The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2008 > May
May 2008
A Harry Potter event? What year is this?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Normal (cough boring cough) Muggles may think that tonight’s to-do at Wordsmiths Books indicates a refusal to accept that the Harry Potter saga is over.
But true fans will greet tonight’s “Wizard Night” with a geekish glee that will resonate throughout the Wizarding World.
Is it an anniversary? No. Just an excuse to pull out that old costume, paste on a lightning bolt scar and party like it’s 2007.
Wordsmiths, which is on the square in Decatur, will kick off Wizard Night with a screening of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the first movie, at 5:30 p.m. Then at 8 p.m., the Potter-themed rock group Accio Bodyguard performs.
So if you’re still wanting to debate whether Snape got the death scene he derserved, but everyone else you know has moved on to talking about “Iron Man,” you know where you need to be tonight.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
A stinging ‘Sweeney Todd’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. GRADE: A-
If you are beholden to the Tim Burton style of “Sweeney Todd” — the bloody sausage grinding, London at its dreariest Dickensian extreme — it may take you a moment to adjust to the radically streamlined version of the Stephen Sondheim masterpiece at the Fox Theatre.
The 1979 Broadway original had a cast of nearly 30, plus a full-out orchestra. British director John Doyle’s knockout revival, which arrived in New York three years ago and is now on its national tour, numbers but 10 performers — a nimble bunch that’s required to double as actors and play all the music, too.
It’s a nifty trick and a glorious transformation, but a show that also tasks the imagination to fill in the details of the demonic barber shop and the oleaginous pastry shop, where Mrs. Lovett chirpily purveys the “The Worst Pies in London.” (For the uninitiated, “Sweeney” is the tale of a London barber who loses his wife and daughter to a lascivious judge, then returns years later to extract his revenge.)
Doyle offers no swelling choruses, blazing furnaces or trap doors for dispatching Todd’s victims into the bowels of the theater. Instead, he trades the conventional horizontal sprawl of spectable for a crisp verticality that pins the action onto a space that’s as lean and narrow as a razor strap. Come to think about it, his visual aesthetic is not unlike Walter Bobbie’s straight-forward, jury-box design for the long-running “Chicago” revival.
This is not to say that emotional flavor of the material has been reduced to Sondheim lite. Yes, the zombie-like acting may take a little getting used to, and the first couple of scenes can feel a little scattershot and clinical.
But everything feels right once Judy Kaye’s Mrs. Lovett arrives — so warm and human, so full of bustle and bounce. To her credit, Kaye lacks the heavily mascara’ed diva factor that Broadway’s Patti LuPone applied to her Mrs. Lovett — and the wispy waifishness of Helena Bonham-Carter ’s film characterization, while David Hess’ Sweeney trades the inward brood of Johnny Depp and cone-headed intensity of Broadway’s Michael Cerveris for a sturdy, handsome efficiency.
Reprising their Broadway roles are Benjamin Magnuson and Lauren Molina as Anthony and Johanna, who both play cello and sing beautifully, and clarinet/keyboard player Diana DiMarzio as the Beggarwoman. One could quibble that Edmund Bagnell’s Tobias is a tad too twitchy. But for the most part, it’s a first-rate ensemble.
With its coffins, straitjackets and blood-spattered white coats, this “Sweeney” brings to mind lunatic asylums and nights of the living dead. A chamber-size piece fairly dripping with elegant design and raw visceral theatricality, it packs its punch with shrill whistles and crimson lights. A keening meditation on lust, desire, sorrow, despair, revenge and the desperate, gnawing nature of 11th-hour romance, “Sweeney Todd” cuts to the bone with an astringent slap.
A meat pie, a clean shave. Nothing to worry about, dear.
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: Attend the tale.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Changes at the 14th Street Playhouse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Changes are afoot at the 14th Street Playhouse, at the corner of 14th and Juniper in Midtown.
All three employees — the general manager, technical supervisor and business coordinator — were told Wednesday that their positions were being eliminated by their parent organization, the Woodruff Arts Center.
According to the Woodruff, the employees are being let go to lower costs and streamline services at the theater, a rental facility for everything from an upcoming teenage beauty pageant to the seemingly endless run of “Menopause the Musical.” The theater will now be run out of the Woodruff’s special events and rental management department. The Woodruff has owned the theater since the 1980s.
Contrary to rumors, however, a sale of the theater — on a prime piece of real estate across the street from the chic new W Hotel — isn’t in the works, according to Michael Flood, the Woodruff’s vice president of operations.
“Even if we were interested in selling it, it’s not a great market to do that,” he said. Instead, Flood said, “we think it will have a second life as a theater.” The Woodruff wants to keep it as an arts venue, he said, but also book more one-night corporate events and other short rentals. (They’d also like a film series. The theater got a new screen last year.)
True Colors Theatre Company, among others, has expressed interest in renting the theater for a few nights, he said. The Woodruff won’t do away with long runs, but will require production companies to be more flexible with their dates to allow for short rentals, Flood said.
The Woodruff hopes to increase the theater’s occupancy rate from around 60- 70 percent to 80 percent, he said.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Arts venues
Salman Rushdie: Save the Date
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is more advance notice than the blog usually gives to author appearances, but this one is a little bit special.
Salman Rushdie will lecture on his new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, at 7 p.m. Monday July 7 at the Carter Center, followed by a Q & A. Advance tickets are required. They cost $28, which includes an autographed, non-personalized first edition of the book.
The only way to get tickets is through A Cappella Books.484-C Moreland Ave in Little 5 Points. 404-681-5123 is the phone, and the link to order online is here.
I read “Enchantress,” and my review is scheduled to run Sunday, June 8, in Arts & Books. Like much of Rushdie’s work, it’s challenging, stimulating, sexy, and sometimes a bit more convoluted than I would have liked. I ended up admiring and appreciating it more than liking it, to be honest. Incidentally, he reportedly wrote a good bit of the novel while serving his teaching residency right here at Emory.
Rushdie has a reputation for giving dazzling public speeches on occasions like this, full of bright ideas and dry wit. If you want to get in, I would not wait until the last minute.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Happy Birthday, Ian Fleming
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today, May 28, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. His estate celebrated by having yet another author, Sebastian Faulks in this case, write yet another authorized novel about 007, titled “Devil May Care.”
My question: Does anyone? Care, that is?
I read all the Ian Fleming novels when I was a kid, and thought they rocked. Fleming?s creation stands with the likes of Sherlock Holmes as a timeless archetype.
But this business of sequels authorized by the estate of the author is usually more about milking a property for all its worth. Are you listening, Margaret Mitchell estate?
So on the 100th birthday of Fleming, how should we honor him? By rushing out and buying the new book by Faulks, or by just lifting a glass, even if only symbolically, to a writer who got it just right?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
“The Lady Elizabeth”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There are some subjects that you can’t publish too many books about.
Lincoln.
Churchill.
Beloved dogs who died.
And, I would argue, Queen Elizabeth I, one of the most popular biographical subjects around. Alison Weir, the very popular historian, wrote a bio of Liz back in 1998, and now she has another bio out, “The Lady Elizabeth.” I’m not exactly clear what’s in the new book that wasn’t in the first one, or vice versa, but here’s your chance to ask her. Weir will be speaking on the life of Elizabeth I and singing books at 7:15 tonight at the Decatur Library.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
ASO Smothers Shakespeare with Love
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Friday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats 8 Saturday. 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Maybe the predictable, weary title — “Shakespeare in Love” — deflated the evening before it began.
Nicholas McGegan, a regular and usually inspiring guest conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, planned a show of words and music devoted to the Bard.
A great idea, in concept. Famous scenes from five popular plays filled the program. At the front of the stage, actors from Georgia Shakespeare offered the dialogue; three singers delivered arias and songs (by six composers) from music inspired by the plays. The orchestra offered accompaniment. But Friday in Symphony Hall it didn’t flow in performance.
The appeal to musicians is natural: the richest characters in Shakespeare, as in much abstract music, exhibit many ideas at once. The crystal turns, we see the three-dimensional shape, and yet never lose view of each facet.
What’s more, for composers since the 17th century, Shakespeare has been a vital source of some of our deepest tales. As the keeper of eternal truths and human contradictions, his sonnets and plays combine to make a kind of secular mythology. In Finland, they’ve got the “Kalevala,” the folk-religion national epic. The Germans have the “Nibelungenlied,” a dense narrative of gods and middle earth. We’ve got Shakespeare, whom American poet Robert Pinsky recently termed “the central imagination of the English language.”
In a program like this, one hoped to find an undercurrent of politics or culture or language or art — something, anything. Instead, McGegan’s selections yielded no insights into either the drama or the music. It felt pale and stitched together, the whole never making sense of its parts.
“Much Ado About Nothing” inspired Hector Berlioz’s opera “Beatrice et Benedict,” with Megan McFarland and Chris Kayser acting the part of the bickering couple, tumbling into love and years of marital counseling.
“Romeo and Juliet” accomplished little, with Chris Ensweiler and Melinda Helfrich playing the Balcony Scene without much dignity — following the signature style of Georgia Shakespeare productions, which tend to be superficial, campy and quick to histrionics. Sibelius’ 1925 “The Tempest” didn’t hang together as theater, although one of the side benefits of McGegan’s programming was the introduction of music to the ASO repertoire.
In this almost-pops format, its shouldn’t have been surprising that the most compelling exchanges came from a hit musical.
