purchase additional tickets as well. Single tickets generally go on sale six to eight weeks before each show. (800-278-4447, broadwayacrossamerica.com)
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Who reads book reviews?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m off working on a project for the week, so my blogs are going to be short and matter-of-fact.
Emory University is offering a panel today called “The State and Fate of Literary Reviewing” from 5-7 p.m. in the Woodruff Library Jones Room. It’s going to be about book reviewing at American newspapers, although given the lineup, it’s possible that the AJC’s book coverage may be a focus.
Among those scheduled to be on the panel: Mark Bauerlein, an Emory English prof and book reviewer; Hank Klibanoff, the AJC’s managing editor for Enterprise; Steve Wasserman, former book review editor of the L.A. Times, and Teresa Weaver, former book editor of the AJC, now the book columnist for Atlanta magazine (and also with Haibtat for Humanity).
It’s no secret that many newspapers have been cutting back on, or changing, their book review policies. Here’s the big question: Do book reviews matter?
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Your favorite author, as a kid
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Over in the forums for the website Something Awful, they’re having a blast with this idea: What might your favorite author, poet or songwriter have written as a child? The idea is not to write in a child-like way, but to use the adult style of the writer on a subject that a child would write about, such as a pet or a trip to grandma’s house. That was the original premise, but people just did what they wanted.
Here are a couple of examples, credited to the poster’s nom de net.
“Me and My Teddy Bear Bob” by Shirley Jackson Age 7 (submitted by Micomicona)
Me and my teddy bear are friends and we like to play together.
My teddy has soft hair and a brown tummy and his name is Bobo. He likes kittens and he likes ice cream and he doesnt like broccoli and neither do I. Bobo and me play every day. We like to play house the best.
I am the mommy and he is the daddy and my kitten Goldie is the baby. I vacuum and brush Goldie’s hair so she can be pretty. I make food in the kitchen and wait for bobo to come home from work. Every day I put yummy dinner on the table and bobo comes home.
I look at his face with buttons for eyes and his big smile and think about smashing his brains in with a hammer.
“My Weekend” By Ernest Hemingway, Age 8 (submitted by Spaceboy)
I went to my grandma’s house. Her house smells fragrant. I feel for a candy on her counter, but I cannot reach it. We go fishing.
“School Code of Conduct” by Sun Tzu (submitted by Eunuchorn)
When in line for the swings, stand to the side of both.
If the swing is in use, dare the enemy to jump.
If you find yourself on the swing, make sure to look for another place to play when you jump.
So much for swings.
When the milk and nap are required, sleep away from the one who smells. Milk will make him worse.
If one will knock down your blocks, you are to throw mud at him.
If one will throw mud at you, you will kick him in the shins.
If you are kicked in the shins you will kick back.
The kicking shall continue until one cries.
When the class is tired, you have occasion to secure the red crayon.
There’s a lot of smart, smart humor here. Here is the link to the entire forum topic.. Warning: There is some profanity throughout.
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What’s your favorite weird word?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keck.
Gound.
Fard.
Excuse me!
Credit to Arts & Books editor Tom Sabulis, who had a short piece on the book page in our Sunday print section about a new book, “Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages” by Ammon Shea. It’s coming out later this year.
Just as A.J. Jacobs read the whole Encyclopedia Britannica a few years ago and wrote a very clever book about the experience, so Shea read the whole Oxford English Dictionary. The above are some examples of some of the words he enjoyed.
Keck is to make a sound like you are vomiting. Gound is the gunk that collects in the corners of your eyes. And fard is to paint the face with cosmetics.
My family has aways loved what we just call “The Dictionary Game.” You get an unabridged dictionary, and one person looks up a word and writes down the real definition. Then everyone but whoever is “it” writes down a fake definition that sounds real. Then “it” has to guess the real one.
One time, years ago, the word was “glanders,” and one definition that was read was “a disease of horses, characterized by profuse mucous duscharge.” Everyone thought that definition was totally made up, and to this day the members of my family are the only people who hear the word “glanders” and start to laugh.
What’s your favorite weird word?
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No hell below us?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Anthony C. Winkler’s new novel, “The Duppy,” is one ramshackle, enjoyable poke in the eye. It’s not for people who might have the proverbial stick up the posterior (who, me? says everyone), particularly those who cherish a traditional Baptist view of heaven and hell.
Winkler is a white Jamaican who now lives in Atlanta. In “The Duppy,” the narrator, a black Jamaican, dies in the first sentence, goes to heaven, and finds out it’s nothing like what he had been led to believe. Cribbing from my own review, which ran on Sunday: If on Earth you couldn’t get enough sex, in heaven you get all you want. (When it comes to ribald sex scenes in the afterlife written in Jamaican patois, it’s a safe bet that no novel can touch “The Duppy.”)
