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October 2004
South America comes to the Rialto
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Putumayo record label, known for its world music primer CDs, has brought its music to life through the Latinas: Women of Latin America tour, which Friday showcased three female vocalists at the Rialto. Two, Belo Velloso and Mariana Montalvo, had never before toured the States. The third, Toto La Momposina, is far from a household name here. So the show acted a bit like Putumayo’s records — it was a joyous and inclusive triple-header designed to spark further exploration.
Velloso (the playful Brazilian) and La Momposina (the feisty Colombian) both delivered their respective goods, drawing proudly from the traditions of their respective homelands. But it was Montalvo’s night. The regal Chilean singer, who has lived for 30 years in exile, sang with a penetrating intensity. She was tough and romantic, her voice coursing with dignity and grace. All three singers communicated ideas across language barriers. More than the others, though, Montalvo channeled human emotions into song and emerged with something devastating.
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Pat Green
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pat Green looks like a guy who’s having a good time onstage. Even when he sings about heartache, he can’t quite repress a smile. That’s not a bad thing. Sure, this country star may never be able to break your heart, Johnny Cash-style, but he might just make you break into a shuffle. His loose, goofy charm and upbeat, rock-tinged tunes have made him a darling of a certain segment of the frat-guy set, who composed the majority of the smallish crowd who turned out for his one-hour show in Centennial Olympic Park Thursday night. Green and his seven-piece band ripped through old favorites — “Who’s to Say,” “Take Me Out to a Dancehall,” — and a couple of songs from his new album, including first single “Don’t Break My Heart Again,” before closing with what the crowd most wanted to hear: a sway-inducing version of his biggest hit, “Wave on Wave.”
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Paul Thorn
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You won’t want to go to the bathroom in between songs at a Paul Thorn show. You’ll miss the best stuff. Don’t misunderstand: The rootsy rocker possesses a husky, soulful voice (think Marc Cohn meets Lyle Lovett) and writes witty, catchy tunes. But it’s the Tupelo, Miss., singers’s in-between stories — told in a halting, Delta-thickened style — that make him special.
Thorn is the son of a Pentecostal preacher, and he’s inherited his father’s way with words. His colorful tales paint vivid pictures of rural Southern life: of the Piggly Wiggly, of the blond, voluptuous ex-girlfriend who wore a purple thong and made him bacon sandwiches, of fireworks tents that resemble the revival tents of his youth.
Thorn is a character (he once boxed middleweight champion Roberto Duran on national TV!) and a born entertainer. Near the end of his set, he presented an autographed, 40-oz. bottle of Silver Thunder malt liquor to the biggest Paul Thorn fan in the small crowd. If there’s any justice, there’ll be more fans clamoring for that prize next time he’s in town.
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Best Halloween show: ‘The Weird’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Weird.� Through Oct. 30.
It’s ghoul to the last drop
YOU HAVE TO LOVE a title like “Morning Becomes Olestra,â€? one of the six horror spoofs that make up Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s “The Weirdâ€? at Dad’s Garage. Directed with broad comedic strokes by Melissa Foulger and Anne Towns, these one-acts probably won’t creep you out, but they could make you die laughing.
This isn’t Aguirre-Sacasa in the edgy mode of “The Mystery Plays,â€? which got a classy production at New York’s Second Stage earlier this year. Here the author of “Say You Love Satanâ€? and “Weird Comic Book Fantasyâ€? dusts off what appears to be his juvenilia for Dad’s crack comedians. Winking at everything from “Rosemary’s Babyâ€? to “Tales From the Crypt,â€? the show is narrated by Scott Warren as a ghoul whose skin is so blemished that it appears to ooze.
If Wade Tilton is the subtlest actor in the bunch, Sloane Warren is the most outrageous. In the Tennessee Williams riff “Swamp Gothic,â€? she’s compulsive talker Abigail, who has a pet alligator and erotic fantasies about her brother’s love life. In trailer-trashy “Olestra,â€? she plays a wife who hires an assassin to get rid of her chubby hubby (Rene Dellefont in a very funny turn). Also good is Kathleen Wattis, who nails the part of the wacky New Yorker in “The Play about Rosemary’s Baby.â€?
If there’s anything remotely frightening about “The Weird,â€? it is bulldozed by this supremely silly ensemble. This intermissionless evening of one-acts goes down quick and dirty — and gets our vote for best Halloween show.
THE VERDICT: More silly than chilling.
$13; $6.50 students. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday (Oct. 30). Dad’s Garage Theatre, 280 Elizabeth St. N.E., Inman Park. 404-523-3141, www.dadsgarage.com.
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Synchronicity’s ‘Language of Angels’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Language of Angels.� Through Nov. 21.
I have known places so still that time seems to have stopped, rooms so thick with the past that you can feel the lingering presence of others. My grandmother's house was like that. Not haunted, but alive with memories.
Yet when I returned recently for my first visit in nearly 20 years, it felt entirely different. The owners had remodeled the place, flooded it with light and comfort, but oddly, what once seemed a rambling maze of dark nooks and crannies appeared smaller, as if all that pent-up time had disappeared, shrinking the house.
Had the voices I once knew been erased — or summoned forth?
In her murky ghost story “The Language of Angels,� Naomi Iizuka attempts to describe a similarly odd experience, or what she calls a “collapsing of time,� by introducing elements of Noh theater into the story of a group of working-class North Carolina youths. (Noh Carolina?) In this contemporary tale of a young woman who disappears in a cave, her friends come forward to tell their side of events, yet the pieces never add up.
What’s really happening here? Why do these people behave so strangely? Who’s alive, and who’s dead? Rachel May’s Synchronicity Performance Group staging has an intentional ambiguity of tone, a beveled edge that’s at once seductive and unsettling. What makes the play so alluring is that we never really know the facts.
In one scene, characters refer to a rapping on the door as rain. It's a discombobulating, comic moment that suggests mysterious phenomena don't just frequent haunted houses or abandoned cemeteries. Iizuka knows that a hint, a suggestion, of the supernatural is infinitely more upsetting than a scream.
As we wade through the characters’ recollections, we learn that the disappeared woman, Celie (Rachel Mewbron), was obsessed with angels, that her father spoke in tongues, that her mother later became a palm reader.
As her ex-boyfriend Seth (Joe Sykes) explains why people are drawn to explore the cave, his face widens with innocence and awe. Grinning like a mule eating briars, he explains the fun of getting high — and the torture of getting lost.
While Celie flits in and out, we meet the angry Billy (JC Long), his girlfriend Allison (Kate Donadio), the randy and reflective sheriff JB (Jeff Feldman), the quirky Kendra (Kristi Casey), the troubled Danielle (Rachel Roberts) and her newfound beau, Michael (Theroun Patterson), who looks a lot like her dead boyfriend, Tommy.
These interconnected relationships are fragmented and fraught.
Most of the characters aren't fully fleshed out, but the most intriguing ones are perhaps Billy (played with an incendiary quality by Long) and Danielle (whom Roberts depicts with a time-worn knowingness). One quibble: Patterson does nothing that he hasn't done elsewhere, and there's a vaguely befuddled quality to his style that makes you think he sometimes doesn't know where the story’s taking him.
Rochelle Barker has created an appropriately dark and portentous cave (complete with three enormous stalagmites), and Sabina Maja Angel’s blurry videos add to the story’s palimpsest-like quality.
Though Iizuka explores Noh, the Japanese influences are wisely subtle. May has a gut instinct that’s more effective than arcane references or overintellectualization.
Still, if you don’t quite grasp the language of “Language,â€? that’s not just OK — it’s completely natural. Iizuka’s play will grow on you. And it may conjure up floating remnants of your own past, places you’ve known, faces that are gone but … not … quite … forgotten.
THE VERDICT: Will you live to tell what happened?
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 7 p.m. Sundays. Oct. 22- Through Nov. 21. $15-$20; discounts for groups, students and senior citizens. Synchronicity Performance Group, 7 Stages Back Stage, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-325-5168, www.synchrotheatre.com.
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ASO and Yoel Levi play Mahler 9
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and 8 p.m. Saturday. $10-$58. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E.
404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org.
For a dozen years, through June 2000, Yoel Levi led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as music director. With a keen ear and enviable discipline, the Romanian-born Israeli conductor buffed the ensemble to a national-caliber polish.
But what concert-going Atlantans might refer to as "the recent unpleasantness" — the public and highly divisive squabble between conductor and management — continues to shade Levi's ASO legacy and, arguably, his entire career.
So it’s probably healthy for everyone that Levi is now conducting his final subscription concerts as music director emeritus — close that chapter and move on. (His last scheduled event with the ASO is the coming New Year’s Eve show.)
For these valedictory concerts, he programmed Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9, a sonic poem of kaleidoscopic colors and moods. Although Symphony Hall was only half-full Thursday evening, several Levi loyalists gave him a brief standing ovation when he stepped on stage.
Mahler’s dense, moody symphonies, like Shakespeare’s plays and scripts for “The Sopranos,” lend themselves to psychological analysis. (The composer actually had a session with Dr. Freud, but that’s another story.)
Levi's Mahler 9 was impersonal and nonconfessional, what's called an "objective" approach. The performance was elegantly proportioned and precise to the letter of the score. He let the music speak on its own neutral terms, a noble achievement. The ASO played exactingly for their former boss.
Yet to my senses, Levi committed the cardinal sin: His interpretation was boring, giving off kilowatts of light but no heat, no emotion. Often he'd begin a section with an ear for beauty, but since he wasn't building drama, there was no payoff at the climax.