Cole Porter’s 1948 Broadway show “Kiss Me Kate,” a screwball comedy, concerns a troupe of Shakespeareans performing “Taming of the Shrew” on the road. Mezzo Stacey Rishoi snarled and spat and blew a gasket singing “I Hate Men,” her manner dour and mean as all get out, her tone dusky, plush, piercing. It’s a wonderful, fascinating voice.
Andrew Garland’s “Where is the Life that Late I Led?” was just as perfectly pitched, tender, faux-suave, a little campy and disarmingly sincere. Soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird’s pure, unblemished, “white” tone seemed just right for “So In Love.”
Here as elsewhere, the British-born McGegan could be seen on the podium mouthing the words to both the comedy and the songs. He smiled at the witty bits and chuckled at the slapsticky schtick and swooned affectionately toward the orchestra. The whole evening might be simply a case of a conductor who loves his material too much for its own good.
More traditional orchestral fare, Mendelssohn’s incidental music to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — here they played just the Wedding March and Finale — closed the evening. Back on safe turf, the ASO finally sounded like its old self, taut and robust and happy to be on stage.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
“Curtains” Coming to Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta’s Theater of the Stars is mounting a co-production tour of “Curtains,” the hit Broadway musical for the 2009-2010 season.
Billed as an old-fashioned musical comedy whodunit, the show was nominated for 8 Tony Awards during its Broadway run, which began March 22, 2007 and will close next month. (David Hyde Pierce — widely known from the “Frasier” TV show — won Best Actor in a Musical for his portrayal of the charming detective at the center of the murder mystery. He’s committed to the show until it closes on Broadway.)
“Curtains” unfolds backstage at Boston’s Colonial Theatre in 1959 in a pre-Broadway engagement. The new musical could be a smash were it not for its talent-free leading lady. When the star dies on opening night during her curtain call, a police detective is called in. But the lure of the theater proves irresistable and he’s soon drawn toward making the show a hit.
Theater of the Stars is a resident company of the Fox Theatre, so look for “Curtains” in the historic theater’s 2009-2010 lineup.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
What’s on your nightstand?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Publishers Weekly has a regular feature called What’s On Your Nightstand?, where people write about the books at their bedside. I thought it was a neat idea, so I, um, borrowed it.
It can be one book you’re reading. Or multiples, if you’re one of those people, like me, who usually has at least three going at once. Or it can be books you have nearby that you really have been meaning to get to, but for whatever reason, it isn’t happening.
There’s a social network for book fans — one of many, actually — called Shelfari, which allows you to show what you have read, what you are reading, what you plan to read. I signed up just to post what I’m reading right now for this blog; I really don’t need another social network to keep track of, or I won’t have any time for reading.
Anyway, my What I’m Reading shelf on Shelfari is here. It consists of:
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” by Michael Chabon, which just won a Nebula Award for best science fiction novel and an Edgar for best mystery, which I think is the first time that’s happened.
“Buddhism for Beginners”
“Africa Doesn’t Matter” by Giles Bolton, a very readable overview of why Africa has some of the problems it has, and what does and doesn’t work to solve them in terms of Western economic aid.
So, what’s on YOUR nightstand?
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Tattoo? You? Who has regrets?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you care to sink down to your lower lip in the Jacuzzi of human weirdness and depravity, there are many options. But may I recommend the new book “No Regrets: The Best, Worst & Most #$%*ing Ridiculous Tattoos Ever.”
I promise you, you have not seen tattoos like these, unless you have been to something like the annual Atlanta Tattoo Arts Festival. And even the most obsessive people there rarely have tattoos like those displayed in the huge, garish, full-color photos shown here.
As you can imagine, some I cannot even describe, either in topic or plaacement. There’s a full face of Dr. Phil on a man’s posterior, a huge full-color Bob Barker on a bicep yelling “Come on down!,” a unicorn saying “Boo-yah!,” Patrick Swayze as a centaur, and “Will Work for Burritos” in a fun font all the way across a guy’s big ol’ belly.
Wait. Patrick Swayze as a centaur? You read that right.
I don’t expect people who come to the Atlanta Arts blog to be able to top that, but in honor of the publication of “No Regrets,” I’m moved to ask:
Does anyone have a tattoo they regret? If so, please the more details the better!
Permalink | Comments (147) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Bow down before Ellen Gilchrist
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta is blessed with plenty of authors who come here to promote books, but it’s not often we are privileged to have someone who writes at the level of Ellen Gilchrist.
Gilchrist, a National Book Award winner, is here to promote her new novel (her first in a long time), “A Dangerous Age,” which tells the stories of several women in one family, and the impact of 9/11 and the war in Iraq on their lives. She’s at the Margaret Mitchell House tonight. 6 p.m.reception, 7 p.m.program . Admission is free for members, $10 for non-members.
I haven’t had the pleasure of reading “Dangerous” yet, but I know that Gilchrist can create wonderful female characters, contemporary women who come alive on the page and linger long after the book is over. Like Amanda, the teenaged unwed mother in her debut novel, “The Annunciation,” or Nora Jane from “In the Land of Dreamy Dreams.”
Here’s a nice comment from critic Sabine Durrant: Gilchrist’s writing “swings between the familiar and the shocking, the everyday and the traumatic. … She writes about ordinary happenings in out of the way places, of meetings between recognizable characters from her other fiction and strangers, above all of domestic routine disrupted by violence. It is disorienting stuff, but controlled always by Gilchrist’s wry tone and gentle insight.’”
Writing this blog has made me realize it’s been too long since I’ve read Gilchrist, and it’s time to rectify that. “Dangerous,” here I come!
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Barbara Walters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barbara Walters swings into Decatur tonight to plug “Audition,” her new memoir that has received such scant publicity recently.
Despite what has seemed like a total news blackout, “Audition” sold a whopping 250,000 copies in its first week, has been at or near the top of the best-seller lists, and has even — you may find this hard to believe — prompted Star Jones to speak out in her own defense.
Walters, who appears on television from time to time, will be at Agnes Scott College tonight at 7. She will be interviewed by Jovita Moore of WSB.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
GUEST BLOG: ASO Chorus says auf wiedersehen to Berlin
Chorus member Kathleen V. Poe gives a first-hand look at the ASO's trip to Germany
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Our Friday and Saturday performances at the Philharmonie were just as well received as Thursday was. The audience’s response remained totally overwhelming each night as they called Joe Kaiser, Norman Mackenzie and Maestro Donald Runnicles back to the stage four and five times. The bravos and ovations were intensified because we were surrounded on all sides by audience members, some of whom were close enough to touch. (For these concerts, about one-third of the chorus occupied seats that would normally have been sold to patrons because our group is larger than the typical European symphonic chorus.) Each night, concert-goers clapped and waved until after we had left the stage.
Perhaps even more thrilling was the applause of the Philharmonic, as well as the keen musicianship they brought to the partnership. Joe Kaiser told a group of us after Friday’s concert that he had heard the orchestra many times before and could tell from the way they played that these performances were heartfelt. A lot of credit for this goes to Runnicles. He was absolutely on fire in Berlin, with a ferocious energy and unwavering focus. If, as he said, “Alle gute dinge sind drei,” — all good things are three — the chorus can look forward to a third engagement with the Philharmonic under Runnicles’s baton.
During the long journey home, which began for half the group at 5 a.m. Sunday morning German time, I spoke to several chorus members about how our week in Berlin stacked up to the 2003 trip. Both were deemed chorus career highlights, but the two were difficult to compare. For some people, this trip didn’t possess the same magic as the first one. This time, each party in the collaboration came into the week with expectations built on prior experience: the Philharmonic musicians knew our abilities, and we knew theirs, generally speaking.
So many stories from the previous trip center on that first rehearsal and the orchestra’s in-the-moment reaction to the chorus, now the stuff of ASOC legend. The element of surprise was not at play as much this time. For those for whom this was a return trip, these indelible memories are likely foremost in their hearts. For singers like me who weren’t a part of the chorus in 2003, Berlin 2008 had a certain magic all its own.
Permalink | Comments (15) | Post your comment |
Fringe Finishes its Debut Season
CONCERT REVIEW Fringe Atlanta. Saturday at Church of the Redeemer. www.fringeatlanta.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s hard to decide what Fringe Atlanta does best. Is it the committed, sometimes superb, chamber-music performances — or the presentation of those concerts?
The Fringe paradigm might be this: classical music, if well played, remains vibrant and engrossing, but the formality and ceremony of most classical concerts turns off audiences in our modern a go-go world.
So across its four-concert inaugural season, which ended Saturday night, Fringe retained what works and shucked what doesn’t. It has proved a savvy strategy: loosen audience inhibitions and heighten anticipation for the actual music-making. It’s irreverent only for people who revere rituals over music.
The cause of classical music’s increased marginalization in America has led to much hand-wringing among its devotees. With a predominantly under-40 audience and a sold-out house Saturday — and more than 80% of capacity across four concerts — it’s impossible to imagine that aspects of the Fringe model won’t soon be copied by classical groups everywhere.
Notably, in the program Mozart’s G minor Viola Quintet and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 received equal billing with the evening’s other artists.
Nashville photographer Jeremy Cowart’s stylized, plasticized portraits of rural Africans hung on the lobby walls. Jennifer Mitchell, a local composer who moonlights under the club moniker DJ Little Jen, spun ambient sounds during the breaks. Her opening set sounded libidinous and skrunky — is that a word? — riding on a thumping sex-and-sweat bassline.
“Jeu” and “The Man Without a Shadow,” two wordless, short films by Georges Schwizgebel, an award-winning Swiss-Canadian animator, told fables of urban life and its ennui using bright Henri Matisse colors.