But if you were an uptight person who liked to tut-tut over people who didn’t follow your set of rules, in heaven you can continue to tut-tut all you want. Unfortunately for those folks, though, the God in “The Duppy” didn’t really make all those rules. He’s a much more “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez” kind of deity.
There is no hell in Winkler’s afterlife, which really ticks off the people who were good on earth out of fear of hell. “All the good I’d tried so hard to do in my life meant nothing!” shouts one woman in frustration. “All the Girl Scout cookies I sold! The blood drives I organized! … The no-sex-on-Sunday rule I put my poor husband through.”
“The Duppy” is a good time, and I would hazard a guess that Winkler’s appearance here tonight will be, too. He will read and sign “The Duppy” at 7:30 tonight at Wordsmiths Books, 141 E. Trinity Place, Decatur.
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Irrational? Me?? Who you callin’ irrational?!?!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Have you ever done this? You’re on Amazon.com, and you order a book for $20. The website tells you that if you will buy something else, you will get free shipping. So even though you didn’t really want anything else when you logged on, you think of the money you will save, and you go find something else, add it to your cart, just to get the free shipping.
That’s a prime example of what Dan Ariely is talking about in his new book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.” Ariely is a professor at M.I.T. in a discipline called behavioral economics, which is the study of how real people behave in real situations, as opposed to theoretical economics.
Ariely shows, over and over and in a startling variety of ways, how many things we do that simply make no sense. “Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless,” he writes. “They are systematic.” In other words, we all tend to make the same sorts of mistakes, such as wanting things that are free even when they end up costing us more.
The AJC’s Richard Halicks interviewed Ariely for our @Issue section recently. You can read the whole interview here. But here is an excerpt in which he talks about the topic of “market norms” vs “soclal norms.” Here’s Ariely:
“We live in two kinds of worlds. We live in a social world in which we do things for each other for friendship, and love. And we live in a world of work — money per hour and so on. Here’s an example. You go on a date with a woman. You go to dinner and a movie. As you lean in to kiss her at the end of the evening, you say, “You know, it’s interesting, I spent about $150 on this date so far.” Now, you haven’t said anything new. Prices are printed on the menu. Prices are printed on the ticket. She knows exactly how much you spent. Saying it will kill the date. There’s no way for a goodnight kiss at that point. Because this is a violation. It’s a mix of norms.
We know how to deal with financial contracts. And we know how to deal with social contracts. And when these two things mix, they lead to unexpected circumstances. Imagine if I asked you to help me change a tire on my car. You think, “Hmm, he looks like a nice person, why not?” How about if I offer you five bucks for it? You don’t tell youself, “Hey, I get to help Dan plus I get $5 in the deal!” No. What happens is that the $5 completely replaces the social motivation, and you say to yourself, “I don’t work for $5. Offer me a hundred, and we can talk.”
There are many ways to think about the implications of this idea. Think about the No Child Left Behind policy. Teachers are not paid much money in general. And we rely to a large degree on their intrinsic motivation — the meaning that they get from work — as one of the main drivers of their effort and motivation. And now we have the No Child Left Behind policy in which we offer payment for performance. How does it make a teacher feel differently when they worry about pay for performance rather than ideology and motivation? I think these are the cases in which [market norms] can dramatically backfire.”
I hope you can see why I’m impressed with “Predictably Irrational.” His chapter on rewarding teachers and No Child Left Behind is particuarly interesting; that excerpt barely does it justice. There’s also a website with excerpts.
Is anyone else reading “Predictably Irrational?” Do you recognize your own behavior in the brief, crude summaries here?
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Angela Bassett Coming to Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Actress Angela Bassett will be in Atlanta July 21 during the National Black Arts Festival for a retrospective of her work and a conversation with author and playwright Pearl Cleage. The event will take place at the Woodruff Arts Center’s Rich Theatre from 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tickets are available here.
Bassett’s many film and TV roles include “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” for which she earned a Golden Globe Award for best actress in a drama for her intense portrayal of Tina Turner. (Pictured above.) She stars in Tyler Perry’s latest movie, “Meet the Browns,” which opens March 21.
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When is it Appropriate to Boo at the Opera?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lest anyone think that ‘regional’ opera is subject to artistic inconsistencies and that New York’s mighty Metropolitan Opera is steady and unsinkable, consider the following email, sent by AJC classical stringer James L. Paulk. He was at the Met Monday evening, eager to hear tenor Ben Heppner and soprano Deborah Voigt sing in Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” conducted by Met music director James Levine.
The show was hyped beyond all decency, compounding anticipation for opening night. The entire run, through March 28, appears to be sold out. Audience reaction plays an interesting role here. When the Met does not meet expectations, the audience feels confident and demanding enough to boo. When was the last time an Atlanta Opera artist(s) flubbed horribly and got a well-deserved boo? Could it be that Atlantans appreciate the difficulty of producing and performing opera more than we value our own experience in the theater?