It left the impression of a highly capable conductor unable, or unwilling, to communicate deeper ideas or feelings. How does a listener respond to that?
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Avril Lavigne plays Philips Arena
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Related
Canadian pop-rocker Avril Lavigne is good for many things, but beer sales are not one of them. Yes, it was a young-skewing crowd Thursday at Philips Arena, so young that a twentysomething reporter arriving with a messenger bag was asked if he’d come straight from school.
Atlanta singer/songwriter/producer Butch Walker opened the show, playing chunky rock and taking a swipe at Lavigne rival (and busted lip-syncer) Ashlee Simpson: “Avril and me would rather play than press ‘play,’ if you know what I mean,� he said.
Lavigne herself came off with a winning mixture of mall-punk sass and Canadian sweetness. At 20, she’s still cute as a ladybug. And best of all, she’s a budding talent. She played three instruments Thursday — guitar, piano and, on a cover of Blur’s woo-hooing “Song 2,� drums — and sang in a voice surprisingly strong at its high-end.
Safe enough for parents and angsty enough for teenage girls, Lavigne has synthesized the disparate elements that made Debbie Gibson and Alanis Morissette momentary mega-stars. Lavigne’s also musically literate enough to have artistic growth potential, and she’s got youth on her side. She could be around awhile.
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Fiery Furnaces nearly go down in flames
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Signs something was wrong with the Fiery Furnaces during their show Wednesday night at the Echo Lounge:
Singer Eleanor Friedberger and her multi-instrumentalist brother, Matthew, barely acknowledged each-other. The exceptions came when Eleanor less-than-convincingly told the audience how much she loved Matthew, and when she glared at him during the encore for playing a song she said she didn’t recognize.
The band didn’t start until 12:30 Thursday morning, blaming their tardiness on a broken string.
The Furnaces played at warp-speed. As Eleanor spat out lyrics while staring through her Joey Ramone haircut at the floor, Matthew and two sidemen seemed competitors in a musical race. The drumbeats took on speed-metal cadences. The guitars and keyboards rushed. The bass hung on for dear life. The show whizzed by in less than an hour.
Despite all of this, the music was pretty interesting, drawing from the Furnaces excellently trippy 2004 record “Blueberry Boat,â€? a psychedelic, herky-jerky experiment gone right. Live, the songs were faster and more unhinged, but the band’s manic creativity was very much on display.
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Thomas Hampson sings at Emory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recital Review
— Baritone Thomas Hampson and pianist Craig Rutenberg, Tuesday at Emory University’s Emerson Concert Hall. www.emory.edu/arts
Singing is as much about language as it is about as music. When it comes to operatic voices, American audiences sometimes forget that equation. Instead, we’re addicted to the beauty of tone, the shapely lines, the super-charged melodies.
It’s easy to understand how we got this way. When an Italian tenor or German soprano sings in their native tongue, the performer intuitively understands the texts — whereas a monoglot American audience, by default, thrills to the glamorous sounds. We pick up the emotions, even if we can’t understand the words.
All this came to mind Tuesday evening when American baritone Thomas Hampson and pianist Craig Rutenberg delivered a recital of German, Czech and American songs at Emory’s Emerson Concert Hall.
Hampson is among the smarter, more stylish baritones in the world. As he approaches 50, his voice remains large, open and distinctively rugged, of fine-grained oak. His preparation and attention to nuance, in any language, is fastidious.
Robert Schumann’s “Stirb’, Lieb’ und Freud’â€? (“Die, Love and Joyâ€?) — one of six Schumann songs that opened the program — was indicative. It’s a covert, almost whispered ballad about a pious girl set to take religious orders, and her secret suitor whose heart is breaking.
Hampson sang it with compassion and depth. When the maiden speaks the title words, the baritone slipped into a well-placed falsetto, rolling each syllable in his mouth, bringing it to the tip of his tongue, and carefully dropping it out of his mouth. He put the words way out the front, to the extent that if you weren’t following the line-by-line translation in the program booklet, you might mistake his text shaping for vocal mannerisms.
With the score in hand, he sang Antonin Dvorak’s seven “Gypsy Songs� in Czech, again with clean diction and superb musicality. He didn’t have the notes/texts fully internalized. Was it surprising that he couldn’t cut loose and find carefree joy for “Struna naladena� (“The Strings are Tuned�), a Bohemian honky tonk where the climactic line is “Join the dance!�
All matters concerning debatable style in foreign languages evaporated after intermission: six songs by six composers, all set to Walt Whitman texts, followed by a group of American folk tunes.
Rutenberg, for his part, was best in Leonard Bernstein’s neurotic “To What You Said,� teasing out the anguished chords at the beginning, supporting the singer as a full partner, exploring the music in close rapport.
And when Hampson serenaded us with “O Shenandoahâ€? and “The Boatmen’s Danceâ€? — in Stephen White’s chintzy arrangement of the former; Aaron Copland’s echt-Americana version of the latter — it was easy to feel we’d never heard these classics more convincingly sung, at once opulent and plain-spoken. Such is the combined power of language and music.
On the Web: Thomas Hampson’s Website is www.hampsong.com
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A Harbison Premiere, the classical weekend
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Reviews
— Atlanta Chamber Players, Sunday at Emory University’s Emerson Concert Hall.
— Warsaw Philharmonic, Sunday at the Fox Theatre.
— New Trinity Baroque, Saturday at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church.
The vitality of Atlanta’s local classical music scene is beginning to rival the old culture centers up the East Coast: world premieres, chamber operas, touring orchestras and more — all packed in a busy weekend.
The big event first. On Sunday, the Atlanta Chamber Players gave the debut performance of John Harbison’s “Songs America Loves to Sing,� a set of 10 familiar tunes, reworked and re-imagined for a chamber quintet of flutist Christina Smith, clarinetist Laura Ardan, violinist Christopher Pulgram, cellist Brad Ritchie and pianist (and ACP founder) Paula Peace.
The first number, “Amazing Grace,� features an assertive flute line against serene, slo-motion drips from the piano. Harbison has somehow made it sound like Aaron Copland painted a Japanese landscape in watercolors. It’s a gorgeous culture clash, and odd.
As might be expected when America is the thesis, Copland and Charles Ives are the ghosts of the 25-minute set. Echoes of their music are heard throughout. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken� gets a citified pastiche treatment made archly rural by a hoe-down fiddle. In “Poor Butterfly� the clarinet flutters and swoops in a long solo and is eventually joined by the others, who stumble in with a somewhat louche attitude.
“Ain’t Goin’ to Study War No Mo’ � is at once jittery and proudly in the old Americana camp. It’s music by a crazy carpenter, fragrant with the sharp smell of fresh-cut pine and likely to collapse at any moment.
“Anniversary Song — a.k.a. “Happy Birthday� — made for an unsettling finale. The piano is strummed from the inside, the others toot on harmonicas, the cello flies away on ghostly harmonics. It gave me the feeling of a Schoenberg reduction of a Strauss waltz, where a happy original is given a dark, neurotic veneer. It’s Harbison at his best, drawing the listener in with what appear to be safe, comforting images while tweaking them just enough to raise all sorts of unanswerable questions — a very Ivesian approach.
On to something completely different. On Saturday, New Trinity Baroque, another ambitious local ensemble, presented Pergolesi’s comic opera of 1733, “The Maid Mistress.� It’s the comic tale of an impertinent servant girl who weasels her way into her master’s heart. She thus swaps her maid’s cap for a wedding veil. The opera, which sounds half way between baroque Handel and classical Mozart, was highly influential, inspiring Mozart and Da Ponte’s “Cosi Fan Tutti.�
New Trinity harpsichordist Predrag Gosta led a delightful show, starting with Jason Hardy singing Uberto, the rich old geezer. Hardy is a major discovery. His bass voice is wide and ringing, with an easy delivery and an Italianate “ping� in his tone. I'm not sure how large the voice is, in terms of filling an opera house, but in the reverberant acoustic of St. Bartolomew's Episcopal Church, Hardy was a most powerful presence.
Soprano Julia Matthews, as the maid Serpina, had charm and a bright, agile voice, although she garbled her Italian diction. Kurt-Alexander Zeller played the dumb and dumber valet role, Valpone. Overall, the performance bursted with energy and fun.
As a chaser to these shows, the venerable Warsaw Philharmonic played the Fox Theatre Sunday evening. On the opening half of the program Antoni Wit conducted music by Polish masters of the 19th and 20th centuries. Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 featured Olga Kern, winner of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition of a few years back, as soloist. Her playing was proportionate and beautifully nuanced. It was also, for my tastes, rather chilly and emotionally uninvolved.
The groovy modern art came from Kryzstof Penderecki’s 1961 “Polymorphia.� This is dizzyingly abstract music, of dense buzzing-bee clusters, wide swoops and massed plunks, clicks and shimmers. There is no harmony, melody or rhythm — at least not in any traditional sense. It moves like dark clouds of dissonance across the sky, or seems to twirl like a giant metal sculpture in the bright sun.
With Retro being the fashion du jour, isn’t it time ‘60s avant-garde pieces join retro-Copland and retro-Ives in our wardrobe closet?
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Jill Scott’s ‘Golden’ at DeKalb Atlanta Centre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If one were to list on paper what makes a recording artist great it would include much of what Jill Scott is on stage.
First, the R&B singer has an exceptional voice. Where many of her peers seem to focus on atmosphere, effect or theatrics, Scott brings warmth, technical ability and power in appropriate doses. A gift made even more evident Saturday night at the Dekalb Atlanta Centre, where the acoustics were particularly complimentary.