Then came slick, shabby-chic infomercial-style musician interviews. These aren’t deep conversations but designed to pique the first-time listener’s attention, touching on the performers’ lives and what to expect from the music. Israeli cellist Roy Harran, for example, revealed that his cello, which is too fragile to check with luggage and requires an airline seat, has its own frequent-flier miles.
Yet when Mozart and Shostakovich finally arrived, they weren’t an afterthought.
Violinist and music director Fia Mancini Durrett, like her colleagues a prominent local freelancer, recruited strong players. In the Mozart, with violists Tania Maxwell Clements and Virginia Respess singing the soulful middle voices, the group found the quintet’s melancholy joy and other powerful yet vaguely defined emotional states.
In the Shostakovich — played by Durrett, violinist Helen Kim, Clements and Harran — they held tight to the composer’s inner torments which shadow the quartet. But in the brief, wrenching, all-consuming firestorm that’s the work’s most unforgettable episide, the players couldn’t dig deep enough, couldn’t find an edge lethal enough to communicate a lifetime of regrets and a (Soviet) culture that devoured its own.
Still, Fringe is on a path to reinventing the classical concert — not by updating the repertoire with contemporary music, but by how the old classics are offered once the lights go down.
The most radical shift in all this is how Fringe empowers its audience. People applauded after every movement of a work, no one shushed the occasional whisperer, beer and wine helped take the edge off, and no one gave bathroom visits during the performance a second thought. Also, the music was available for free download the next morning.
In recent decades, when concert rites ossified and the repertoire rarely included music composed after the early 20th century, the performers, by default, held a dominant position. Among other complications, this led to passive audiences who sat quietly, applauded at prescribed times and knew their role as a paying support group for the folks up on stage. This is a bit of a generalization, but I think not so far off the mark.
Fringe’s casual scene means that it is incumbent on the musicians, moment by moment, to earn your rapt attention. Their plan might not work with the subtlest pieces of music, or with works that yield its secrets only with very focused attention. They’ve offered a few recent works across their debut season, but little of it left an impact. No, what Fringe does well — repackage the old classics for a new audience — it does very well.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
Cast Set for “Color Purple” Musical
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A cast has been chosen for the first North American touring production of the Broadway musical “The Color Purple.” The show will be at the Fox Theatre July 15 - Aug. 3, coinciding with the National Black Arts Festival.
The cast includes Stu James, an Atlanta native and graduate of Morehouse College. He’ll play Harpo. His acting credits include “Rent” on Broadway, the movie “Dreamgirls,” and appearances on “General Hospital,” and other TV shows.
Celie will be played by Jeannette Bayardelle who also played the role on Broadway. The cast also includes Felicia Fields as Sofia, who was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of the role on Broadway. “American Idol” fans will recognize another cast member: LaToya London, playing Nettie. She was an early front-runner to win season three before she was voted off, ending up in fourth place. She later won a recording contract and had two Billboard chart-topping singles.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Vegas Violinist at the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two young women dominated the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s concert on Thursday: Laura Jackson, who conducted, and Sarah Chang, the violin soloist. Jackson recently finished up a year as the ASO’s conducting fellow, so this was a sort of homecoming for her. Women conductors are still a rare breed, and her success is far from assured. She’s lined up some guest slots for next season, and is presumably in the market for a posting.
The concert opened with Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, premiered in 1918 but which mimics the forms and textures of Haydn’s 18th century symphonies. Anyone betting on a generic reading of the score was quickly proved wrong. Via a slight exaggeration of the dynamics and tempos (faster in the fast bits, slower in the slow), a heavier emphasis on the sweep of the strings, and some adjustments in balances (holding down the basses and percussion), Jackson gave the work an energetic feel without losing its delicacy. It worked, and the listener was inclined to forgive occasional lapses in coordination.
Sarah Chang arrived on the stage in a shiny, jade green dress that said a lot about her “show biz” stage personality. Having made an astonishing debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 8, she has grown up on the concert stage, making her the classical music equivalent of Judy Garland.
Here, she played the Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1, the same piece she played for her Julliard audition at age 6. Her tendency to rush into the fast passages can either be exciting or annoying, depending on your point of view. There is a theatricality to her playing, both in terms of her interpretive style and her self-conscious stage gestures, including foot-stamping, shoulder swoops, and wild bowing techniques. You chuckle at the Las Vegas act that’s part of the package.
It’s no longer possible to forgive the orchestra’s coordination problems, including problems with intonation not normally associated with the ASO. Is it possible that the many distractions of the past few weeks, including the Encore Park opening, had prevented adequate rehearsal? Or was Jackson pushing the orchestra for dramatic gestures at the expense of precision? The audience seemed happy with the way it turned out. Of course, the audience here always seems happy, even delirious.
The orchestra returned from intermission like a football team after a rousing half-time talk from the coach. In Dvorak’s Sixth Symphony everyone was together and in tune, displaying the discipline normally associated with the ASO. Hearing it played so elegantly, you have to wonder why the piece is so rarely performed.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
GUEST BLOG: ASO Chorus met with resounding approval
Chorus member Kathleen V. Poe gives a first-hand look at the ASO's trip to Germany
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday night’s performance in Berlin started at 8 p.m. on the dot. There’s generally no accommodation for latecomers at the Philharmonie — probably because they don’t have a downtown connector to contend with.
Once the chorus took the stage, even before the orchestra tuned, the audience broke out in welcoming applause. This sort of anticipatory energy and first-night excitement carried the evening.
While our recent shows in Atlanta included an instrumental piece as a first half, the performances here are all-Berlioz: just the one work, without intermission. It’s a big sing, as we say, and a demanding piece for an audience, too, at nearly an hour and twenty minutes long.
Still, we could sense that they stayed with us for the duration. When the maestro gave the final cutoff, nearly 10 seconds of silence elapsed before he lowered his arms and a roar erupted from the packed house.
Cobb County teachers in the chorus at the reception with Donald Runnicles (back row, center) and Norman Mackenzie (far right).
(Another thing I’ve noticed about European audiences through my travels: Standing ovations are rarities here. While Americans predictably leap to their feet when a curtain goes down, Germans will clap for an eternity — from their seats — to show their appreciation.)
Maestro Runnicles, Joe Kaiser and Norman Mackenzie were called back to the stage three or four times before the audience started to trickle out. The chorus waited until the Philharmonic musicians left the stage to head backstage, nearly 10 applause-filled minutes after the piece ended. As we left, another hearty round of cheers and clapping began, bringing Donald and Norman back onstage.
At the after-party in the lobby, we celebrated a successful first performance with the orchestra, our patrons, sponsors, friends and family — and lots of Champagne. Those who addressed the crowd kept their speeches short. Ben Johnson, incoming chairman of the ASO board said that, as an Atlantan, he’d never had a prouder night; Maestro Runnicles mentioned that all good things come in threes (hint, hint) and wrapped up his thoughts by telling the chorus, “You rock!”
So it’s one down, two to go in Berlin for the ASOC — and I think the best is yet to come.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment |
Down Home With C-Span 2
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bob Dart covered the South as a reporter for the AJC for years, before moving on to the Washington D.C. bureau of Cox Newspapers. Just so there’s no pretense that this isn’t an in-house plug.
His book, “Down Home: Dispatches from Dixie,” is a collection of stories about Southern culture, society and politics. When Dart spoke at Hattie’s Books in Brunswick to promote the book, C-Span was there with its cameras.
Dart’s talk will repeat on C-Span 2 at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 17.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
GUEST BLOG: ASO chorus lands in Berlin
Chorus member Kathleen V. Poe gives a first-hand look at the ASO's trip to Germany
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Being a member of the all-volunteer Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus has its perks. Sure, we sacrifice our Monday nights from August through April to rehearse, and we may not see our friends and family during performance weeks, but it all pays off. This week is proof, as the chorus makes its second trip to Berlin as a guest of the renowned orchestra Berliner Philharmoniker (the groups’ first collaboration took place in December 2003).
There has been a lot of reminiscing about that first engagement at the Philharmonie and, in the long-timer crowd, memories of previous occasions they sang the work we’ll perform Thursday through Saturday: Hector Berlioz’s Requiem. (The ASOC’s earlier recordings of this won the Grammy for best choral performance under Robert Shaw in 1985 and again under current music director Robert Spano in 2005; the Shaw recording also scored a Grammy for best classical album.) A handful of us were either not in the chorus or couldn’t make the trip in 2003, so we are experiencing all of this for the first time.
Aside from poking around in Berlin, eating schnitzel and gelato and trying to get our body clocks on the right time zone, the nearly 200 ASOC singers have spent several hours in rehearsal with the exceptional Philharmoniker musicians. The first alto section has decided that, in addition to tenor soloist, Joseph Kaiser, we want to kidnap a few of the instrumentalists from Berlin and bring them home to Atlanta.
Actually, the Philharmonie — the hall itself — is an amazing instrument. It’s bowl-shaped, like two cupped hands considering the ceiling, and its acoustics create a completely different singing and listening experience from our hall at home. The audience surrounds the orchestra, with seats situated at various angles. This is the sort of tiered vineyard seating that the ASO envisions for its future Symphony Center. Somehow it’s easier to sing in these spaces — or maybe it’s just harder to oversing — in such a sympathetic environment. Add an enormous top-tier international orchestra (eight sets of timpani! 16 trumpets!), top it all off with ASO Principal Guest Conductor Donald Runnicles, and… well, you’ll have to wait and hear what happens.