Here’s what James Paulk passed along:
The Tristan (last night) was a debacle. Heppner was sick and bailed out. He was replaced by John MacMasters, who had apparently sung the role once, at the Welsh Nat’l Opera. One of the biggest singers I’ve seen, and one of few for whom Heppner’s big costume needed to be let out, MacMasters had a small voice and ran out of steam during the second act. From that point on, things deteriorated, with the voice at times inaudible, sometimes breaking up, and all sorts of other issues.
Voigt was remarkably consistent: she sang flat all night. Levine apparently decided that the best course of action was to let the orchestra drown out everything, and he was quite brisk, by Levine standards (the Met orchestra sounds wonderful when heard at this volume and with such energy). All singers in secondary roles were outstanding, perhaps excepting the Kurwenal, Wilm Schulte, who sang loudly but with no refinement whatsoever.
MacMasters got the loudest and longest booing I’ve heard since the fabled Francesca Zambello “Lucia” — a disaster! — but that was for her stage direction. Directors are more at risk from first night Met audiences than singers.
—jimmy paulk
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Travel cliche contest winner
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sometimes the contests are a big hit, sometimes not so much. I thought the Travel Cliche Writing Contest sounded like fun, but we got four entries, so maybe not so much.
Our winner was Sheila Hudson, who explained that:
“Rustic, romantic, and roomy” means barren, without electricity, and a bath down the hall.
I haven’t stayed at that inn, Sheila — yet — but I know that you need to be careful when something is described as “rustic.”
Well done. Please email me at pkloer@ajc.com so I can send you my copy of the book that started it all, “Travel Speak” by N.W. “Red” Pope.
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Alice Walker: Save the Date
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alice Walker, who recently placed her literary archive at Emory University, will give a reading at Emory’s Glenn Memorial Auditorium the evening of March 25, her friend, Rudolph Byrd, a professor of American studies at Emory, told me. The talk also is mentioned in the Candler theology school’s list of upcoming events, but tickets haven’t gone on sale yet.
When they do, act fast. Author Salman Rushdie’s talk in the same venue sold out.
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Mysteries of the Monday night speech
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thomas Cahill is an engaging popular historian whose best-known work is probably “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” with sizable honorable mentions for “The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels” and “Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus.”
His most recent book, “Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science and the Arts from the Cults of Catholic Europe,” which came out in 2006, didn’t generate quite the buzz those books did, but I found it to be packed full of fascinating historical connections.
As he did in “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” Cahill (a Catholic with issues with the Church) shines a light on the darker centuries, roughly 600-1400, in an attempt to show that a lot of what we value in modern times was born or nurtured then. It’s a nifty tour that takes in Dante. St. Francis of Assisi, Heloise and Abelard, and many more, and he has a real knack for bringing these people to life. In the end, I wasn’t sure that he had proven what he had set out to prove, but I had learned a bit and been entertained.
Cahill will talk tonight at 7:15 at the Decatur Presbyterian Church, then go right next door to the Decatur Library to sign his books. His website doesn’t give a clue what he will be speaking about; it might be “Mysteries of the Middle Ages,” or, since he’s so wide-ranging, just about anything else.
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Wendell’s weekend picks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
1. “Blue Door” / Grade: A- In Tanya Barfield’s intensely moving play, an African-American man confronts the accumulated sorrows of his ancestors, to shattering effect. Eric J. Little’s mesmerizing performance as the man’s mysterious doppelganger makes this the best production in town. Through March 16. Theatre in the Square, Alley Stage, Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com.
2. “Angela’s Mixtape” / Grade: B- Eisa Davis tells all about growing up in the shadow of her controversial aunt, Angela Davis, in this world premiere. Through March 16. Synchronicity Performance Group at 7 Stages, Little Five Points. 404-484-8636, synchrotheatre.com.
3. “Duke Ellington’s Cat” / Grade: B- Jon Ludwig’s wondrously crafted show imagines the adventures of the jazz great’s feline companion. Like a master of bebop and scat, Ludwig defies formula to create playfulness and poetry. Through March 16. Center for Puppetry Arts. 404-873-3391, puppet.org.
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Contest: Best travel-writing cliches
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So you read — maybe in a brochure, maybe in a travel article, maybe on the Net somewhere — “Life on this island goes on at a slumbering pace.”
What it means: This may be the most boring place on earth.
Or “A local breakfast can be enjoyed in the back garden terrace.”
Which really means, of course: Savor hard-boiled eggs, hard bread and hard cheese as you swat at bees.”
Ah, the world of travel writing. Not really euphemisms in the strict sense, but frequently not really accurate either. I’m not talking about great travel writing, like Paul Theroux, but the kind that seems to ooze along in promotional writing and sometimes the mainstream media.
