B-r-e-c-h-t, find out what it means to me

The Fourth Wall seems to have left the tristate area.  Every show I've been to in the past few weeks has had some kind of performer/audience interaction.

The streak started on July 25th when I went to see my friend Dan Tepfer (interviewed here) play with Lee Konitz at 11pm at Birdland in midtown. About halfway through the set, Lee opened his mouth (without a saxophone in it) and addressed the audience for the first time. "Any questions?"  he asked. Someone in the front row said that he "enjoyed the counterpoint in that last piece." Um, thanks dude? I got the impression, though, that if someone had asked a question - any question - Lee would have actually answered it.  He wasn't playing during a piece a few minutes later, so he just went and sat down in the audience and watched, which totally cracked me up.

Three days later, my sister took me to the Green Day concert at Madison Square Garden. She gave me the tickets for my most recent birthday which, along with the spare laptop battery my dad got me, confirmed that my tastes mirror those of a 15-year-old boy.  More wall crumbling: the lead singer, Billy Joe Armstrong, jumped into audience right and practically sung an entire song there, faux-exorcised a 12-year-old boy on stage, and pulled three kids from the audience to "start a band". The new bassist was so impressive that the actual bassist gave him a bass to take home. That in addition to the usual "hey-o" calls and responses and a whole lot of "New York is the best effing city in the whole world" shout-outs made for a very interactive evening.

(Here's someone in the audience with an "I Play Guitar" sign, who obviously had heard about the Build-a-Band from the concert the night before:)

(Here's the new band-in-training - cute overload:)

(And here's the "exorcism" - cute again but a little creepy:)

Last Friday, I got soaking wet at All Points West in Jersey City, where - again in addition to all the bands addressing the audience at one point or another - Matt Berninger of The National took his plugged-in mic into the audience and sang "Mr. November" in the pouring rain, completely surrounded by fans. 

I (finally) saw Billy Elliot on Sunday, during which the Michael character, after singing the poor man's version of "Dress Has Always Been My Strongest Suit" (one wonders why Sir Elton didn't just plop that song in rather than trying to recreate it), plays off the audience, encouraging us to clap more as he shakes and shimmies. Multiple characters exited and entered from the audience.

One more! On Monday night, I went to the Béla Fleck/Toumani Diabeté concert and film screening in Central Park.  Béla told the audience that he flew into the city on Sunday night, and as the plane was landing he started chatting with the woman sitting next to him. "What are you doing in New York?" she asked. "I'm playing a concert in Central Park," he answered. "Oh!" she said. "Are you playing with Béla Fleck? We're going to that concert!" After the laughter subsided, the woman, who was sitting on a picnic blanket house (lawn) left, stood up and waived at Béla on stage.

Last night, I did my laundry and watched Law and Order: SVU. All walls remained intact.

This series of performances led me to think about the times when the fourth wall was broken during classical music concerts. I wrote about one extremely positive experience - Gloria Cheng at (le) poisson rouge - here. Mostly, though, the musicians don't interact with the audience except maybe during encores, and when they do, it usually annoys me to no end.

One example I always come back to: David Robertson conducting the New York Philharmonic in December 2006. I was in it for the Kaija Saariaho premiere, but there was Debussy on the program as well. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe people clapped after the first movement of La Mer, at which point - and this is quite clear in my memory - Robertson, with his hands still up, turned around and said to us, "I always want to clap after that movement too."

!!!

It really bothered me, but in retrospect, I don't quite know why. Was it his patronizing tone? Smug smile? (He did look smug.) Interuption of the music more than any missplaced applauding could have? Calling attention to the audience misbehaving? Or was it, I wonder, that I just wasn't accustomed to conductors addressing the audience in the middle of pieces. Yes, it LuPone-style ruins the moment a bit, but bands stop and start over all the time and no one really minds; singer-songwriters talk over instrumental sections and the performances are usually more entertaining for it.  Was it simply his way of connecting with the audience? As far as I know, it could have been successful. Whereas I go around saying, "This one time David Robertson ruined a NY Phil concert", others may very well have gone home and said, "The concert was so great; the conductor said he wants to clap between movements, too!"