Live performance is naturally unpredictable — but I’m pretty confident that the opening-night after-party on Thursday with our friends, family members, ASO subscribers and patrons who have traveled to Berlin and the Philharmoniker musicians will get stellar reviews.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment |
Update: Listing for Jack Whitten Artist Talk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jack Whitten Artist Talk. Lecture in conjunction with his show titled “Memorial Paintings.” In the Hill Auditorium. 7 p.m. May 15.
Free with museum admission: $18; $15 senior citizens and college students with ID; $11 ages 6-17; ages 5 and younger free.
High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4444, 404-688-1970, www.thecontemporary.org.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Visual arts
THEATER REVIEW: ‘The Poetry of Pizza’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Grade: B-
Deborah Brevoort’s “The Poetry of Pizza” is a zesty, easily digested romantic comedy that tastes more like thin crust than deep dish.
When a saucy American college professor goes on sabbatical in Europe, the table is set for a culture-clash caper of slamming doors, mistaken identities and amorous exchanges over the pleasures of sausage and pepperoni.
No intellectual calories will be burned. No cosmic revelations about the nature of love shall be revealed in this Theatre in the Square production. About the only surprising ingredient of this comedic mishmash is that it’s set in the cold Nordic landscape of Denmark instead of the sun-dappled splendor of Tuscany.
Yet expat poetry expert Sarah Middleton (Agnes Lucinda Harty) isn’t about to fall under the spell of the foolish married fop Ule Enevold (Scott E. DePoy) or cheesy Danish academic Heino Anderson (Robin Bloodworth). Not when the handsome Soran Saleen (David Kronawitter) is showering her with Purple Passion, Persian Kisses and Rose Petals (as she names his beautifully crafted pies).
“The Poetry of Pizza” has whiffs of magic realism (see the foodie film “Chocolat”) and the exotic allure of romantic travel tales (see “The Light in the Piazza”).
Soran, a Kurdish immigrant, is the kind of guy who gets homesick for figs and pistachios and speaks with the rhythmic thud of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat. Kronawitter imbues Soran with pitch-perfect comedic timing and the soul of an artist. (You can guess who the true poet is here.)
Also good are Karen Howell as Sarah’s agorophobic-turned-nymphomaniac landlady, Olga; William S. Murphey as Soran’s employer, Rebar; and DePoy, as the flustered romantic Ule, who happens to be married to another agorophobiac (played by Nita Hardy). In this dishy bunch, Harty’s Sarah seems a little bland.
Director Jessica Phelps West’s ensemble could use a lot of guidance with their Scandinavian accents, which are cartoonish one minute and non-existent the next. While costume designer Joanna Schmink’s parade of red buttons is cute, Rochelle Barker’s faux-stucco set has the curdling effect of a purple stomach laxative.
At 2 1/2 hours (including intermission), this light-as-piecrust offering stays in the oven just a bit too long and has a predictable, happily-ever-after flavor in the end. But no matter how you slice it, “The Poetry of Pizza” is still a fool-proof recipe for fun.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays. 2:30 p.m. June 4. Through June 8. $18-$33. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com
Bottom line: Fresh-baked, with plenty of cheese.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
‘In the Solitude of Cotton Fields’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: C
In Albert Camus’ existentialist novel “The Stranger,” a Frenchman kills an Arab man he sees on the beach for no apparent reason. In Bernard-Marie Koltés’ “In the Solitude of Cotton Fields,” a momentary glance between a white “client” and a black “dealer” prompts a study of the tipping point between fear and desire, attraction and repulsion.
Koltés, a French playwright who died of AIDS in 1989, had an abiding fascination with the complex relationships between blacks and whites. After producing Koltés’ “Black Battles With Dogs” in 2001, Atlanta’s 7 Stages now embarks on a 10-year investigation of the dramatist’s mysterious body of work, which uses poetry and symbolism to express his political and moral concerns.
Directed by Eric Vigner, Isma’il ibn Conner’s elegant new translation of “In the Solitude of Cotton Fields” applies a precisely choreographed vocabulary of language and movement to portray the dangerous pas de deux of the dealer (Conner) and client (Del Hamilton).
Beginning as a series of alternating monologues, “Solitude” strains to turn a passing glance into an erotically charged, 90-minute meditation on the dynamics of power, trust, control and submission. Though the psychological face-off can be a slow-going, tedious experience, it also offers moments of genuine heartbreak.
What happens when a game of seduction turns into an orgy of anguished words and regret? In this case, it’s as if the client expects a kick and doesn’t know what to do when he gets a caress. His rage over the hustler’s compassionate impulse can easily be interpreted as a case of self-loathing and homophobia.
While you admire these artists’ affinity for the material, “Solitude” treats a minor playwright with an air of self-importance that will stretch the patience of many theater-goers. At the end of the day, the piece might play better in the solitude of graduate seminars than the public domain.
THE 411: 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday. 5 p.m. Sunday.$ 25. 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave., Little Five Points. 404-523-7647, 7stages.org.
Bottom line: A lot of work.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
A Voyage Long and Strange
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tony Horwitz’s book “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War” looked at ways in which the Civil War lives on, from re-enactors to controversies over a Lincoln statue. He took a year traveling to various shrines and battlefields, and the book was as much his own sometimes bizarre journey as it was a work of proper sociology.
Now Horwitz has written a new book, “A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World,” which covers American history from 1492 to the pilgrims, the period that even some of us history buffs are a little spotty on. That was Horwitz’s own realization one day as he stood at Plymouth Rock.
Horwitz being Horwitz, of course, this isn’t a textbook. He goes on his own pilgrimage, all around North America, visiting the sites where stuff happened, and filtering it through his idiosyncratic lens.
Here’s what our reviewer, Emory professor Michael A. Elliott, had to say Sunday in his review:
“It is in his description of how our contemporaries experience history that Horwitz really shines. He does more than serve up a cast of colorful characters. He depicts an overlooked paradox of American life: Even though surveys repeatedly show that most of us know little about our shared past, there remains a large, diverse assemblage of Americans for whom history remains very much alive. It is hard to read “A Voyage Long and Strange” without catching a little of their passion for the past.”
Horwitz will give a lecture and sign books at the Margaret Mitchell House at 7 tonight.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
No surprise: Tony snubs the megamusicals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, the Tony Award nominations are in, and there are no major upsets or oversights.
Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” and Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” — big, expensive spectacles that were the most closely watched new shows of the fall season - fared poorly, while “In The Heights” — Lin-Manuel Miranda’s salsa-and-rap-flavored story of the Latino experience in New York — led with 13 nominations.
Megamusicals are out. Diversity is in.
Quiara Alegria Hudes, who wrote the book for “In the Heights,” is the author of “26 Miles,” a new play that will have its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre next March.
Georgia natives and previous Tony winners Shuler Hensley and Sutton Foster (who portray Frankenstein’s monster and the sexy Inga in the Mel Brooks musical) were passed over in favor of Christopher Fitzgerald and Andrea Martin, who play Igor and Fraulein Blucher in the musical comedy. Fitzgerald and Martin were nominated in the featured actor/musical and featured actress/musical categories. Scenic designer Robin Wagner picked up the show’s only other nomination.
“Young Frankenstein”’s three nods may be about what the show deserved, but I’m kinda surprised that the Mel Brooks brand didn’t carry a bit more weight. “Young Frankenstein” drew mixed reviews and shot itself in the foot early on with its high ticket prices. The Tony snub won’t do it any favors at the box office.
Disney’s “Little Mermaid” did even worse, with a paltry two nods for Natasha Katz’s lighting and Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater’s score. (Menken and Slater, you may recall, wrote the music and lyrics for the Alliance Theatre’s “Sister Act.”)
After “In the Heights,” revivals led the pack, with “South Pacific” getting 11 nods, “Sunday in the Park with George” nine and “Gypsy” seven. “Passing Strange,” the musical biography of alternative rocker Stew, garnered seven nominations. (Again, diverse, innovative voices are being rewarded over glitz and spectacle.)
Among plays, Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County” led with seven nominations. Letts is known in Atlanta for his cult hits “Killer Joe” and “Bug,” both produced by Actor’s Express, and for playing George in the Alliance production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” a few years ago.
The Alfred Hitchcock spoof “The 39 Steps,” starring Lawrenceville native Jennifer Ferrin, was nominated for six prizes, including best new play.
The Tonys will be presented on June 15 in a live CBS broadcast from Radio City Music Hall. For more information, check out the full story and complete list of nominees.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Boots on the Ground
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After 9/11, Pat Tillman left a career in the NFL - safe, very lucrative - and enlisted as a U.S. Army Ranger. On April 22, 2004, he was killed in Afghanistan. The Army said he had died during a gun battle with the enemy. A month later, the Army changed its story, and said Tillman had been killed by friendly fire.
There have been numerous allegations and investigations; yet another investigation is still going on. Through all of this, Pat’s mother, Mary Tillman, has spoken out strongly against the way the Army has handled the case.
Mary Tillman has now written a book, “Boots On the Ground by Dusk: A Tribute to Pat Tillman,” about her son’s life as well as his death. She will speak and sign the book at 7 tonight at the Jimmy Carter Library and Museum., 441 Freedom Parkway, Atlanta.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
It’s time for the Tony Awards
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta made a big splash the morning the Tony Award nominations were announced last year. The Alliance Theatre won the Regional Tony for sustained excellence, and August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” (directed by Atlantan Kenny Leon) received four Tony nominations.