N.W. “Red” Pope, a retired and well-travelled businessman from Arizona, has collected a lot of these phrases, and his own interpretations (those are his above), in a fun little paperback called “Travel Speak.”
Here’s another. “English spoken here.” Which Pope knows is usually “Map two dollah, scarf two dollah, belt two dollah.”
It’s contest time again. Send in your favorite travel cliche, piece of flowery prose or euphemism, and what it really means. The best entry will receive my copy of “Travel Speak.” We’ll keep the contest open till Monday.
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ASO Premieres Gonzo Music
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., 404-744-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gonzalo Grau — Gonzo to his friends — is wonderfully hard to pin down.
The 35-year-old Venezuelan plays in a salsa band in the U.S., arranges and composes music for jazz bands, modern operas, movies and theater. His parents are classical musical celebrities back home, and he absorbed their music and popular Latin American sounds, “music of the street,” he calls it, with equal zeal.
And he’s played percussion and piano with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in epic, impassioned music by Osvaldo Golijov, the global man of the moment in classical music and an artistically kindred spirit. It was Golijov and ASO music director Robert Spano who together decided Grau deserved a chance to step onto the classical stage in his own right.
The ASO commissioned Grau’s 15-minute “Pregunta y Respuesta,” his first orchestral score, and gave its world premiere Thursday in Symphony Hall. The one thing you expect to be intrinsic to a down and funky salsa composer — and likely a reason the ASO commissioned him in the first place — is a sense of audience involvement. A musica call to get up and move (or at least feel the music take charge your body).
The work is in two sections, “Question” and “Answer.” It opens with a four-note theme — B, F#, D, A — which are the tuning notes of a small South American folk guitar called a cuatro, an instrument most school children learn to play in Venezuela.
Except Grau’s order is the reverse of how kids learn it. By upending an imprinted childhood memory, he makes a mild political statement about Venezuela’s social upheavals under the turbulent leadership of President Chavez. Here the question concerns the future and is unresolved; the answer is a joyous celebration — life, and thus music, will always go on.
The first section is mostly quiet and subtly evokes the gentle, open plains made famous by Aaron Copland, with the addition of lovely, lingering voices emerging from the orchestra, like birds at dawn. The peace is interrupted, temporarily, by a heavy salsa beat — six percussionists at work, two of them clapping their hands. The music often threatens to shout a compelling song, but instead leaves us wondering where all the throat-clearing will take us.
Part two is equally tame, with nice sounds moment by moment yet never seeming to take us anywhere. Spano conducted in the same half-squatting flamenco dancer position he deploys for Golijov’s music. The ASO probably gave it the best performance it’ll ever receive.
Could it be that in “Pregunta,” Grau holds the sort of soft-lens nostalgia for his homeland that affects self-exiled artists of all cultures? His new work is uncommonly pleasant, yet feels undernourished and inert. It lacks a vibrant personality, although for him it’s just a start.
Along with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, which I missed, the ASO and principal cellist Christopher Rex offered Samuel Barber’s 1945 Cello Concerto. For both the orchestra and Rex, it was the first time playing this fiendishly difficult music.
This is curious for a major, 30-minute work, given Barber’s perennial appeal in the concert hall. Yet the concerto, perhaps one of his rare misses, isn’t idiomatic for the cello’s natural, warm singing tone and it crams too many notes, not all of them welcome, into the finale.
Before the music started, Rex served as teacher and emcee, microphone in hand, introducing the main themes with his cello, leading us through the concerto’s structure, often with a humorous aside. (Rex studied with important cellists who knew important composers, a glimpse into 20th century music history.)
Rex was most eloquent where the concerto is most lyrical and emotional, in the plaintive middle movement. Still, they couldn’t step through the portal that would make this concerto live and breathe, if such a door exists.
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A fantasy about reality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atticus Higginbottom doesn’t have Harry Potter’s magic wand or Luke Skywalker’s light saber, but there are times either one would come in very handy. Atticus is a very ordinary and unpowerful 13-year-old boy who gets caught up in an adventure involving multiple realities in the new Young Adult fantasy fiction series “The 13th Reality.”
Author James Dashner, who grew up in Duluth and graduated from Duluth High (class of ‘91) is in town to promote his new book, the first volume in a series that he can only cope will be one percent as successful as Harry Potter.
In the the first volume, “The Journal of Curious Letters,” Atticus starts receiving mysterious letters with obscure clues, while having unsettling encounters with strange folks named Mothball and Mistress Jane and the occasional mechanical device that tries to kill him. I liked it a fair bit, but it seemed to be me to a fantasy aimed squarely at younger readers.
Some fantasies — “Lord of the Rings,” Harry Potter, “His Dark Materials” — work on multiple levels, so that adults can enjoy them as much as kids. Others seems to be more story-driven and appeal mainly to kids. For me, “The 13th Reality” was one of those. If you know of a fantasy reader aged maybe 10 to 16, I would recommend it.