Second, the exceptional vocalist has occasionally incredible things to sing. Key word: occasionally. Though Scott’s two studio albums are dotted with simple, “sister-girl” tracks like “Gettin’ In the Way,” writing, melody and emotion make powerhouses out of singles like “He Loves Me,” “Rasool” and “I Keep.”
Third, her eight-person musical accompaniment was instrumental in making her concert a better-than-the-album experience; reworking the soulful “The Way” into a rock scorcher; and closing dance single “Golden” with a jazzy piano vamp.
And finally, Scott makes her audiences feel good - in that gushy, Oprah kind of way. At the end of “Slowly Surely” she asked her fans to yell “I do love me!” and hug themselves. A pleasant gesture especially needed after many in the capacity crowd endured an hour-long line, or more, only to spend three more on their feet for the standing-room-only show.
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Morrissey Plays the Tabernacle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Morrissey is a man of many moods, though most folks probably associate him with misery. At the Tabernacle Friday night, the mayor of Mope-ton seemed pretty happy. And the worshipful fans that tussled over his sweaty shirts and reached for his hand looked downright giddy.
His set relied heavily on his recent album, “You Are the Quarry.� He was chatty, playful and in remarkably fine voice as he led his seasoned band — several have backed him for a decade — through more than half of the tunes on that disc. Songs that seemed lackluster on the album were brighter and punchier on stage, holding their own alongside earlier solo bright spots such as “November Spawned a Monster,� “Everyday Is Like Sunday� and “Now My Heart Is Full.�
The packed house saved its loudest cheers for the Smiths tunes, though. The set began and ended with a couple of gems from those glory days. The throbbing pulse of “How Soon Is Now?� was powerful as ever, but “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,� the night’s lone encore, may be the loveliest tune Morrissey and his Smiths songwriting partner Johnny Marr ever wrote. It was a fitting closing statement for a show that proved Morrissey is still as charismatic as ever.
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At Horizon: Hookers with heart
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Café Puttanesca.� Through Nov. 28.
After shedding a shiny purple ensemble for a frou-frou white slip with layers and layers of tulle, the Marquesa does a frantically timed bit of comic nonsense that’s sure to linger long in the memory of giggling fans of Horizon Theatre’s “Café Puttanesca.�
The evening is drawing to a close on the Michael Ogborn musical cabaret, and the well-lubricated hooker is being serenaded by her longtime colleague, the Baroness, in their signature tune, “Rasputin and the Russian Nun.� Engaging in a little après-brothel tomfoolery, circa 1948 Amsterdam, these vulgar, absinthe-minded ladies of the night are the poor man’s answer to such patent-leather sophisticates as Edith Piaf and Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles.
Dusting the mothballs off her novelty number, the high-stepping, heavily rouged and très-Frenchy Marquesa (or Marquie, as her friends call her) has to slide in and out of the dualing roles of Rasputin and the czarina’s queer-tulip courtesan. She does this by constantly manipulating a hairpiece that doubles as the demigod’s whiskers and the fey one’s wispy mane.
It helps considerably that the actress in question is none other than the inimitable LaLa Cochran. She’s a scream.
Directed by Heidi Cline and starring Michelle Lynne Martin as the zaftig Baroness and Kenya Hamilton as the Eliza-Doolittle-in-reverse vamp known as the Duchess, “Café Puttanesca� is charming but flawed — an uneven but entertaining evening of frothy throwaway fun.
As penned by Ogborn and co-lyricist Terrence J. Nolen, its sole plot point is that the blond-tressed Baroness is heading off for the green pastures of Pennsylvania (which one song manages to rhyme with “nymphomania�); thus her coquettish colleagues have gathered for one last night of sousing and grousing about the tawdry state of whore-dom.
The merriment sometimes stagnates between songs.
The 90-minute effort would be a much happier affair sans intermission.
And there’s nary a truly fine singer or dancer in the cast (although you could argue that, as with the strippers of “Gypsy,� that’s precisely the point).
Yet there’s something wonderfully beguiling about these bawdy broads and their liquid limericks. While “Allez-Vous En� has an air of Paris, the overall tone of “Café Puttanesca� is more “peel off� than Piaf. You don’t have to have too florid an imagination to figure out the punchlines of “Gypsy in My Purse� and “Oh, How I Miss the Kaiser.�
But under its glib façade, the revue has ripples of romance and regret, too. An aura of sadness informs Marquesa’s ode to young love (“Artists and Models�), and the cafe’s barkeep (Phillip Webster) and his wife, Rosa, the cook (Denise Arribas), are genuinely in love.
In sum, Ogborn has written a valentine to the golden age of European cabaret.
We may dream of a better cast and a quicker pace. But music director S. Renee Clark keeps the piano tingling. Kenton McGhee’s ridiculous costumes are pure kitschy fun. And in serving up a cornucopia of patter and petticoats, these bosomy tarts win us over with their bigness of heart.
THE VERDICT: You gotta have tart.
8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 8:30 p.m. Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 28. $18-$25. Horizon Theatre, 1083 Austin Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-584-7450, www.horizontheatre.com.
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‘From Door to Door’ at Jewish Theatre of the South
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “From Door to Door.� Through Nov. 14.
Chicago playwright James Sherman’s “From Door to Door� is a bittersweet comedy about the blessings and compromises that three generations of women encounter in their pursuit of love, faith and marriage.
Opening Jewish Theatre of the South’s 10th season, the play explores familiar domestic and psychological territory. But the writing is so ingenious and clearly structured, the performances so affecting and the directing so smart, that you come to think of grandmother Bessie, her daughter Mary and granddaughter Deborah as if they were members of your own family.
The play begins and ends at the same place: Deborah (Pamela Gold) is urging her aging mother, Mary (Marianne Fraulo), to pursue her long-repressed passion for painting. Spinning back in time, the story explains why Mary’s dreams have been shunted away.
Sherman captures these abiding but complicated relationships in a way that’s both culturally authentic and universal. It’s a testament to his considerable skills that he evinces three fully realized and lovingly detailed portraits in the seamless, 90-minute one act.
Director Susan Reid (“Tuesdays With Morrie�) gets sterling work from the cast. \
The action fades in and out of designer Travis George’s set of disconnected panels and doorways, which frees the actors to dance between the numerous scenes without drawing attention to the mechanics of this cyclical play.
The script requires the trio to play their characters at all ages, no small feat, but the actresses do so with grace and credibility. All three women, particularly Judy Leavell as the adorably crotchety Bessie, give readings that are moving and richly nuanced.
The opening scenes flicker from the play’s present (the 1990s) to its past (the ’30s), and Fraulo masters the precise shifts in time with minimal changes in appearance but maximal expressiveness.
In one frame, she’s an aging, self-doubting matriarch; in the next, an optimistic and obedient little girl at her mother’s apron strings; and later, a 21-year-old who’s badgered by her mother to forget art and marry the first man who asks her.
As the story shifts to the next generation, Mary urges Deborah not to marry outside the Jewish faith, even though her daughter is deeply in love with a handsome, kind and successful man. In the end, Deborah’s marriage is less stable than her mother’s and grandmother’s, but she is no less whole, and she finds the professional success that eluded her mom.
Under her armor and Russian accent, Bessie conceals residual fears of anti-Semitism and vivid memories of her youthful romance. As played with a sparkling wit by Leavell, Bessie softens with age, and becomes more warm and human. Always solid and workmanlike, here Leavell sails to delightful and terrific new heights.
At the end, as Chris Crawford’s lighting goes down on the face of Mary, this familial canvas is suffused with a sense of lessons learned and hope for the future.
In 1995, Jewish Theatre of the South staged Sherman’s “Beau Jest� as its inaugural production. Since then, the ensemble has become a vital part of our cultural landscape, its work a gift that sustains and nurtures us all.
THE VERDICT: Superb.
8 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays and Saturdays (no show Fridays); 3 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 14. $18-$26. Jewish Theatre of the South, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654, www.atlantajcc.org
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Volkov conducts ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
It’s not often three generations of musicians make a mark on a single Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert, but it happened Thursday.
The youngest was on the podium. Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov is just 28 — still a toddler on the conducting curcuit — and has already established himself as a serious artist of the highest potential.
Wisely, the tall, lanky maestro is gaining experience away from the big-city spotlights: he’s currently in charge of Glasgow’s BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He’s been an ASO guest three times in as many years.
His Thursday program centered on the music of birds (and other twittering beasts).
He opened with a fluent, passionate account of Dvorak's Gothic tone poem "The Wood Dove," from an old Czech folk tale. The music graphically depicts a troubled young widow who is courted by a handsome lad, gets remarried, but still can't slip the nagging feeling that poisoning her first hubby was wrong. At his grave, the cooing of a wood dove -- the angel of death, perched in an oak tree -- sends her over the edge of sanity.
Winningly, Volkov played up key scenes, such as the widow’s insincere sobbing at the beginning, depicted by repeated cascades from the strings. “Boo hoo hoo,” she sobs. People who’d read Nick Jones’ program summary beforehand got a laugh out of those for-public-consumption tears.
Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” in the complete, 45-minute ballet score, closed the evening. This is unbeatable music for the concert hall. We love the thick Russian romanticism and glittery exoticism of this, the composer’s first hit.
We love knowing that most of the ballet is drawn from the style of his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, but in those climactic moments, when the magical Firebird's spell enchants the evil-doers, it's the genius Stravinsky shining through, for the first time in his life.