When the Tony contenders are announced tomorrow morning, we’ll be watching to see how Georgia’s Broadway contingent fares. Here’s a look at the homegrown talent, all of whom have a chance at nominations but are by no means shoo-ins.
Tituss Burgess. The Athens native is making a delightful turn as Sebastian, the fussy crab in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”
Sutton Foster. Already a Tony winner for “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” the star who grew up in Augusta was also nominated for “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “Little Women.” Foster plays Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s love interest in the Mel Brooks musical, “Young Frankenstein.” The big news from Foster is that she’ll play Fiona in “Shrek: The Musical,” opening Nov. 8.
Jennifer Ferrin: This lovely actress is a native of Lawrenceville and graduate of Brookwood High School. She’s the lone female in “The 39 Steps,” the frenetic physical comedy send-up of the Alfred Hitchcock film, which happens to be airing at 8 tonight on TMC. Ferrin is known for playing Jennifer Louise Munson on the daytime soap “As the World Turns.”
Shuler Hensley: The Marietta native gets to make whoopy with “Will and Grace” star Megan Mullally, whose character ditches Dr. Frankenstein for his Monster in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.” Hensley has already won a Tony for his portrayal of the lonely, downtrodden Jud Fry in Trevor Nunn’s “Oklahoma!”
Atlanta’s Boris Kodjoe recently stepped in for Terrence Howard to play Brick in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” but Kodjoe won’t be eligible for a Tony nom.
If there were a category for biggest disappointments, “Young Frankenstein” and “Little Mermaid” would be in the game. As it is, “Passing Strange,” “In the Heights,” “Catered Affair” and “Xanadu” have all been better received. By all accounts, the best musicals on Broadway right now are the revivals: “Gypsy,” “South Pacific” and “Sunday in the Park with George.” Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage Count,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, is the best American play in decades. It will win a Tony.
The Tony Awards will be handed out live on CBS on June 15. Whoopi Goldberg will host.
Now, What Broadway shows have you seen this year? And who do you think should win a Tony?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Carl Hiaasen and I have something in common
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We both have a passionate love-hate relationship with golf. But while I just flail away, week after week, trying to either get better or get calmer, Hiaasen does the same, and then wrote a very funny book about it: “The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport.”
Hiaasen is known for his Florida-based comic thrillers like “Nature Girl” and “Strip Tease,” so the lacerating first-person account in “Downhill” will be new to his fans. But not the humor, as he sets out on “the cart path to perdition” to improve his game and/or be at peace with it. What he finds, instead, is that “golf is as calming as a digital prostate exam.”
Hiaasen will talk and sign “Downhill” at 7 tonight at Georgia Perimeter College in Clarkston. In a phone interview last week, he was in a venting mood.
Q: Are you still playing?
A: I played yesterday and it was a bloodbath. It was like I never played the game before.
Q: Have you made any progress in how you view the game?
A: No. Yesterday was such a massacre I have nothing good to say about it. It was one of those days you want to throw your clubs off a bridge. I set out at the beginning of this experience to be able to say OK, I’m having a rotten day, but I’m still outside walking around in Florida. Theres only 3 billion people who would trade places with me in a heartbeat. If nothing else maybe I can teach myself to enjoy the game in a therapeutic way. And I’m not there yet, obviously. I have nothing to offer but bile and bitterness.
Q: Books like this are supposed to end with enlightenment.
A: This isn’t a self-help book. This is a self-abasement book. I don’t think writers are cut out to be golfers. We train ourselves to be our own toughest editors. Then you take that way of thinking on the golf course and you’re just brutally hard on yourself on every hole.
Q: What’s harder, golf or writing?
A: Both are very difficult and painful, and they’re supposed to be. If you’re gonna be good and excel at them, it’s not gonna be easy. Anything that’s easy, the outcome shows it. Day to day, the writing comes more naturally to me.
Q: I loved your writing about the ads on the Golf Channel.
A: That’s the most depressing commercials in the world, on the Golf Channel. Prostate problems, erectile dysfunction, joint pain, high cholesterol. They know their demographic. And their demographic is me.
Q: Near the end of the book you realize that the worse you play, the funnier the book is going to be, and that your editor is actually hoping your game goes as far south as possible.
A: I thought it would still be a good story if I got to a level where I was breaking 80, so there’s sort of a heroic ending. Of course it didn’t work out that way. The worse I played, the funnier it got, not just for my editor but for all my friends. I would trade the whole book for an 8 handicap any day.
Since today’s book is about golf, do we have any golfers out there who would like to try to one-up either Hiaasen or me on how insane golf makes you?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Opening Night at Encore Park
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Symphony is in the business of presenting concerts — its own orchestral shows and, increasingly, rock acts that generate the kind of money classical performances can’t match.
To that end, the ASO’s $35 million Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park, an outdoor pavilion in the northern suburb of Alpharetta, opened for business Saturday night. [For background articles, click here and here.]
Nostalgia rock bands dominate the summer calendar, but the ASO claimed the inaugural concert for itself, adding its world-supreme chorus, and then over-loading the evening with extras from a jazz trio to local high school marching bands to fireworks.
Somehow it worked, mostly. Low humidity and good spirits settled over the early-summer evening, and the 12,000-seat pavilion, it turns out, has good feng shui. Designed primarily by Minnesota’s KKE Architects, Encore Park’s vibe is pleasant and bright, the seats comfortable, the sightlines clear, the aisles wide, the crowd flow manageable, and parking a breeze. Cameras on stage and big screens above let us peer into the ensemble to see a flutist pucker up for a prominent solo or a triangle adding sparkle.
Opening night attendance was just a little over 7,300, however. Next week, a more revealing stress-test of the facility comes when veteran rockers the Eagles’ play four sold-out shows.
Encore Park was designed to meet several goals. It’s a new entertainment destination for a booming region. It’s available for community rentals, like high school graduations. It’s also, as ASO chief financial officer Don Fox has put it, part of the ASO’s “financial solution” against a $4.5 million debt and mostly flat ticket sales in Symphony Hall.
Concessions are a major part of any venue’s income. At Encore Park the food services are located to each side of the stage, in full view of the audience. Light smoke and the smell of grilled meat wafted across the crowd. Like Pavlov’s dog, I got very hungry. (My Angus beef burger was dry and the bun ice cold; the fries were flavorful and crispy.)
The amphitheater is also billed as the new home of the ASO’s summertime classical concerts, relocated from Symphony Hall. To gauge the acoustics, I sat on the main floor for the first half, switched to the upper seats for the second. The stage is so high, the amphitheater so expansive, that the musicians appear far away no matter where you sit.
But while spirits were high opening night, a essential ingredient — the sound — was boomy, out of balance, strident and unacceptable as a sonic norm. And ambient white noise, from multiple generators and the chatter of crowds on the lawn, drowned out the orchestra when the playing was quiet.
Almost everything can get a pass on a hectic opening night. Undoubtedly the sound engineers will learn to better cope with the demands of acoustic instruments. But the chance to attract new listeners to classical concerts will be lost if the music is distant and distorted and the best part of the evening is the ambiance.
Is this a surprise? The need to maximize revenue for heavily amplified rock shows comes at a cost to the sonic refinements required by an orchestra.
The first musical notes heard at the new venue — a ritornello by Monteverdi — came from the Milton High School Marching Band, followed by Robert Spano conducting the ASO in the National Anthem and then, mercifully, just nine minutes of speeches. Said Alpharetta Mayor Arthur Letchas: “This is a great night for the city of Alpharetta.”
American music by Bernstein, Copland and Gershwin (his “Rhapsody in Blue,” with the Marcus Roberts Trio improvising the solo piano part) filled the rest of the opening half.
Spano’s manic energy enlivened the “Ode to Joy” Finale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the orchestra played with commendable zest. Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” capped the evening. With the ASO joined by the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra and Milton and Alpharetta high schools marching bands, it made a tremendous and joyful noise.
Permalink | Comments (44) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
ASO Thursday: Gorecki, Brahms
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, composed in 1976, languished in obscurity until the late 1980s, when orchestras began programming it. Then a miracle happened.
In 1992, a Nonesuch recording, conducted by David Zinman with soprano Dawn Upshaw, became one of the biggest-selling classical recordings of all time. It topped the Billboard classical chart for 37 weeks, and even got to sixth place on the pop chart in Britain. Since then, it’s become a staple of the repertoire, and was used in Peter Wier’s movie “Fearless.”
So it’s something of a mystery that the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has waited until this week to program it, particularly given their affinity for “safe” modern pieces. As if to make up for lost time, they’re also recording it for Telarc, though you do have to wonder whether the classical world needs yet another recording, with over two dozen already in the catalogue.
Patrons entering Symphony Hall on Thursday might have paused to make sure this was the right place. Instead of the usual unforgiving bright glare, the entire room was dimmed a bit, the sides of the orchestra shell were bathed in colors, highlighting the wall texture, and there were three giant screens behind the orchestra.
In contrast to his earlier, dissonant works, Gorecki’s Third, subtitled “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” is thoroughly tonal and melodic. It is also quite slow, with distinct rhythmic patterns. But change is constantly afoot, and the piece seems shorter than its actual length (about an hour). The work is a setting of three Polish texts: a 15th Century Lamentation in which Mary speaks to Jesus as he is dying, a prayer written by a teenage girl that was found on the wall of a 1944 Gestapo prison, and a folk-song in which a mother grieves over a son killed in battle.