Dashner will be at the Barnes & Noble, 2205 Pleasant Hill Rd., Duluth, at 7 tonight to read and sign. Also, check out the book’s awesome website .
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Alliance: Love it or leave it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tell me candidly: What do you readers think about the Alliance Theatre’s 40th birthday season?
In case you missed the news, last week we reported that the city’s top playhouse has big plans for its 2008-2009 anniversary year, which begins in the fall. A world premiere Southern Gothic musical by Stephen King and John Mellencamp. A gospel version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.” “The Second City: Too Busy To Hate…Too Hard to Commute,” a riff on Atlanta culture in collaboration with Chicago’s famed Second City comedy ensemble. “Gem of the Ocean” and “Radio Golf,” the beginning and end notes of August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” in rotating repertory.
Now I’d like to hear what you think.
What shows are you most excited about? Is there something you’d like to see that didn’t make the cut? Do you think it’s a healthy mix of edgy new work and more mainstream offerings? Plays by familiar voices as well as fresh ones?
In case you missed the story, here’s a link to Sunday’s analysis.
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Cobb Energy Centre the real ‘Superstar’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. C +
The Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet have given their stamp of approval to the gleaming new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. But can the intimately scaled, 2,750-seat theater compete with Midtown’s palatial Fox Theatre for Broadway-scale productions?
Based on Tuesday night’s inaugural run of a musical, the sleek new $145 million Northside venue has superstar potential — even if that ’70s show that’s hosanna-ing in Cobb feels a little dated.
To be sure, “Jesus Christ Superstar” — Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock-opera telling of the story of Christ — still has moments of soaring emotional resonance and lyrical beauty. Even after what seems like several millennia of tours and revivals, there’s still nothing like that first “Hosanna heysanna sanna sanna ho” to get the goose bumps going.
But the shrill, amped-up paean to peace and love needs a serious makeover and a thoughtful edit, which is hopefully what the Alliance Theatre will do with next year’s “Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL.”
For now we can exult in the promise of a top-notch new space for musical theater and hope that producers such as Broadway Across America-Atlanta (who programmed “Superstar”) and Theater of the Stars will hear our prayers for more.
Meanwhile, hard-core “Superstar” worshippers will appreciate the historic importance and beatific posture of Ted Neeley in the title role. (He played Christ in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation).
But come on.
Neeley is nearing 65, and though his voice is certainly authentic to the eight-track age, it’s starting to feel as screechy and scratchy as a worn-out Camaro. And that excruciatingly long crucifixion scene has Mel Gibson written all over it. Mercy. Just give him a sip of water already.
Yet all is not forsaken in this long journey to Golgotha.
Director Dallett Norris’ casting of Corey Glover as Judas, Tiffini Dodson as Mary Magdalene and Aaron Fuksa as Herod is divinely inspired.
Glover’s Judas is eaten up with conflict, and his exquisite take on “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” simply stops time. The former Living Colour frontman has both pop charisma and vocal chops. Dodson, for her part, is a glorious singer, and the show really begins with Mary Magdalene’s soothing “Everything’s Alright.” Bawdy and bouncy, Fuksa, in his one big scene, adopts the loud, raucous and irreverent style of improv comedy, to hilarious effect. Thank goodness somebody’s having fun.
Even those of us who don’t know how to love this electric-in-all-the-wrong-ways musical can’t help but look around and feel good about what’s happening at Cobb Energy. A halfway point between downtown and the northern suburbs, the performing arts center is serving a demographic that you often don’t see at intown venues. May the neon lights be bright on Cobb Galleria Parkway.
The 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday. 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. $20-$53. Broadway Across America-Atlanta, Cobb Energy Centre, 2800 Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com
Bottom Line: Broadway has a future — in Cobb.
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Does bad writing make us feel good?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Why are we attracted to bad writing? I don’t think anyone likes to read it at length, but excerpted, it can be quite entertaining. That seems to be the idea behind those awards for the worst sex scene of the year, or the Bulwer-Lytton contest, where people deliberately try to write the worst possible opening sentence to a novel.
Now we have something called the Delete Key Awards, run by an author named Janice Harayda. She has nominated 10 recent books, many of them best-sellers by big-name authors, for the past year’s worst writing in books.
Boy, does she have a good time ripping into some of these books.
On Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose,” which was chosen by Oprah for her book club and has been No. 1 on Amazon.com ever since: “Goodbye, Love in the Time of Cholera. Hello, Psychobabble in the Time of Ratings Wars.”
She quotes Alice Sebold’s “The Almost Moon,” which got pretty widespread pans: “And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.… This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.” Adds Harayda: Face-to-face” doesn’t seem quite the right phrase for those body parts, does it?”