The ASO played with force and precision, and Volkov had all the essentials in place, save one: his interpretation lacked vivid personality. The music overflows with Stravinsky's buoyant energy, which makes it easy for a conductor to simply direct traffic and still take credit for a satisfying show.
But we've come to expect more from Volkov. I wanted the sense that Thursday's performance was a one and only, that it was an event. Instead, Volkov led one of thousands of fine "Firebirds."
Back to the generations thing mentioned earlier. Principal oboist Jonathan Dlouhy, who joined the ASO when Volkov was three years old, here played the solo in Mozart's C Major Concerto for Oboe.
Before wetting his lips to begin, Dlouhy picked up a microphone and, with a deep bow of gratitude, introduced his own teacher who was seated in the audience: John Mack, the legendary former oboist of the Cleveland Orchestra.
Unlike pop music, which so often is about dissing your elders, classical music gains richness from generations of accumulated experience. Dlouhy, via Mack and HIS great teacher, the genius Frenchman Marcel Tabuteau, is a living link to an unbroken tradition that goes back to the invention of the instrument.
In cognac-warm tones, Dlouhy’s approach to the concerto was as our guide. There was no flash to his interpretation but rather a gentle sharing of his beloved Mozart.
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Beastie Boys play Gwinnett
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Conventional wisdom suggests that the Beastie Boys were brats in the ’80s, found enlightenment in the ’90s and enhanced their lefty activism in the ’00s —- all true. What’s easy to forget is that the New York trio has made consistently fresh hip-hop at every step along the way.
The Beasties’ show at the Gwinnett Arena offered a kind of career retrospective. They wore matching tracksuits. They chanted rhymes in their oddly endearing three-part hip-hop harmony. They mocked President Bush. They even did minisets on a ministage, playing funky groove on their own instruments, seemingly just as a reminder that they could.
Much of the night, though, was a traditional hip-hop show —- three emcees and one DJ dropping old-school sensibilities. Among the memorable songs the boys reeled off: “Root Down,” “Shake Your Rump,”“Intergalactic,” “Brass Monkey” and “Paul Revere.”
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At Ga. Shakes: The Scottish Play
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “”Macbeth.” Through Oct. 31.
Sexy and slit-throated, the new production of “Macbeth� at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival comes dressed as a Halloween kill-a-thon that, ultimately, is far more passionate than moving.
Director Drew Facher takes Shakespeare’s shortest play, with its dagger-sharp plot about a tormented war hero slashing his way to the throne, and delivers a matinee-worthy thriller that revels in disembodied heads, freeze-action swordfights and Gollumlike witches. The blood bank works overtime, too. In an uncomfortable twist of timing, we get enough grisly decapitations to make the horrors of 11th-century Scotland remind us of the present-day war in Iraq.
Where this production falls short is in conveying the inner haunting of the protagonist. As villains go, Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most sympathetic, and a monumentally difficult role to master, precisely because the audience identifies with him battling the darkness within.
Ultimately, whether it’s a lack of gravitas by Daniel May in the title role, or the cast’s collective speed-reading of some of the most famous poetry in the canon — everyone should be blessed with the clarity and ease of Chris Kayser’s doomed Duncan — this “Macbeth� registers less than the drama’s full freight.
Then again, it looks terrific.
With the muscular and tattooed May, we get a Macbeth whose kilt is splattered with the grungy chic of “Braveheart�; at first, he seems almost too young to play the ascendant Thane of Cawdor, until you realize that “old age� arrived much earlier in those days. His youthful virility is a good match for the willful sexuality of Marnie Penning as Lady Macbeth, who skirts the maternal shading often found in this character, giving us more of a hot-to-trot schemer in pursuit of the crown.
Still, in the spirit of the spookhouse season, the “Scottish Play� — so nicknamed because “Macbeth� was said to be cursed — has moments of chilling fun. You can’t help but note the cinematic influences in the overall design, especially when it comes to the superbly strange three witches, the “weird sisters� who foretell Macbeth’s rise to the throne. Two of them
(Sherman Fracher and AlisonCQ Hastings) look like refugees from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mordor. The third (the delightfully detached Bruce Evers) is a cross between Uncle Fester and Marlon Brando’s Colonel Kurtz in “Apocalypse, Now.�
The horror.
On a technical level, the production has some wonderful otherworldly touches. Kat Conley’s foreboding cubistic set skillfully suggests the play’s empty, godless arena, while offering distant outlines of a castle forever lost in the fog banks. Also noteworthy is MitaCQ Beach’s sound design, full of throbbing percussion and curious industrial noise: You half expect Blue Man Group to show up on the battlements at any minute.
Timewise, as befits Shakespeare’s most concise and violent play, this “Macbeth� flies (two hours, 20 minutes including intermission). Yet despite all the sound and fury, it doesn’t soar.
THE VERDICT: Dressed to thrill, but this “Macbeth� doesn’t kill.
8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Oct. 24 and 31. $10-$35. Through Oct. 31. Georgia Shakespeare Festival, Conant Performing Arts Center at Oglethorpe University. 4484 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-264-0020. www.gashakespeare.org.
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‘Spooky Puppet…The Beginning’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Spooky Puppet . . .the Beginning.” Through Oct. 30. Horror always resides in a spooky house on a hill, and babes lost in the woods never run away from danger. They leap voluntarily into the vortex every time.
It’s from these tired-and-true camp formulas that the Center for Puppetry Arts’ “Spooky Puppet . . . the Beginning� now rears its ugly head.
In director-writer Clint Thornton’s purported prequel to Lucky Yates’ “Spooky Puppet Horror Show,� an impossibly tall, white-gowned drag-queen thing known as Fang traps a virgin and her goofus fiancé in a ghoulish puppet motel for an orgy of evil.
“A hundred puppets and a blood-red moon!� shrieks Fang as she introduces her circus of freaks and monsters. (Be forewarned, the raunchy romp is intended for ages 18 and up only.)
While Yates’ cult favorite was a chance for his randy creation Fiend to don a smoking jacket and tap a keg of silly sexual shenanigans, here Thornton attempts to describe the events leading up to the birth of Fiend and sidekick She-Devil.
Unfortunately, Thornton’s tale of Rod and Rosie and their inevitable brush with Fang is a fumble. The show is neither particularly scary nor funny, and the injection of an intermission makes the 80-minute evening feel longer than it should.
The veiled nature of puppetry would seem to be a perfect conduit for sophisticated suspense. After all, you get more goose bumps by suggesting evil than you do by screaming bloody murder.
But once we see where the tale of Rosie (Kathleen Link) and the aptly named Rod (Ed Link) is headed, our imagination doesn’t have far to travel, and Thornton’s low comedy offers uninspired writing and too few surprises. References to “Hello, Dolly!� and “The Sound of Music�? Come on.
That said, Bryan Mercer’s performance as the sick and manipulative Fang is perversely delightful, and Kathleen McManus’ nymphomaniacal Lips — nothing more than an enormous pair of red smackers on a pair of sticks — is a hoot. Instead of doing Peggy Lee’s torchy “Fever,� she sings “Fever Blister.�
Then there’s Fang’s “phantom Dick� (Adam Fristoe), who gets to rivet Rosie in a dental chair, while anesthetized Rod is kept under the knife (as it were). Along the way, a doll is blended into a shake, and a trio of swinging objects (the Evil Axes) does a surreal conceptualist ballet.
Maybe “Spooky Puppet� would work better if it mixed a bit more woo-hoo with things that go boo. Toward that end, the center is offering half-price student tickets on Wednesdays, free beer on Thursdays, and costume contests and live music on Saturdays.
Hopefully that will amp up the spooks and the spirits.
Otherwise (and we never thought we’d say this): Come back, Lucky. Come back.
THE VERDICT: Boo.
8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays; 8 and 11 p.m. Saturdays. Through Oct. 30. $16-$20. Center for Puppetry Arts, 1404 Spring St. N.W., Atlanta. 404-873-3089, 404-873-3391, www.puppet.org.
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David Robertson conducts ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and 8 p.m. Saturday. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E. 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org.
Conductors, those fabulously well-paid jet-setters of the music business, play an intercontinental game of musical chairs.
This weekend, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's artistic leaders, Robert Spano and Donald Runnicles, are in San Francisco conducting that city's orchestra and opera, respectively. On the ASO podium Thursday evening was the St. Louis Symphony's music director-designate, David Robertson, who built his reputation largely in France. Recently the New York Philharmonic tapped him as a favored guest conductor, an accolade that's sure to raise his national visibility.
With the ASO, Robertson’s substantial talents were evident. He made Tchaikovsky’s ‘‘Capriccio Italien,” which closed the concert, sound like a masterpiece. It’s not, and there’s the brilliance.
For the opening, he forged the brass and percussion into a giant sword of glinting steel, then seemed to swing it around over his head. (Such panache! Such control! I laughed aloud in delight.)
The work is a postcard of the composer’s travels, including a folk dance in three, a dark and noble lament, a spinning merry-go-round and a Roman Carnival. Throughout, Robertson laid out the vertical and horizontal lines of the score — the harmony and melody — with equal zeal. Thus enlivened and supported, the music exploded off the stage. Rarely does the ASO play with such concentrated power, seemingly with more in reserve. It’s proof again that top-tier guest conductors are essential to the orchestra’s growth.
The evening opened with music by the invincible Stravinsky, his complete ballet score to ‘‘The Fairy’s Kiss.”— inspired loosely by music by Tchaikovsky, after Hans Christian Andersen’s grim fairy tale “The Snow Maiden.”