The soloist was Christine Brewer, and her large, bright, richly colored voice was a stark contrast to the duskier sound of Ms. Upshaw. She is thrilling to hear, but her focus seemed to be altogether on producing a beautiful sound, rather than giving us a sense of the passion in her texts. Even her facial expression seemed to lack any sense of emotion. She sang with her eyes half closed, as if in a dream. I would question whether her gleaming soprano is right for such a dark piece, but there is no denying the beauty of the sound that filled Symphony Hall as the three chants soared over the strings.
No one could accuse Donald Runnicles, who is conducting, of neglecting the drama in this symphony. Like a giant, pulsing organ, his orchestra took us inside a church of sorts. You could almost smell the incense, as this is a work with a strong Eastern Orthodox feel, although the composer is Polish and Catholic. The first movement, a canon for the strings, starts almost inaudibly in the double-basses and builds up. The singing comes in the middle, then the canon slowly descends. The remaining two movements contain contrasting melodic material, but retain the New Age mystical feel and the slow tempi.
A year ago, the Brooklyn Philharmonic came up with the idea of “staging” this symphony, and brought in visual artists to put together some projections (a movie, essentially), and choreographed movements for the soprano.
Following suit, the ASO in recent seasons has done what it calls “theater of a concert” productions. Hence its own projections and the big screens, but here they scratched the choreography: Brewer is not a dancer. The images, by Anne Patterson and Adam Larsen, were quite subtle and consisted of abstracts, nature scenes, and women’s faces, slowly changing, like the score.
This business borders on pandering, but - like the projected titles - it keeps the audience involved, and there was noticeably less coughing. At times, the images were quite engrossing, and I thought they added to the impact of the piece. For me, the more important effect was the lighting of the room and the musicians, who looked so much better on the darkened stage, gently lit by the glow from their music stands.
Perhaps wanting to give the audience some relief from all this angst, after the intermission they gave us Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, his most exuberant. And here, perhaps still under the spell of the Gorecki, Runnicles’ tempi seemed quite slow at times. This was an intensely dramatic reading. Perhaps too much so. There is an energy ceiling inherent in the work, I think, and a more restrained reading actually has more impact. Still, this was a glorious performance, and it seemed fair to give the woodwinds a chance to show off after the strings had dominated in the Gorecki. Laura Ardan played the andante’s clarinet solo with warmth and great feeling. And we got a second feature from the movie-makers as well. This one consisted mostly of water and trees, and again added to the overall effect.
This concert won’t be repeated tonight, as the orchestra is heading over to Encore Park for its inaugural concert. And on Sunday, the ASO Chorus heads to Germany, where Runnicles will conduct them with the Berlin Philharmonic.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
“The Last Lecture”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Randy Pausch was told last August that he had 3-6 months to live. It has been nine months, and he is still alive.
That’s good news for Pausch and his family. The good news for the rest of us is that Pausch’s book, “The Last Lecture,” has been tearing up the best-seller lists lately. Which means a lot of people are benefitting from Pausch’s wondrous world-view and approach to life, and that, ultimately, his family is benefitting from every book sold. I have rarely felt so good plunking down my $22 for a book.
Here’s the story. Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He was an award-winning teacher who truly inspired his students, and a man who had married late in life and started a family, with three children under age six. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which has one of the worst fatality rates of any disease, and battled it for a while. But eventually it metastisized, and he and his family had to come to terms with his impending death.
So on Sept. 18, 2007, Pausch stepped in front of a packed hall at his school and delivered his last lecture, on the topic “Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. (You can watch it, at over an hour long, on the Youtube link above.) It was funny, upbeat, wise. Although the video is free on Youtube, he expanded the lecture into the book.
Pausch’s advice is not startlingly new to anyone who’s paying attention to what matters in life. Show gratitude. Tell the truth. Don’t obsess over what other people think. Decide whether you want to be Tigger or Eeyore. But the way he delivers all this, both in the video and the book, while facing a death sentence, is just flat-out overwhelming. I’m not ashamed to admit I choked up a dozen times reading this slim book.
Pausch continues to post updates on his life and health on a blog here.
I’d love to hear people’s reaction to Pausch’s last lecture. Or we can go this way: If you were dying, and could pass along some wisdom to those who live on, what would it be?
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
‘The Last Schwartz’ @ Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
Don’t cry for Jewish Theatre of the South.
The 13-year-old ensemble may be shutting down at the end of the month. But it’s goodbye gift to the city ends with a howl, not a sniffle.
Deborah Zoe Laufer’s “The Last Schwartz” is a terrifically performed, raucously comic ensemble piece that plays like a softer version of Tracy Letts’ riveting portrait of family dysfunction, “August: Osage County.” With its dead patriarch, juicy female characters, dining-table roulette and ghostly metaphysics, the funny-stinging play conceals dark inner secrets under a playful blanket of sexual parlor games, sibling barbs and hissy fits.
The Schwartzes have gathered at their parents’ upstate New York home to commemorate the first anniversary of their father’s death. But as the decorum dissolves into anger and confrontation, we witness an unexpected primal grief that’s deep, all-devouring and unacknowledged: It’s the living mourning the unborn.
Sound like heavy stuff? It is. But it’s heavier on the laughs.
While brother Simon (Jeffrey C. Zwartjes), a nearly blind astronomer, gazes off into the cosmos, sister Norma (Tess Malis Kincaid) bristles at brother Herb (Jared Simon) for propping his feet on their hallowed mother’s coffee table. Herb listens to his barren wife, Bonnie (Kathleen Wattis), describe an “Oprah” segment on Siamese twins. And when little brother Gene (Chris Moses) drops in with his clueless date, Kia — aka “The Fat No More Girl” (Bethany Ann Lind) — the table is set for a twisted late-night pajama game, and an adoption scheme of such perverse proportions that it would make Jerry Springer smile.
Simon’s Herb has the Borscht Belt timing of Jackie Gleason. Moses gives a dependably good performance, though he’s perhaps a little too boyish to capture the hip slickness of a Manhattan filmmaker. Zwartjes’ Simon — a zoned-out, stargazing savant with apocalyptic visions — is, as the script requires, almost invisible.
But these men are just window dressing for the hormonally overwrought Norma and Bonnie — and the Lolita-like Kia. It’s hard to say who chews the scenery harder. But the delightfully zany Lind is a knockout.
Travis George’s scenic design is authentic to the milieu. Mimi Epstein’s elegant soundscape provides just the right mood. And Linda Patterson’s props and costumes are appropriate to characters who are by turns starched and flirtatious — and a story that uses coffee tables and sideboards to stir emotion.
Even if the playwright’s more serious meditations are never fully realized, the show rarely disappoints. Director Freddie Ashley delivers the goods with comic brio. And artistic director Mira Hirsch says goodbye to her 13-year-old ensemble with a stiff upper lip and a heroic mixture of laughter and tears. Mazel tov.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays. Through May 25. $18-$30. Jewish Theatre of the South, Marcus Jewish Community Center, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654, jplay.org.
Bottom line: Jewish Theatre of the South ends 13-year run with a juicy comedy — and a dash of existentialism. Finis.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
‘Some Men’ @ Actor’s Express
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: Grade: C
Actor’s Express’ fondness for male nudity is no secret, but its production of Terrence McNally’s new play, “Some Men,” must rank at an all-time high for flashes of flesh.
Nearly every actor in the nine-man cast drops trou at least once, and some seem to spend more time naked than clothed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to wonder if it isn’t meant to distract from the disjointed tedium that sometimes plagues the production.
Spanning the decades from 1922 to the present, “Some Men” is a series of vignettes that illustrates the progress gay people have made toward social acceptance. A rich young banker (Louis Gregory) makes love with his Irish chauffeur (Tim Batten) on a dark South Hampton beach before acknowledging they can never share a life together in 1922.
A closeted family man (Doyle Reynolds) flaunts the law to explore his forbidden desires in a hotel tryst in 1968. Middle-aged “show-tune queens” huddle in fear inside a piano bar while the Stonewall riots rage outside in 1969.
The strength of “Some Men” is in the juxtapositions McNally creates between disparate segments of the gay community: young gay activists vs. settled life partners; a man on the verge of coming out vs. an angry closeted colleague; those who are HIV positive vs. those who are not. But there are an awful lot of scenes, and more than a few seem superfluous, making it a challenge to connect the dots. It’s as if McNally set out to include every milepost in gay culture. Gays in the military, check. Gays in the Harlem Renaissance, check. And so on.
The production opens and closes with a same-sex wedding in 2007, but it comes across more like a convenient literary device than the significant cultural milestone it is and the thing that the entire play builds toward. At times director Kent Gash struggles to develop the tension in each vignette, and as a result, the emotional pitch sometimes starts too high, too fast, leaving the actors nowhere to go but louder. By contrast, it is the quieter, less showy scenes that pack the most punch.
Some of the more satisfying scenes underscore the gulf between generations.
In 1975, a pair of slumming “elder queers” (Don Finney and Tom Thon) discover they’re out of their element among the randy young hotties looking for action in a gay bath house. Even more poignant — and universal — is a chat room scene where a middle-age lonely heart (Finney at his best) makes a surprising emotional connection with a cruiser (John Benzinger), only to be dumped with the stroke of a computer key for a young trick just looking for sex.
It just goes to show you: Gay rights have come a long way, baby. But human nature remains pretty much the same.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays. Through May 31. Plus, 5 p.m. May 11 and 25; and 2 p.m. May 18. $16-$27. Note: Contains adult language and nudity. Actor’s Express at King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. N.W., Suite J-107, Atlanta. 404-875-1606, 404-607-7469,actors-express.com.