This whole list brings the funny. Nice job.
But back to my original question: Why do we like bad writing?
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Phil Kloer - bio
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Phil Kloer has worked for the AJC for 22 years. He has been the Arts Editor, the television critic, a pop culture writer, an editor on ajc.com and is currently a feature writer. The only consistent thread is that he has reviewed books for the AJC all along. E-mail Phil
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Wendell Brock - bio
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wendell Brock has been theater critic of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 2001. He is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. An honor graduate of the University of Georgia, he joined the AJC in 1982. Since then, he’s been an arts editor, food writer, feature writer and copy editor. His work has appeared in newspapers everywhere — and in American Theatre, Pointe and Saveur magazines. He loves cooking, gardening and collecting photography.E-mail
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Memoirist busted: Condemn or forgive?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another memoir-writer has been busted for making up her life story, but I find this case strange and troubling.
Here’s the short version of the story, as reported by the Associated Press and posted on cnn.com.
Misha Defonseca wrote “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years.” It wasn’t a big deal in the United States, but it was a best-seller in Europe, was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film. In the book, she claimed that her parents were killed by the Nazis when she was four years old, and that she set off on a trek across Europe, killed a soldier and lived with a pack of wolves.
Under increased scrutiny, she now admits she made up nearly all of that. Her parents were indeed taken by the Nazis, but she lived quietly with relatives in Belgium. She’s now 71 and lives in Massachusetts.
Defonseca said in a written statement: “This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving. I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost.”
This isn’t the first case of a memoirist being unmasked as a phony, nor will it be the last. But do the circumstances change anything, that this girl was horribly traumatized at a very young age, and is now an old woman? Or should the truth, particularly since we’re dealing with the Holocaust, be the supreme value?
Should we forgive or condemn Misha?
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New venue, new season for the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will open the first season at its new amphitheater in Alpharetta with a mixed bag of classical favorites, Broadway show tunes and an appearance by musicians from local high school marching bands.
Music director Robert Spano will lead the Saturday concert on May 10 at 8 p.m. in the 12,000-seat Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park. Among the highlights: the Marcus Roberts Trio performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” and the final movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Ode to Joy” with the ASO chorus. Also on the program are Broadway songs by Bernstein and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The ASO also has invited 320 musicians from Alpharetta and Milton High School to perform “Seventy-Six Trombones.”
Also, there will be a family concert with Julie Andrews narrating “Simeon’s Gift,” a book she co-authored with her daughter. Score by Ian Fraser and lyrics by John Bucchino.
The outdoor concert venue announced in January that the Eagles will headline on May 14. Later in the summer, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Rod Stewart and ’80s metal band Rush will appear. In addition to classical and popular concerts, the amphitheater is expected to be a hub for high school graduations, fund-raising events, high school music concerts and competitions.
The $35 million venue, operated by the ASO, is expected to be a big cash-generator for the symphony. It gives the ASO a third venue in which to perform, in addition to the 6,000-seat Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Buckhead and the 1,750-seat Symphony Hall in Midtown.
Among eight other classical concerts in the summer lineup:
_ An Evening of Beethoven. Spano conducting. June 28.
- A semi-staged concert performance of the Puccini opera “La Boheme.” Spano conducting. July 26.
-“ASO Connects,” a free concert conducted by ASO assistant conductor Mei-Ann Chan. Aug. 14.
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‘Blue Door’ @ Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: A-
Something is eating away at Lewis, the mathematician at the center of Tanya Barfield’s emotionally riveting play “Blue Door.” Something far deeper than his recent divorce. Something that’s probably connected to the shadow figure peeping through the window of his handsomely decorated study.
As the playwright pulls back a curtain to reveal Lewis’ troubled interior world, he is visited by the accumulated sorrows of his ancestors, all represented by that mysterious doppelganger who hijacks his consciousness and takes him on a guided tour of his horrific past.
Masterfully written and beautifully executed by director Gary Yates’ two-man cast, “Blue Door” is getting a superb production at Marietta’s Theatre in the Square. Easily the best stage experience Atlanta has to offer at the given moment, this searing drama operates like a full-out exorcism in which the demons of slavery and the Jim Crow era are painfully purged from memory.
Barfield is not the first writer to explore what she calls the “cultural amnesia” of African-Americans. But her study of Lewis (Rob Cleveland) is so thoroughly imaginative, her structure so fine and smartly calculated, that the material feels newly urgent and intimate.
The playwright packs the essential concerns of August Wilson’s sprawling 10-play cycle into a single one-act capsule. In a remarkable feat of storytelling, the inhabitants of Lewis’ family saga are all ingeniously portrayed by a single actor.