But here orchestra and conductor weren't yet of like mind — perhaps didn't realize what they could achieve together. Although there wasn't much color painted on Stravinsky's neo-classical soundscape, there was some lavish playing and moments that contrasted a hard-edge sound with extreme tenderness.
At core, Robertson’s strength comes from a strong feeling for rhythm and tempo, which he translates into a good sense of musical architecture. He has a frisky, nerdish look, and for the ballet he seemed like a marionette on a string, flopping his arms or jerking his head, using his whole body to get his message across.
His communication skills are also helped by the fact that he at times conducts just ahead of the beat. He’s not moving his baton with the notes, he’s anticipating them, shaping each phrase like a potter at the wheel. It allows him to make spontaneous, if subtle, intrepretive decisions, as a sort of real-time feedback loop between the score, the players and the audience. I’d like to hear him again in weightier repertoire, maybe a Boulez-Mahler program? Bring him back soon.
Between the Russians came Grieg’s chocolate-cake-and-ice-cream Piano Concerto. Robertson’s soloist was his wife, Orli Shaham (sister of celebrated violinist Gil Shaham).
As a pianist, Shaham is not of the look-at-me supervirtuoso school. The delicate lace figures in the adagio movement, calm and soft-spoken, were her best moments.
Did husband and wife have special onstage chemistry, like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the movies? I’d answer that conductor and pianist knew each other’s interpretation well and, as sensitive artists, made music in a unified spirit.
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The Pixies play the Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dear unborn grandkids,
I saw the Pixies Wednesday night. They’re the ones you’ll be reading about in your rock history classes, the magnificently thrashy quartet that influenced Nirvana in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, back when nobody but Kurt Cobain was listening, then broke up acrimoniously and seemed unlikely ever to reunite.
A lot of people discovered the Pixies since then, though, and their show Wednesday (the first of two at this huge place called the Fox Theatre) sold out months ago. It was the most-anticipated rock show of the year, and I knew you’d want to hear about it.
Going into the night, I was expecting a glorious volcanic eruption from a long-dormant mountain of rock.
You know what it felt like instead? It felt like walking downstairs on Christmas Eve and seeing Santa Claus delivering your presents. In a way, it was amazing. But when you spend the last decade imagining what that moment would be like, it’s jarring to discover that he’s just a tubby guy with crumbs in his beard.
The band only seemed into the show about half the time. The frontman, Frank Black, is known for singing in this weird mix of English and Spanish and animal barks, but he somehow found a way to make all that howling seem conventional. Hustling through the setlist and barely acknowledging the audience, he acted like a human jukebox up there, cranking out the old favorites just because somebody dropped a quarter in the slot. In his defense, screaming about sliced eyeballs must get tiresome after all these years, but it was frustrating waiting for him to scream like he meant it.
The guitarist, Joey Santiago, is one of the most underrated and influential players of his generation — he plays guitar like bricks play windows — but he often looked bored, as though he was reading aloud in front of a class.
Fortunately, the rhythm section (singer/bassist Kim Deal and drummer David Lovering) seemed like they were happy to be there. Deal sang hard and played well, and she appeared most appreciative of the rapturous audience; several times she smiled like a child. Lovering’s drumming was the most urgent music on stage, pushing his bandmates along.
At times, all four Pixies clicked. And when they did, they were glorious.
“Vamos� was a shredder, with Santiago (as if awaking from a trance) unexpectedly setting his guitar on a stand so he could play a meltdown solo using his effects pedal and a drumstick. And Black seemed to be in the moment screaming “IT’S EDUCATIONAL,� during the refrain of “U-Mass.�
Usually, the band’s lesser-known material (the above two songs, plus “Hey� and “Nimrod’s Son�) sounded best. (One exception, the popular tune “Gigantic,� sounded great because Deal’s vocals are so adorable, and because the melody is invincibly catchy.)
As for the Pixies’ classics, well, their two versions of “Wave of Mutilation� were flatter than roadkill, and the Beatlesque “Here Comes Your Man� fared no better.
At the show’s peaks, I caught myself playing air guitar and slapping some dude five. In its valleys, I caught myself yawning and writing the word “professional� in my notebook. That’s about the last adjective I ever expected to associate with this band.
In the Fox lobby, you could buy tour T-shirts with “Pixies Sellout� on the back, a wry sentiment consistent with the gallows humor in Black’s writing. I happen to think the Pixies deserve every penny they’re getting on this reunion tour — I consider the money they’re making as back-pay, compensation for all the bands that got rich in the last 10 years ripping them off — but I do wish the musicians still loved their material as much as they once did. I wish there were a little more magic left.
My parents, your great-grandparents, always told me to stay in bed on Christmas Eve, never to come downstairs. Now I know why.
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Gwinnett Philharmonic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Gwinnett Philharmonic, Tuesday at the Gwinnett Center in Duluth. www.gwinnettphilharmonic.org
In “The Wealth of Nations,” of 1776, Adam Smith flipped a central economic paradigm. No longer was a country’s total worth determined simply by how much gold was stored in the treasury; the real measure of national output was in its productivity, in the extensive web of infrastructure that connects all the goods and services that make a society livable.
Is it the same in the arts? Metro Atlanta has gold bullion in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, to cite one shiny example. It also boasts smaller organizations that function below the city’s marquee of officialdom and, in the process, proves that our cultural wealth is spread wide across the region.
The 700-seat Performing Arts Center at the Gwinnett Center was mostly full Tuesday evening, when the Gwinnett Philharmonic opened its 2004-05 season.
Conductor Monte Nichols, who founded the philharmonic and led its first concert nine years ago — Oct. 1995 — assembled here four beloved chestnuts. If the logic to the program wasn’t apparent, at least each work held exciting moments.
Beethoven’s “Consecration of the Houseâ€? Overture started the evening, just as it did for the philharmonic’s 1995 inaugural concert — a bit of nostalgia, a musical link of past and present. They made it sound like chamber music, with the players more cued into each other’s phrasing than to the conductor’s gestures.
Vivaldi’s super-pops Concerto for Two Trumpets in C featured high-spirited soloists Kevin Lyons and Yvonne Toll. They delivered a muscular, unified interpretation that flowed with the orchestra’s muscular, romantic accompaniment. It was the strongest showing of the night.
Holst’s “St. Paul’s� Suite was performed in the original version for string orchestra. Nichols couldn’t quite keep his players together in rhythmically tricky passages, but he kept the tempo swift. Holst’s message of urbane pastoralism came across clearly.
Yet what worked for the suite, which was composed for a student ensemble, pointed to systemic philharmonic shortcomings when it came to Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, a blockbuster nicknamed “From the New World.�
In the high-calorie Dvorak, a listener often had the sense that the players were galloping horses and conductor Nichols was the hapless rider, hanging on till he could get his foot back in the stirrup, hoping they didn’t run off a cliff.
There were no serious accidents and even a few virtues to this approach. As elsewhere in the concert, the players relied mightily on their own ears (attuned to their colleagues) not their eyes (on the conductor) for guidance.
They created a halo of sound in the achingly beautiful slow movement. They romped fearlessly through much of the finale. It was fun to hear.
In most respects, the philharmonic looks like its white-tie-and-tails in-town cousins. Significantly, the atmosphere is less formal. Nichols does not leave the stage between works but serves as affable emcee at the microphone, describing the upcoming music, introducing the soloists and the concertmaster by name, telling humorous anecdotes, putting a face — his face — on the organization.
After the performance, Nichols was there too, like a church pastor, standing at the lobby exit saying personal goodbyes to everyone in the audience.
The background is this: the Gwinnett Philharmonic Association is a presenting organization, not an orchestra. With a board and just two full time staffers — including conductor/founder Nichols –- and no office space, it hires musicians on an ad hoc basis. Three times a year it presents orchestral concerts. Other shows under its auspices are string quartets or brass ensembles.
The hired musicians come from the broad pool of Atlanta talent: from the full-time ASO or juggling various freelance jobs with the Atlanta Opera or Ballet or the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. From a professional musician’s perspective, the Gwinnett Philharmonic is one more potential employer — even if it’s only three shows a year. For the audience, it’s a chance to hear a community-based orchestra boasting professional players, adding cultural wealth to the region as a whole.
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Takacs Quartet at Spivey Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Takács String Quartet, Sunday at Spivey Hall in Morrow. www.spiveyhall.org.
The Takács String Quartet, which performed Sunday afternoon in the luxurious acoustics of Spivey Hall, are the sort of artists who give a reviewer trouble. Once you’re spent your superlatives on them — a few years ago, after a devastatingly good concert, I called them “the preeminent quartet of our time� — and they outperform themselves yet again, what’s to say?
The group’s current line up is a foursome of two Englishmen and two Hungarians — violinists Edward Dusinberre and Károly Schranz, violist Roger Tapping, cellist András Fejér — and they gave a blessedly substantive program.
Bartók is their specialty, and they made his knotty Third String Quartet exceptionally vivid and witty, burnished in tone and alive in personality. The scurrying phrases of the “Seconda parte� here became part of a compelling story line.
They played Borodin’s popular Second String Quartet, including the hit-tune Nocturne, without sentimentality, and the work grew in stature.