Bottom line: An uneven comedy-drama about the coming out of gay culture.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
LLoyd Webber picks Alliance’s Booth to direct gospel ‘Superstar’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production company has tapped Atlanta’s Susan V. Booth to direct the forthcoming gospel version of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” scheduled to run at the Alliance Theatre Jan. 14-Feb. 22.
The Alliance artistic director said she was called to London recently for a sit-down with Webber’s Really Useful Group. “Sir Andrew wasn’t there,” Booth said, “because he was on his way Las Vegas for ‘American Idol.’ ”
Detroit native Louis St. Louis is restaging the classic musical as “Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL.” To prepare, Booth said they will be hitting Atlanta’s gospel churches in the coming weeks. She says part of the fun is being able to check out churches “other than Presbyterian,” which is her denomination.
Apparently, the search for a director was quite competitive.
“This is their prime copyright,” Booth said. “This is the first major reconception of the work in a long time and that’s a big deal.”
“It’s very humbling and it’s very challenging, and it’s the greatest thing in the world when you get to do that,” she said of her new assignment.
Booth’s connection to the ’70s rock opera is personal. She says she sang “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” in a sixth-grade talent show. “I thought it was stunning, but I don’t think everyone else did.“ She says she now croons “Everything’s Alright” to her 4-year-old daughter, Moira.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
What Are Your Encore Park Expectations?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The newest major performance venue in metro Atlanta’s northern suburbs won’t open until Saturday, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra inaugurating the $35 million Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park. The rest of the summer calendar is booked with vintage rock acts — Styx, Stevie Nicks, the Steve Miller Band — and a variety of community events.
But the 12,000-seat pavilion, off Ga. 400 across from North Point Mall, has already been a topic of both anticipation and concern among patrons and Northside residents.
Alpharetta High School principal Buck Greene calls Encore Park “a great experiment for us.” On opening night, the school’s marching band will join the Atlanta Symphony (along with numerous other local youth groups) in the bombastic, cannon-blasted finale of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”
Then, on May 24, the high school’s seniors will graduate from the stage.
The concert, says Greene, “is great public time for the school, and with the students working side by side with the ASO, a priceless opportunity.”
For the graduation ceremony, the school will pay about $7,000 in fees, including security and audio-visual equipment — or about $3,000 less than the Gwinnett Center charges for a comparable rental.
Brandon Beach, president of the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce, was a key figure in the original Encore Park conception, hoping to build an arts and community center on the site.
“Concerts were the one missing component in north Fulton,” he said, “but everyone knows that the arts and performances are a quality of life issue, and we expect [Encore] to bring the business community together. Encore will be our meeting ground.”
Yet even as some Alpharetta residents see an attractive opportunity, others are not convinced Encore Park will meet their summer entertainment needs.
Sydney Sivertsen and her husband, John, an attorney, are in their 50s with children away at college. They were initially thrilled that the ASO would be performing just a couple of miles from their house.
As she checked into her options, however, she compiled a checklist of “disappointments” — mostly in comparison with concerts at the ASO’s other outdoor venue, Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Buckhead.
Where patrons often bring elaborate picnic meals to ASO concerts at Chastain, Sivertsen worries that Encore Park’s no-outside-food rule will steer the event too down-market.
“A hot, Southern evening at the symphony,” she says, “calls for vichyssoise, cool pasta salad and fresh fruit, with a nice wine and candles. If we want burgers and hot dogs and beer, we go to a baseball game. It’s a different aesthetic, and the ASO should know that.”
With frustration in her voice, she adds that if Encore Park’s owner, the Woodruff Arts Center, “is being greedy and is mistaken in its sense of ambience, maybe we should continue to fight traffic down [Ga.] 400 to Chastain for our summer arts.”
Indeed, ASO leaders had anticipated these sorts of concerns. ASO president Allison Vulgamore sees three distinct identities for its three venues — Encore Park, Chastain and Symphony Hall in Midtown. Encore Park includes 184 VIP seats, although all those spaces are already sold-out for the summer.
“We present the orchestra in different settings,” she says. “Chastain is under the stars and you bring your own [food] basket.”
At Encore, “we have a chef on-site [for the VIP tables], and you’re under a cover in case it rains.”
Permalink | Comments (16) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
Twice the Clarks!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We don’t see too many of these: A mother and daughter, both best-selling authors, appearing together.
Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark are being billed as the Queen and Princess of Suspense for their appearance tonight at the Atlanta History Center.
Mary, the mom, is one of those brand names in publishing like Nora Roberts or James Patterson that’s just a force of the marketplace. She has sold more than 85 million books in the United States, according to her publisher. Her latest thriller is “Where Arte You Now?”
Carol, the daughter, has co-written four suspense novels with mom, and then created her own series of mysteries around Regan Reilly and her husband Jack. Her latest is “Zapped,” which takes place during a blackout in New York City.
The lecture and signing is sponsored by the Margaret Mitchell House; admission is $5 for members, $10 for non-members. Reception at 6, lecture at 7.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Shake at the Lake opens with goofed-up ‘Servant of Two Masters’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The farce is with Shake at the Lake, even if the Bard himself is nowhere to be found. Georgia Shakespeare’s annual al fresco springtime outing on the dock at Lake Clara Meer in Piedmont Park kicked off Wednesday night with a goofed-up version of “The Servant of Two Masters,” a farce by Carlo Goldoni.
Piedmont Park has been off-limits to large events like the Peachtree Road Race of late because of the drought. But Shake at the Lake is restricted to under 1,000 people per night, only a few on grass, so it’s allowed.
“I’ve come every year. It’s just amazing,” said Dayna Holbel, a stay-at-home mom from Morningside, who showed up at at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning to get her tickets. “The sun going down, the water behind it, everybody’s really sweet and sharing wine.”
Like Chastain Park on a more intimate, less intricate scale, Shake at the Lake is about pre-show picnicking as well as the play itself. Mary Wellington and five friends brought wine, salads and deviled eggs stuffed with spicy hummus; many who showed up opted for carry-out subs or pizza.
“I enjoy the Shakespeare,” said Wellington, “but this is not Shakespeare.” She wasn’t complaining, but the “Servant” trotted out here is re-written in the extreme, with Miley Cyrus jokes and a record number of deliberate mispronunciations of Dahlonega. Since hardly anyone has seen the original play, hardly anyone can take offense at Georgia Shakespeare’s liberties.
For those wanting to try it through Sunday, the Shake rules must be obeyed. Tickets are free, but they are only available the day of the show to people who come in person to the visitor’s center at Piedmont Park. The handouts start at 10 a.m., the line starts earlier. No lawn chairs, pets, Frisbees, or anything that makes noise is allowed; coolers are cool, but keep them small.
More info: www.shakeatthelake.com • Map it and review it
Permalink | Comments (24) | Post your comment |
New Chairman at Woodruff Arts Center
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Woodruff Arts Center approved a new chairman today: Phil Kent, CEO of Turner Broadcasting.
Kent replaces Neil Williams, who has been chair since 2002. Williams, a retired partner of the law firm Alston & Bird was honored for his 36 years of volunteer service to the Woodruff Arts Center and one of its organizations, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. (He became involved in the symphony’s governance after singing in its choir.)
The Woodruff — or WAC, as some fondly call it — is Atlanta’s biggest arts organization by far. It’s the parent of not only the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra but the High Museum, Alliance Theatre and the youth arts education group Young Audiences.
Kent comes to the position with a wealth of experience managing a big organization with multiple divisions. At Turner, he oversees one of the biggest programming empires in cable TV. The Atlanta-based subsidiary of Time Warner includes CNN, Headline News, TBS, TNT, truTV (formerly Court TV) and the Cartoon Network, among its 40 networks throughout the world.
Any thoughts about what should be on Kent’s to-do list at the Woodruff?
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Arts venues
Story-time for Grown-ups
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wordsmiths Books in Decatur continues to come up with awesome-sounding new promotions. Like this one.
Tonight, Wordsmiths is offering its first “Story-time for Grown-ups.” It brings together Will and Benji, who are Open Mic night regulars, and decribed by Wordsmiths as “a little off-color, a little offensive;” the Kennesaw State University Regulars, who are billed as very much in the same vein; and author Ben Tanzer.
Milk will not be served, but adult libations will. No nap mats will be provided, but you can sprawl on the floor if there’s room. Sounds like a blast. 7:30 tonight at Wordsmiths, which is on Decatur Square.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Alice Walker at Spelman tonight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Alice Walker, who’s both a prize-winning author and an outspoken activist, is scheduled for a speech and book signing tonight at Spelman College. The appearance is sponsored by WAND — Atlanta Women’s Action for New Directions — and their website is here.
A reception at Cosby Atrium is at 6 p.m., and Walker will speak at 7 p.m. Book signing follows. Admission is $50,or $25 for students.
That’s an old picture of her I found on the Internet, but I thought it was cool and seemed appropriate.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Alliance’s King-Mellencamp musical on hold
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Alliance Theatre’s world premiere musical by Stephen King and John Mellencamp, originally scheduled for next year, won’t be running as planned after all.
Mystery writer King is apparently not far enough along on the script of “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County” to make the deadline. The Alliance says it hopes to produce the musical, with tunes by Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mellencamp, during its 2009-2010 season.
“There was a really great creative team meeting in April that yielded a smart road map for the next revision of the script,” Alliance artistic director Susan V. Booth said via email Tuesday. “But it was a revision that would require more time than first anticipated. And while it’ll make for a much improved text, it also meant deferring.”