Here that’s Eric J. Little, a virtuosic human chameleon with unsinkable energy and comedic brio. While Lewis is pretty much a static figure, his memory is crowded by a stunning array of people — grandfathers, slave owners, his brother — and the charismatic Little imbues each of them with high spirits and heartbreak. Though Cleveland builds toward Lewis’ epiphany with a slow, steady grace, this is ultimately Little’s show.
According to family lore, one of Lewis’ ancient grandmothers painted her door blue to keep the good spirits in and the bad ones out. In airing out the corners of his mind, that’s exactly what Lewis does. It’s a painful act of self-discovery that ennobles us all.
THE 411: 8 p.m Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 16. $15-$20. Theatre in the Square, Alley Stage, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com
BOTTOM LINE: Intensely moving.
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A bazillion authors hit Atlanta this week
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, Book Page fans, here we are in our new home on ATL Arts. If you found us here, congratulations. Bookmark the Books link on ATL Arts, and I will be posting here regularly, with a special emphasis on what’s happening in Atlanta.
And this week is the busiest (not counting the Decatur Book Festival) since I started the blog for author appearances in metro Atlanta. Here’s your rundown for the week.
Today, March 3
Dorothy Allison. 8:15 p.m. at Joseph Jones Room, Woodruff Library, Emory University. Allison is the author of “Bastard Out of Carolina” and winner of the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction. She will be giving the Feminist Founders Reading.
Allison DuBois. “Secrets of the Monarch.” 7:15 p.m. at Center Stage in Midtown. DuBois, pictured above, is both a best-selling author and the inspiration for the TV show “Medium.” She is giving a series of seminars, which are scheduled to include “bringing through lost loved ones for members of the audience that she feels compelled to read,” according to the press release. In other words, a really big seance. So this is not gonna be your everyday book-signing.
Melody Moezzi. “War on Error.” 12 noon at Emory Law School. I blogged and wrote about Moezzi several weeks ago. She’s an amazing young Iranian-American who lives in Decatur and whose first book is a series of profiles of herself and other young Muslim-Americans. Read this book and you will meet Muslim-Americans in a way that will open your eyes.
March 4
Joshilyn Jackson. “The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.” 6 p.m. at Margaret Mitchell House. Jackson is an Atlanta author who got a fantastic blurn from Sara Gruen, author of “Water for Elephants,” which I excerpt here: “With a storyteller’s easy grace, she whisks readers between bourgeois Victorianna, where dirty laundry and family drunks are secured firmly behind a Sunbonnet Sue exterior, and the unfathomable poverty of DeLop, a town of single-wides, chained pitbulls and no way out - unless you’re willing to sacrifice your very soul. Nothing is quite as it seems, and Jackson’s skilful unraveling of family secrets and betrayal left me breathless. You must read this book!
Karen White. “The Memory of Water.” 6:30 p.m. at the Book Exchange in Marietta. Also at 2 p.m. March 8 at Barnes & Noble Northpoint. Atlanta author White played hooky in the seventh grade to read “Gone With the Wind,” and knew she wanted to be a writer. “The Memory of Water” is a novel about sisters with secrets.
March 5
Jim Wallis. “The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in Post-Religious Right America.” Evening event at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Wallis is one of the leaders of the growing chorus of devout Christians who believe that the so-called “religious right” does not have a monopoly on interpreting Christianity. This is a sequel to his best-seller “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it,” and it has an introduction by former President Jimmy Carter.
Amy Sutherland. “What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage.” 7:30 p.m. at Borders, Snellville. I already blogged about Sutherland’s book, in which she used techniques of animal trainers to reshape her husband’s behavior to her liking. Needless to say, this pushes people’s buttons in various ways.
March 7
James Dashner. “The 13th Reality.” 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Duluth.** I just heard about Dashner, who is launching a new young adult fantasy series called “The 13th Reality,” about a 13-year-old boy who starts receiving letters with clues about parallel universes. He’s from Duluth, and I’m going to track down him and his book and blog about him later this week.
March 8
Nathan McCall. “Them.” 2 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Edgewood Retail District. Dang, I can’t believe I still haven’t gotten to McCall’s new novel. It;s about gentrification in Atlanta, using fictional characters but very real places and racial feelings, and it got great reviews.
Jenifer Fox. “Your Child’s Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them.” 2 p.m. at DeKalb Medical Center Auditorium in Decatur.
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Remember the Name: Isabel Leonard sings at Spivey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
RECITAL REVIEW Isabel Leonard and pianist Brian Zeger. Saturday at Spivey Hall. www.spiveyhall.org.
What appeared to be a typo on the front of Saturday evening’s Spivey Hall recital booklet — Isabel Leonard’s named floated free of category yet Brian Zeger was identified as the pianist — turned out to be a statement about artistic options.
A native New Yorker, Isabel Leonard made her professional opera debut last season in Atlanta Opera’s “Romeo et Juliette” as the page boy Stephano. That she out-shined an impressive cast in the cavernous Civic Center implies that her star appeal will out in any venue.