They closed with a big event: Beethoven’s C-sharp minor String Quartet, Op. 131, one of the late, introspective, unfathomably deep works composed after his Ninth Symphony. In seven connected movements, the stone-deaf Beethoven went off the grid of what a string quartet was supposed to be. The Op. 131 is mostly abstract and proto-modernist, at turns impenetrably dense and dancing, joyous or fateful. It’s safe to say no ensemble, in 178 years, has explored every corner of this cosmic music and been able to elucidate it all in a single performance.
The Takács came closer than most. Although the opening Adagio movement, a long, slow fugue, took a few minutes to gel, they brushed the movement’s serene nature, setting the otherworldly mood necessary to contrast with the jazzy, syncopated detour that follows. By the grand fourth movement — a theme and variations — the inhibitions were gone, the play off each other seemed spontaneous, searching. The dialogue between cellist Fejér and violist Tapping was notably tight, the men listening and breathing as one.
With perfect comic timing, the Takács understood Beethoven’s vivid sense of humor: for a round of pizzicato plunks they made me laugh aloud. I like it when that happens in a concert.
Later, after a sublime transition into another Adagio, this one deathly and summarizing, they made the final Allegro movement a savage romp, a slashing, horror flic glimpse into the abyss. I like when that happens, too.
In the lobby, after the concert — no encore could follow the finale of that Beethoven — I spoke with two local violinists who became converts. In giddy agreement, they said, “We’ve never heard better string quartet playing.�
The current Takács membership has been stable since 1995. Tragically, next season will be different: violist Tapping is quitting the group. A quartet’s character alters with new personnel, so for Atlantans, this really might have been the end of an impressive chamber music reign.
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Sylvia McNair at Spivey Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Soprano Sylvia McNair and pianist Ted Taylor, Saturday at Spivey Hall.
www.spiveyhall.org.
Everyone who knows Sylvia NcNair?s singing loves her, don?t they? The soprano?s distinctive, resplendent voice and uncommonly high musical intelligence ? add her scrupulous preparation, her al-ways per-fect dic-tion and her beauty, of a small-town girl gone glamorous ? made her an opera star.
But she’s chucked that life for a different career: as a pops singer. Her reasons for the switch must be agonizing for a diva only in her mid-40s. Earlier this year, she told Opera News magazine, ?I have completely disconnected myself from the classical world … and I honestly don?t know what anybody?s doing in that world anymore.?
For Spivey Hall?s season opening gala, Saturday night, McNair sang her new one-woman-and-a-pianist show titled ?This is All Very New To Me? ? which was also the title of her lovely opening song, from Horwitt and Hague?s 1955 musical ?Plain and Fancy.?
For the most part, the audience was eating up this new McNair. Her connections to Atlanta?s classical world run deep: beginning two decades ago, Robert Shaw mentored her, giving the young artist invaluable opportunities. Soon after, McNair sang light soprano roles ? music from Handel and Mozart to Britten ? with shimmering, glorious aplomb. By 2000, however, a severe vocal crisis forced several cancelations at New York?s Metropolitan Opera.
So she?s reinvented herself with a repertoire that?s easier on the voice ? at Spivey she used a microphone ? and which requires a different skill set to convincingly emote. She found a bittersweet nostalgia in the Vernon Duke ballad ?Autumn in New York.? Stephen Sondheim?s ?Send in the Clowns? and songs by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern were delivered eagerly, passionately and carefully.
Between songs, she told the audience of her days living on Peachtree Street and she singled out old friends, complete with hugs, who had come to support the new Sylvia.
Musically, she was best in a set of waltz tunes by Richard Rogers, where it finally felt like she’d freed herself, let herself be spontaneous with the music.
The show is a work in progress. Pianist Ted Taylor was a supple Gershwin player, thickening up middle harmonies, giving the composer heft as well as tunefulness. (In the right hands, Gershwin can sound like THE great American composer.)
Yet this cabaret act often felt mild, conservatory-classical and heavily scripted. She might profit from a jazzman pianist, a musician a little more louche, to complement her Miss Perfect stage manner.
Elsewhere, the entertainment felt cobbled together. Trained as a violinist, McNair took out her fiddle for the choo-choo double-stops of ?Orange Blossom Special.? She half-fiddled, half-sang a version of “Oh Danny Boy,” which she dedicated to the Atlanta Opera’s William Fred Scott, another valued colleague. McNair plays the violin well and in tune, but there was something disconcerting to see a charismatic opera star — oops, former opera star — jamming on her student violin, hoping to please. Still, McNair?s got the musicianship and personality to make a career change, even if she?s not quite there yet.
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‘Tuesdays With Morrie’ at Theatre in the Square
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Tuesdays With Morrie.� Through Nov. 14.
Morrie Schwartz, the irascible philosopher at the center of Mitch Albom's stupendously successful memoir, knows a thing or two about the joy of life and the inevitability of death, about dancing the tango and the fox trot, about love and forgiveness, about Ted Turner’s megalomania and Ted Koppel's hair.
Albom, a Detroit Free Press sportswriter, sat with his old Brandeis University sociology teacher as he lay dying of Lou Gehrig's disease and recorded the old man's whimsical philosophy. A consistent New York Times best seller since 1997, “Tuesdays With Morrie� has been made into a TV movie and a play, which is getting its first Atlanta production at Marietta's Theatre in the Square.
“Morrie� is relentlessly optimistic, and sappy to a fault. But thanks in no small part to playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's sure-footed adaptation, Susan Reid’s expert direction and the heart-melting work of David Milford (Morrie) and David Marshall Silverman (Mitch), the show overcomes its sentimental veneer to become a rich, rewarding and insightful evening of theater.
Even the most hardhearted cynics will be reduced to puddles.
Milford, who has a long and impressive résumé as one of the city's hardest-working actors, nails the part of the indefatigable Morrie. With his receding, snow-white hairline and nervous tremor, Morrie attacks death with wit.
“My funeral was last week,� he deadpans to Mitch. (Seems he arranged a “living� eulogy so he could enjoy it.) “If I get reincarnated, I want to come back as a gazelle!� he shouts near the end.
When the conversation turns to Turner's attempt to buy CBS, Morrie exclaims, “He doesn't need a network! He needs a hug!�
Morrie, you see, is unafraid to express physical affection or to cry like a baby. He urges the ambitious, overachieving Mitch to find inner peace, to be as human as he can be and to forgive all grievances — even if the other person is 100 percent wrong. “Let it go.�
Silverman gives a winning performance as the workaholic transformed by his mentor’s philosophy of selflessness. Ultimately, Mitch’s uptight exterior is cracked wide open by Morrie’s infinite generosity and compassion.
A tale about how friendship can be an antidote to loneliness, “Tuesdays With Morrie� is, after a fashion, a love story. We know that when Morrie tells his young soul mate and surrogate son: “I like myself better when I'm with you.�
Albom likes to say his reunion with the man he called “Coach� after a 16-year absence was like returning to class for a final lesson. Theatre in the Square earns extra credit for handling Albom's labor of love with such gentleness and sensitivity.
Milford and Marshall are menschen made in heaven. “Tuesdays With Morrie� gets an A.
THE VERDICT: It’s soooo sweet. A three-hankie performance.
8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sundays (no 7 p.m. show Nov. 14). Also 2:30 p.m. Nov. 10. Through Nov. 14. $18-$32. Theatre in the Square, 11 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-422-8369, www.theatreinthesquare.com.
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Jack in the Black Box does Kerouac
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “On the Road With Jack, an Original Performance Inspired by the Work of Jack Kerouac.� Though Wednesday, Oct. 13.
A hipster sits at a dark corner table, scribbling in a notebook as a trio plays jazz.
These Beat-era atmospherics are the prelude to “On the Road With Jack, an Original Performance Inspired by the Work of Jack Kerouac.â€?
But Kerouac fans looking for the writings of the Beat icon won’t find them. Instead, an ensemble delivers an exhilarating evening of song, comedy, theater and media, most of it original material.
Taking off from Kerouac’s “On the Roadâ€? theme, Rachel Craw, Maia Knispel, Shawn Hale and Tyler Owens quickly accelerate into bright if uneven sketches that satirize America’s obsession with the highway. The humiliations and dangers of car travel hilariously conflict with the romance of the road.
In a glimpse at a roadside diner, Hale takes charge as a waitress in drag, her big hair “as if out of a Dairy Queen Machine.� Her bosom nearly bursting from her starched white uniform, she belts out Merman-style blues about nighthawks at the Waffle House-like place.
Later, Owens and Knispel give off sparks as a Sonny and Cher-type duo, sending up rock-concert patter in a hilarious, upbeat dirge to road kill — “Dear Animal.�
Dennis Coburn’s Mr. Boom, in porkpie hat, dark glasses and goatee, rises throughout the evening to perform original Beat-style poetry. One piece lampoons the hectic pace of modern life, imagining an ATM machine that also spits out junk food. His work mocks the easy profundity of the genre while succeeding at the same verbal high jinks.
When the evening shifts focus from exterior to interior journeys, Craw stands at an ironing board in skirt and slip top, delivering a monologue about her character's anxiety disorder. The spooked young woman is ironing her blouse for her first group therapy meeting. When at last she pulls on the top and stands fully clothed, she appears whole, capable of healing. But that possibility is shattered when she suddenly feels a chill. Her bravado wavering, she wraps herself in an overcoat, then bolts the stage.
The trio of lead guitar Jesse Lauter, bass Michael Feinberg and sax Cory Takeuchi deserves a special salute, handling everything from John Coltrane and Duke Ellington (“Take the A Train�) to rock standards.