Booth said she was on the phone Tuesday trying to line up a replacement. “Ghost Brothers” was to open next April and close the 2008-2009 season. The Alliance informed subscribers of the change via email late Monday.
When the world premiere was announced in February, the story drew national press attention. Last year, the Alliance won a Tony Award for sustained excellence in regional theater.
Alliance publicist Robert Saxon says the postponement will give the creative team more time to work on the musical. “While it seems to be a disappointment, it really is for the better,” Saxon said.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
Any fans of “Baby-sitters Club?”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s pretty much the coolest thing that can happen to an 11-year-old.
Emily Hinely of Newnan entered a contest pegged to a new book series, “Main Street Kids” by Ann M. Martin, author of “The Baby-sitters Club” books. Her entry, a photo collage, won.
“I like mysteries, I like books that have girls and boys that are around my age group. I like scary books, but they can’t be too scary because they’ll freak me out,” Emily says, hardly taking a breath. “I’ve read all the Harry Potter books, seen all the movies and all that. ‘The Baby-sitters Club,’ I loved all of them. I don’t really have a favorite. They’re all books that I can relate too.”
Her prize $500 gift card, well, “that’s sort of all gone now,” says Emily, a fifth grade student at Arnco-Sargent Elementary. She bought a trampoline, an American Girl doll — Molly, if you’re curious — Legos for her little brother and doo-dads from Claire’s Accessories. Books, too.
But there’s another part to the prize: Martin, the author, in the flesh.
Martin’s hectic writing schedule keeps her from book tours, but she’ll be in Newnan today to meet Emily, and also greet fans and sign books. Martin will be at Scott’s Bookstore, 28 S. Court Square, Newnan, from 3-5 p.m. signing her books.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
How to be thrilled
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s time for the first (and soon to be annual) Atlanta Thriller Bookfest, which runs tonight and Saturday. The folks at Eagle Eye Book Shop in Decatur deserve major props for pulling this thing together, particularly considering they’re doing it at what seems like a bunch of locations.
Think of this more as a schedule of great stuff to pick and choose from, rather than a single event where you show up and just cruise around, like the Decatur Book Festival.
Here are some basics, but I strongly recommend you get your information direct from the Eagle Eye website.
Tonight at 6, Jeff Long, author of “Deeper” and “The Descent,” gives the keynote address at Georgia Perimeter College-Dunwoody Campus, 2101 Womack Rd., Dunwoody, in the C-1100 auditorium.
Saturday there will be massive talks and signings by authors. Jeff Long, Sallie Bissell, Jaclyn Wheldon White, David Fulmer, Mitchell Graham, Philip Nutman, Ridley Pearson and others. The venues are the Gwinnett County Public Library, 455 Camp Perrin Road, Lawrenceville, from 12 noon-5:30 p.m. and Eagle Eye Book Shop, 2076 N. Decatur Road, Decatur, from 11:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Again, consult Eagle Eye’s website.
And we’ll mention again, proceeds from the fest are going to fun libraries and schools in Tibet.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
Wendell’s Weekend Picks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here are my top five shows for this weekend. Last chance to see “Doubt” and “The Lion King”!!
1. “Doubt” / Grade: A
The pope’s apology for the Catholic sex scandal makes this production of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize winner seem all the more topical. But the play is less concerned with whether the priest did it than the impulse to cloak venality in a public mask of good. The Alliance Theatre closes its exceptionally strong post-regional Tony Award season with a nearly flawless 90 minutes of theatrical miracle-making. Through Sunday. Alliance Theatre. 404-733-5000, alliancetheatre.org
2. “Cinderella della Circus” / Grade: A Only Jon Ludwig would put Cinderella in clodhoppers and make her fall for a clown prince. Inspired by the epic showmanship of P.T. Barnum and the classic fairy tale, this children’s production uses classic marionettes, but there’s plenty of winking irony for adults. Through June 22. Center for Puppetry Arts. 404-873-3391, puppet.org
3. “The Little Dog Laughed” / Grade: A- An irresistibly crisp and campy comedy of manners that mixes the salaciousness of “Queer as Folk” with the satirical edge of “Entourage.” Douglas Carter Bean’s play exposes the hypocrisy of Hollywood’s sexual politics with glee and bite. Be prepared, however, for male nudity, simulated sex and raunchy language. Extended through May 11. Theatre in the Square, Marietta. 770-422-8369, theatreinthesquare.com
4. “Expecting Isabel” / Grade: B With joy we announce that Synchronicity Performance Group has given birth to big bouncy comedy that chronicles the heartbreak of infertility with rhythmic good timing. But with the exception of a couple of touching moments, the tone is more roundly comic than preggers with insight. The hamster jokes are pretty good, though. Through May 11. Synchronicity Performance Group at 7 Stages. 404-484-8636, synchrotheatre.com
5. “The Lion King” / B- The kids, and the kid in you, will be filled with awe and wonder by director Julie Taymor’s one-of-a-kind achievement, which uses puppets and masks to express the beauty of Africa in magical terms — and hits just enough musical high notes to provide an emotionally satisfying Disney experience. Through Sunday. Presented by Broadway Across America-Atlanta, Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Theater
ASO Chorus Gets Ready for Berlin
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. 404-733-5000, www. atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra last performed Hector Berlioz’s Requiem in the fall of 2003, a few weeks before the ASO’s illustrious Chorus traveled on its own to Germany for its debut with the Berlin Philharmonic.
It was heady stuff. They sang Britten’s “War Requiem,” conducted by Donald Runnicles, the ASO’s principal guest conductor who was also making his Philharmonic debut . The concerts were a triumph, with the chorus proving itself a peer to the Philharmonic, typically described as the world’s best orchestra.
From a group that doesn’t suffer fools, a Berliner musician offered his highest praise by declaring the ASO Chorus’ singing a match for the Philharmonic’s own burnished, golden string section in tone. The ASO Chorus and choral director Norman Mackenzie had stepped decisively onto a global stage. There was immediate talk of a second invitation.
It’s finally about to happen. This weekend in Atlanta Symphony Hall, Runnicles, the ASO and Chorus perform the Berlioz Requiem, a preparation for another Runnicles-ASOC-Philharmonic performance in Berlin, May 15-17. (One hopes the Atlanta Symphony orchestral musicians, who will again stay home, won’t start nursing a grudge.)
As expected, the chorus Thursday night was polished to sleek, unblemished perfection. At turns warm or fierce, it’s without a weak section: the sopranos were as angelic at the flute-accompanied opening of the “Dies Irae” as the men were hauntingly pastoral for the “Quid sum miser.” 200 voices strong, this is a formidable instrument.
Tenor Joseph Kaiser, who’s also on board for the Berlin gig, sang the “Sanctus” from the top balcony, invisible to most of the audience. His sound is masculine and bright, with a wide vibrato and a teardrop in his tone — an affecting apparition of a voice.
Runnicles, however, still seemed to be working through his interpretation. Some sections lacked punch, some gravitas. In the rhythmically eccentric “Lacrymosa,” for example, his tempos were too quick, the phrases too cursory, and the chorus too tonally homogenized. This combined to dilute the (potentially) devastating impact of the climax, one of several viscerally explosive moments in the score. Most of these matters will likely tighten in subsequent performances, at home and at the Philharmonie.
Leos Janacek’s “Sinfonietta” open the evening. Both the Berlioz and Janacek exploit spatial relationships between sections of the orchestra. Both go heavy on the brass.
The Janacek begins and ends with powerful fanfares — produced by multiple trumpets, tubas and timpani — which lap in waves over each other. With no chorus on stage, the 18 brass players sat in the upper choir risers, distant from the rest of the band and all the better to blast to their lungs’ content.
There were moments of ragged ensemble, though Runnicles had a sure hand in the Janacek, as idiosyncratic a composer as Berlioz. The conductor found the composer’s operatic voice — weary yet hopeful, where phrases are often drawn from Czech dance rhythms —in every rough-hewn lyrical gesture.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
First Look at Stephenie Meyer’s “The Host”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stephenie Meyer’s new novel “The Host” is due to hit bookstores next week, and I know from experience there are some serious Meyer fans out there who sometimes stop by this blog. I got an advance review copy of the novel, and my review will run in our Sunday Arts & Book section on May 11.
But I wanted to give her fans the advance work - it was more than I had hoped for. I’m not as big a fan as some of her “Twilight” series of young adult novels — a swoony saga of forbidden love between a handsome, noble vampire and a high-school girl — but I get why they appeal to so many women.
“The Host” is Meyer’s first novel aimed at adults, but really, it’s a lot like “Twilight.” It’s very emotional, well-told but not all that sophisticated stylistically, and creates a few great characters who carry the narrative. In this case it’s Wanderer, an alien who is part of an invading force taking over the earth. It’s like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” from the point of view of the Body Snatchers. And of course, because it’s by Meyer, it’s a romance.
At more than 600 pages, there were times when I thought the story was treading water and wanted it to get to it. But the last 100 pages were a blast, and made me forget my earlier impatience.
“The Host” straddles two genres of fiction that don’t always get a lot of respect: science fiction and romance. Fans of both genres know, though, that the better examples of each deal with what even the highest reaches of literature always aspire to: Exploring what it means to be human.
I could go on, but since no else has read it, I don’t want to risk too many spoilers.
Are there any Meyer fans out there who are approaching the release of “The Host” next week like Harry Potter fans used to anticipate those books? Making plans to buy an early copy, maybe take off work or unplug the phone?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