She came to Spivey for her professional recital debut, the launch of an art-song tour that will culminate at Carnegie Hall. The Metropolitan Opera has already booked her in increasingly prominent roles into the future. Her career train, as they say, is pulling out of the station.
But what’s her voice type, what the Germans call a “fach”? Nowadays, we find comfort in tidy, fixed categories — the light-voiced Mozart tenor, for example, is distinct from the heavy-voiced Wagner heldentenor and apart from the spinto Verdi tenor. Different roles, different mindsets, different career paths.
In her Spivey program, Leonard kept us guessing. Is she a lyric mezzo with sparkling top notes? A soprano with mezzo tendencies? At 25, perhaps her voice hasn’t settled yet. Perhaps, like a Cecylia Bartoli or a Susan Graham, she’ll always sing on the cusp between the two — what was historically called a “second soprano,” best suited to the in-between range of notes and where typical soprano-y brightness flows down to a mezzo-y purr.
With pianist Zeger, one of her mentors at New York’s Juilliard School, Leonard sang a thoroughly perfect debutante’s program — in five languages and a range of musical styles and emotions.
Perfect she was. Like many young American singers, she’s fabulously well trained. Her diction is clear, whether it’s a Romance language, German or Russian. She sings the texts first and shapes the phrases around them, where communication is at least as essential as beauty of tone.
But for Leonard that’s just a starting point. In selections from Hugo Wolf’s “Italian Songbook,” sung in German but based on Italian poems, she could open a hydrant of vocal power then scale it down a line later to an almost confessional intimacy. In “Ihr jungen Leute” (“You young men”), where a lass frets when her beloved marches off to war, she offered a flash of strong personality for the concluding line, a foreboding of his death. Leonard is a strikingly pretty woman with a radiant voice and an elegant bearing, but in that instant she became the helpless peasant, inhabiting a role, drawing us into her moment of despair.
Yet unlike many educated young Americans, Leonard doesn’t put the answers ahead of the questions. Interpretively honest, she could sound naive in Wolf songs where another soprano might feign world-weariness.
She was perhaps most appealing in songs by Reynaldo Hahn, with an idiomatic sense of the French language, cool temperatures and glowing, pure tones. She excelled, too, in Falla’s “Seven Popular Spanish Songs.” Each one was delivered as a piece of theater and the building was on fire. Yet nothing felt forced, nothing was inadequately considered.
Flirty and cynical cabaret songs by Arnold Schoenberg formed a bridge from the “classical” numbers to the American songbook of Gershwin, Porter and Kern. No surprise: these were just right, not as opera or a modern pop but in an antique, 1940s flashback style. In Meredith Willson’s “Till There Was You” she shelved a controlled art-song vibrato for a slight tremor in the voice — like everything on her recital, it was very savvily sung, very fetching.
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New Trinity Baroque’s ‘St. John’ Passion a Tour de Force
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW J.S.Bach’s “St. John” Passion. New Trinity Baroque. Saturday at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. www.newtrinitybaroque.org.
For its 10th anniversary, Atlanta’s New Trinity Baroque ensemble presented Bach’s monumental and challenging “St. John” Passion.
The texts were drawn directly from the gospel of John and from a contemporary type of poetry, rendering the story of Jesus’ death. The Evangelist, a tenor who speaks on pitch, tells much of the story. He alternates with arias, where singers expand on their feelings, and hymn-like choral passages. All of this is organized in a complex palindromic and harmonic structure that probably isn’t evident without some degree of preparation. (For example, as Jesus is crucified, the key signatures become masses of crosses).
Even for those so foolish as to arrive unprepared, there was still much to enjoy on Saturday. New Trinity is likely the only local arts group to have migrated here from London — via its founder, Predrag Gosta — and for this performance the regulars were augmented by players and singers from all over the world, as well as the organ and chorus of St. Bartholomew’s Church.
Leif Aruhn-Solen, the Evangelist, was less dramatic than you’d expect, but he brought so much tone and color to a semi-sung role that all was forgiven. Baritone Paul Max Tipton’s portrayed Jesus with dignity, beauty, and compassion. The other vocalists were fine without exception. The orchestra had a tepid start, as Gosta’s sluggish tempi mercilessly exposed their slips, tonal issues, and lost detail. Things picked up, though, and in the second part the instrumental solos became part of a moving tour du force.
With his period-instrument band, Gosta made a strong case for the as-Bach-heard-it authenticity of this performance, with the nine soloists singing the “choruses,” joined on the “chorales” by the larger church organ and choir. He’s likely right, to the extent that this matters, though Bach probably would have had only men and boys in his choir. But the truth is that, based on contemporary accounts of appallingly low performance standards, this probably sounded better than Bach himself ever heard.
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