When at last a famous quote from Kerouac's iconic “On the Road� flashes on a screen near the evening's conclusion, it hardly seems necessary to inspire us further. A final, powerful slide show glowing with images of home, accompanied by the recorded, heart-touching “100 Mile Dance� by Drew de Man of the musical group New River City, reassures us that the road can lead to a happy destination.
THE VERDICT: Verdict: A groovy road trip.
8 p.m. Monday-Wednesday; $12. Jack in the Black Box Theatre Company at Actor’s Express, King Plow Arts Center, 887 W. Marietta St. N.W. 404-432-9847.
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‘Richard II’ at the Shakespeare Tavern
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Richard II.� Through Oct. 30.
Last season, the New American Shakespeare Tavern staged what scholars call the Henriad, the history cycle that includes “Richard II,� the “Henry IV� plays and “Henry V.� By all accounts, Jeff McKerley's performance as the self-sabotaging Richard II was revelatory, so the theater decided to explore it further this year.
It’s a welcome choice.
“Richard II� is a tough row to hoe and thus rarely performed. Virtually plotless, the play is about the slow abdication of an inept politician who happens to be a silver-tongued poet.
The Georgia Shakespeare Festival’s 2000 version, starring the regal Chris Kayser, was stylish and lovely to look at but dramatically flat.
Tavern Artistic Director Jeff Watkins’ take is likewise long-winded, and might benefit if some of the nonessential speeches were deleted. But when the players pause to luxuriate in the bard’s magisterial verse, it’s a glorious, soul-stirring affair — inertia redeemed by language.
While “Richard II� is technically a history, I think of it as a tragedy, a love story, a meditation on time. “Shakespeare composed ‘Richard II’ as an extended metaphysical lyric, which ought to be impossible for a history play,� says the critic Harold Bloom, “but for Shakespeare everything is possible.�
It’s impossible not to be moved by John of Gaunt’s deathbed paean to the sea-battered, windswept beauty that is England, and Eric Brooks metes out the soliloquy with grace and restraint: “This happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea . . . this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, this nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings . . . �
McKerley, who has a reputation as an irrepressible comic fool, steps into the garb of Richard a bit preciously at first. But when he sits to ponder the intrigue that’s plagued the court through the ages, he brings time to a stop. In a divine stroke, the actor uses his finger to mock the “little pin� that bores through the castle wall, thereby alluding to his final speech: “Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point, is pointing still. . . . � Wow.
Melanie Walker’s account of the queen is also finely wrought — although it’s unfortunate that her headdress looks like a gold-lamé hot water bottle. As the Duchess of York, the dainty Jackie Prucha proves again why she’s one of the city’s most intelligent actresses of a certain age. Quivering with a kind of nervous energy, she nonetheless manages to find the place where courage and kindness strike equipoise.
My major quibble is with the choice of Maurice Ralston as the usurping Bolingbroke. The actor turns his lines into a singsong patter that doesn’t make sense. This Bolingbroke is sufficiently smarmy, but his rhythm is off.
That said, I’m happy the Tavern has brought back this last vestige of its Henriad. “Richard II� is an autumnal feast, a touch of sweet-sweet sorrow.
As the doomed monarch puts it: “Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.�
THE VERDICT: A feast of words
7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Through Oct. 30. $19.50-$24.50. New American Shakespeare Tavern, 499 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-874-5299, www.shakespearetavern .com.
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Review: Aurora Theatre’s “Das Barbecü”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the hilarious opening minutes of the country-western opera spoof “Das Barbecü,� the Aurora Theatre crams our confused heads with Wagner’s 16-hour “Ring� Cycle. That’s the four-opera epic where fat singers traditionally wear horned helmets and belt their lungs out about everything from gods and giants to drugs and incest. It’s really about the meaning of love.
There’s a lot of plot to cover. So in a mad-cap rush of information, the “Barbecü� cast, under David Crowe’s whip-smart direction, uses flashcards, gold hula-hoops and a lecture on narcolepsy to force-feed us the story.
Very funny, but it’s still too complicated.
So they start over, beginning a comically sentimental Texas-style musical about an arrogant man who has a house built and can’t make the payments and so steals a golden ring — the power of the universe — for payment, then tries to steal it back. When his daughter disobeys him, he puts her to sleep inside a magic circle of fire, which is broken by his heroic grandson, who instantly falls in love with her (his aunt) till he (the young hero) gets tricked by a family of dastardly schemers who want the ring for themselves, but — even the best plans can go awry — the world is set on fire, then flooded. Curtain.
Summarizing the outrageous story is the point. Commissioned by the Seattle Opera to help novices understand Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nieblungen,� “Barbecü� is based on Wagner’s plot but not his music. Scott Warrender’s score is all easy-flowing pop-country — with nods to honky tonk, Western swing and Hank Williams — highlighted by hummable tunes like “A Ring of Gold in Texas� and “Makin’ Guacamole.�
Jim Luigs’ book and lyrics are saucy and sly. His jokes are hit or miss, but there’s a warm glow when he shapes his words for romantic exchanges. He gives the characters, for all the absurdity, flickers of humanity.
The real delight comes from the Aurora’s alert cast, with five actors covering some 30 roles on a set that could double as a coyote-country saloon. It helps, too, that the fiddle-guitar pit band, led by Ann-Carol Pence, give sure-footed musical accompaniment.
Brandon O’Dell, with a light, pleasant singing voice, plays the gawky hero Seigfried, the dwarf villain Alberich and a cancan-dancing soothsayer in drag, among other roles. His chemistry with Marcie Millard, as Brünnhilde, in the Texas two-step dance number “Slide a Little Closer,� is surprisingly intimate.
Sandra Benton, authoritative in voice and given some choice lines addressed directly to the audience, holds the show together. As the long-suffering wife Fricka, she plays to stereotypes, both sassy and tormented. As hippy-dippy earth-mother Erda, she’s just serene enough to be believable. It doesn’t matter that Anthony P. Rodriguez (Aurora’s artistic director) can’t hold a tune: He plays all his characters with rude, crude bluster, shades of John Belushi. The energy level soars when he’s on stage.
Then there’s Aimee Diane Ariel, who has the least to sing yet is perversely charismatic as the love-starved Gutrune, a trashy, big-haired pip-squeak who runs around in cowboy boots and a wedding dress. More than the others, she owns her biggest role in “Barbecü� — and gives this alternate-universe “Ring� Cycle a oddly compelling reason for being.
THEATER REVIEW
“Das Barbecü�by Scott Warrender and Jim Luigs
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. Through Oct. 24. $18-$25. Aurora Theatre, 3087-B Main St., Duluth, GA, 770-476-7926, www.auroratheatre.com.
The verdict: Brünnhilde goes Honky Tonk.
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At the Fox, ‘Chicago’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Chicago.� Through Sunday.
To paraphrase Roxie Hart, the show on everybody’s lips this week is a certain Kander and Ebb musical with lots of brass, sass and … we can’t say it but it rhymes with “class.â€?
“Chicagoâ€? — thanks to director Rob Marshall’s Oscar-winning 2002 film — is a theatrical spectacle that needs no introduction. Choreographer Ann Reinking’s Bob Fosse-inspired 1996 revival is now the longest running show on Broadway, and on Tuesday the national tour of the ahead-of-its-time classic from 1975 arrived at the Fox Theatre.
Given that lyricist Fred Ebb died just last month, Broadway in Atlanta’s season opener seems like a particularly well-timed choice — an occasion to honor the man who, along with longtime composer-collaborator John Kander, penned the scores for “Chicago,â€? “Cabaretâ€? and more than a half-dozen other Broadway musicals.
How good was Ebb?
Well, he’s certainly the only pop writer we know who managed to rhyme “finagleâ€? and “bagel,â€? “Methusalehâ€? and “bambooz-a-lerâ€? — in the same song, no less. (See “Razzle Dazzle.â€?)
A jazz-age tale of “murder, greed, corruption, violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery,� “Chicago� ranks among the smartest musicals ever, and for the first four numbers of the Fox show, you see why.
Featuring William Ivey Long's all-black wardrobe of sheer tops and tight bottoms, Reinking and director Walter Bobbie's sexy take on the story is a flawless marriage of music and choreography. There's not a wasted note in their interpretations of the slinky “All That Jazz� and that wonder of one-liners “Cell Block Tango.� (“I fired two warning shots ... into his head.�)
But if the gin is cold and the piano's hot, the casting of this show is sometimes a tad lukewarm. As Velma Kelly, Brenda Braxton has a good voice and impeccable comedic timing, while Bianca MarroquÃn (as Roxie Hart) is an agile singer and dancer who captures the essence of her character's mix of vulnerability and vim.
And yet neither actress has the mankiller looks you equate with their femme fatale stage counterparts.
Fortunately, Gregory Harrison, famous for his work on TV's “Trapper John, M.D.,� cuts an elegant figure as sheister attorney Billy Flynn. Ray Bokhour lends that perfect hangdog sadness to the part of loser Amos Hart (“Mister Cellophane�). And Roz Ryan makes a mighty fierce Matron “Mama� Morton.
A fierce belter with a voice that can fill the Fox, Ryan’s Morton has a power ponytail, plenty of attitude and she knows how to spice up a pun. Example: “They say that life is tit for tat ... So I deserve a lot of tat.�
In sum, this “Chicago� — with its simple band-shell box of a set by “Color Purple� designer John Lee Beatty — deserves all the attention it will no doubt get. If you've never seen this sensational musical performed live and in the flesh, it would be a crime to miss it.
THE VERDICT: “It’s good, isn’t it? Grand, isn’t it?
8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. 2 p.m. Saturday. 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. $23-$57. Broadway in Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.foxtheatre.org.
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‘Maria Kizito’ at 7 Stages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Maria Kizito� Through Oct. 24.
John Adams commemorated Sept. 11, 2001, with “On the Transmigration of Souls,� a symphonic work that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Picasso lamented the remains of Spain’s Civil War with the monumental “Guernica.�
Now California playwright Erik Ehn takes on the 1994 Rwandan genocide with “Maria Kizito,� a drama that poses troubling questions about the combustible nature of religious fanaticism and war.
Opening 7 Stages' 25th season, the world premiere delves into the case of the Hutu nuns — Maria Kizito and Gertrude Mukangango — who assisted in the massacre of some 7,000 members of the rival Tutsi minority. Why did these Benedictine sisters betray the countrymen who sought sanctuary in their convent? How could Maria supply the gasoline used to burn hundreds alive?
Like any good artist responding to human catastrophe, Ehn doesn't claim to know all the answers. Instead, he uses the facts of the crime as a blueprint for a philosophical investigation. Directed by 7 Stages’ Del Hamilton, “Maria Kizito� melds dance, music, prayer and scenic design into a sweltering choreopoem of baffling, almost schizophrenic, extremes.
In its quarter-century in Atlanta, 7 Stages has become a national player by presenting new plays that push the boundaries of theater. Oftentimes, this makes for work that is perplexing and hard to sell. “Maria Kizito� is no exception.
One cannot overestimate the apocalyptic beauty of Ehn's language or the haunting stagecraft on display here. “My heart is a white tin, a tin of gasoline,� says Maria, opening a window onto a hallucinatory landscape of pure, elemental images.
But poetry doesn’t always travel tidily to the stage, and Hamilton and his designers don’t seem to know where to stop. Hence a text that by nature is fragmentary and mysterious becomes a cloying pile of ideas, symbols and lofty prop-metaphors.
The event that triggered the genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were slaughtered over 100 days, was the shooting down of President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994.
As the play begins, we fast-forward to 2001: An American nun (Laurie Strickland) has decided to travel to Belgium, where Maria (Crystal Dickinson) and Gertrude (Marvel Micheale) are on trial for their crimes.
While Dickinson gives an admirable account of Maria's hysteria, the magic of Ehn's esoteric material sometimes evaporates in Strickland's rushed delivery. And while the actors' various accents often capture the musicality of African speech, Johnell Easter’s Rekeraho sounds more like an urban American youth than a Rwandan militia leader. (There's an element of Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromme in the Rekeraho-Maria relationship, and you can't help but wonder how the play would be different if that were exploited.)
With so many cans of gasoline, flickering candles, shrill whistles and so on, the less embellished moments work best.
Bryan Mercer’s video projection, with its soaring-jet motif, works nicely to frame the historical timeline with Ehn’s storytelling device. Faye Allen’s set, which secludes most of the action inside the convent walls, is illumined by the shadow-glow of Jessica Coale’s evocative lighting.
Standing at the “Book of Genocide,â€? Yvonne Singh unleashes an a cappella blues lament that is heart-stoppingly sad. Though the show could probably do without the clichéd machete dance, Olori “Mama Yeyeâ€? Oriyomi’s African-inspired choreography is, for the most part, rich in detail and wonderfully authentic.
Ehn’s impulse to look at the moral issues of our time through the mysteries of faith is a noble one. But given the complexity of ideas swirling through it, a streamlined staging would probably serve the script better.
THE VERDICT: Story gets thrown out with the bath water.
8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Sept. 30-Oct. 24. Also 10 a.m. Thursday Oct. 7 and Oct. 14; 2 p.m. Saturday; Oct. 9; 5:30 p.m. Oct. 13 and 20. $20-$25. Through Oct. 24. 7 Stages, 1105 Euclid Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-523-7647, www.7stages.org.
Coming in Sunday’s Arts & Books: How “Maria Kizito� fits into the recent wave of fact-based plays.
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Usher comes home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Usher Raymond does not walk — he glides. He does not sweat — he glows.
He does not perform a concert — he puts on a show.
For his homecoming concert Saturday at Philips Arena, which was a near-constant marvel of athletic choreography, he did the splits, moonwalked, walked on his hands, breakdanced and executed a standing backflip.
The Atlanta R&B star also sang a big batch of songs that were, for the most part, noteworthy only because he was singing them. He didn’t always have the world’s best material, but he radiated so much charisma and sexuality that you barely even noticed.
This Michael Jackson acolyte is indeed a smooth criminal.
He opened with “Caught Up,� a strong song from his phenomenally successful 2004 “Confessions� album, and spent the early portion of the show with a group of dancers who, in their uniforms and white gloves, resembled hot-stepping doormen.
Usher himself changed clothes a number of times throughout the night, usually winding up in some version of a stylish suit or a muscle-revealing shirt. For “My Way,� however, he seemed to be wearing the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
(In case you were wondering, Usher’s famous abdominal muscles made their inevitable cameo about 45 minutes into the show when he tore off his shirt and unleashed his rippling physique.)
As for the music, it was up and down. Mostly up — some songs, for instance, showcased the lovely high-end of Usher’s voice. A long midsection of ballads, though, was just passable, and the show did for a moment sag.
Usher’s opening act, the rapper and producer Kanye West, has remarkable songs and so-so delivery. If Usher has a problem, it’s the reverse.
Still, this wasn’t a problem very often, in part because the show had a lot going on besides music. (The performance was being taped for a forthcoming DVD, and one imagines there’ll be no shortage of visuals when the thing comes out.)
At one point, Usher danced with two frisky women who were wearing what we might conservatively call “pajamas.� At another, he serenaded an audience member in such tantalizing fashion that the young lady seemed ready, at any moment, to melt into a puddle.
Usher saved his recent singles “Burn,� “Confessions, Pt. 2� and “Yeah!� — which this year were simultaneous Top 10 hits — for the end of the show. The performance ended with “Yeah!,� the rapper’s huge (and well-deserved) hit single featuring Atlanta hip-hop stars Lil Jon and Ludacris.
Jon didn’t show up on stage, but Luda did, taking the audience — which by this point did not seem capable of any further enthusiasm — into a state of delirium.
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Review: ASO plays Creston on trombone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and 8 p.m. Saturday. $10-$58. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org.
No one is asking that you take sides, of course. These aren’t the presidential debates, but the strifes and scandals of 20th-century music history, played out by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Last week, the ASO’s concert opened with music by Elliott Carter (born 1908), the most formidable and forbidding of the abstract modernist composers. In the 1960s and ’70s, Carter’s reputation and influence was so exalted that a generation of American romantics were forcibly demoted and sent to the land where irrelevant artists dwell. The melody-writers were antediluvian and counter-revolutionary — or so it seemed.
This week, the ASO helped revive a worthy composer from irrelevancy. Paul Creston (1906-1985) didn’t live to see a concert-hall revival of his music, but nowadays you can hear all his important works on CD and, increasingly, experience them live.
Creston’s music is “an embodiment of the affirmative, lyrical, melodic strain that dominated American music in the 1930s and for a time afterward,” wrote critic-conductor Will Crutchfield in an obituary. Creston rightly joins the company of Copland, Piston and Barber.
Creston's 1947 Fantasy for Trombone, one of his best-known works, served to introduce the ASO's principal trombonist, Colin Williams, who joined the orchestra three years ago and is now making his official solo debut.
In the jazzy Fantasy, Williams was heard, finally, to his advantage. In the treacherous Symphony Hall acoustic, the orchestral trombones' warm bass notes get absorbed by the stage walls and the bright high notes get polarized to a blinding glare, like sunlight off a swimming pool.
At stage front, we heard Williams au natural: his clean, “white” tone, with very little vibrato and exceptionally pure and lovely soft notes.
And for the ASO, with their committed playing this week and last, they showed that it's likely the romantic vs. modernist argument will seem quaint in another generation. This would follow the Wagner (progressive) vs. Brahms (retro) debates, which eventually subsided, leaving both men on the winning side. What survives isn't ideology, it's good art.
As an encore, Williams and the orchestra played ‘‘The Blue Bells of Scotland,” an amusing and sentimental work by Arthur Pryor, the trombonist in John Philip Sousa’s band a century ago. Where the Creston was unfailingly polite, Pryor asks the soloist to scale heights, blow elephant calls and raspberries, all accompanied by oom-pah-pahs from the orchestra. Williams breezed through the moto perpetuo variations with mostly machine-drilled aplomb.
On the podium was Alexander Mickelthwate, who had been the ASO’s assistant conductor for the past three years and now holds the same post with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His career is ascending in sure-footed steps. He’s one to watch.
Where Strauss’ tone poem “Don Juan,” which opened the evening, brimmed with energy and daring, Mickelthwate’s reading of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony was architecturally solid and, in the famous funeral march slow movement, emotionally substantial.
Throughout the revolutionary “Eroica,” however, one sensed that the young conductor tried in vain to excite volcanic passions from the musicians. They played well for him but seemed a bit standoffish. Part of the roadblock might have been that Mickelthwate didn’t differentiate moods across the four movements — all were utterly serious and sober. Missing was an arc of a story line, a dark tale with an optimistic ending.
You heard it in the volley of phrases at the start of the finale, which sounded like an engineer’s clean, etched lines rather than a playful game of cat-and-mouse. The interpretation might have profited from a more buoyant spirit. Still, there was chemistry on stage. They have two more concerts, tonight and Saturday, to reach for great music making.
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