Archives for February 2004

I reviewed the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Regina Taylor’s Drowning Crow and Primary Stages’ production of Terrence McNally’s The Stendhal Syndrome in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.

The first was horrible:

According to the program, “Drowning Crow” was “inspired by” Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” Nothing wrong with that, except that what Ms. Taylor really means is “adapted from,” which is another thing altogether. To be sure, the characters are all black and the action has been relocated from Czarist Russia to the Gullah Islands of South Carolina, but otherwise “Drowning Crow” is a near-direct transposition of “The Seagull,” partly recast in slam-poetry English but with large chunks of dialogue left untouched. “I liberally sampled from Chekhov,” Ms. Taylor said in a New York Times interview. “Other times, I just riffed.” (I know a better word.) The result–not to put too fine a point on it–is bizarre, with the characters alternating between jive and translatorese to no obvious purpose or good effect….

The second was a winner:

Mr. McNally has neatly bookended his chief theatrical preoccupations in the titles of the two one-act plays that make up this double bill, “Full Frontal Nudity” and “Prelude and Liebestod.” The second and more substantial half is about a bisexual conductor suspiciously reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein (Richard Thomas), his unfaithful but loving wife (Isabella Rossellini), the sourpuss concertmaster of his orchestra (Michael Countryman), a male groupie (Yul V

Hilton Kramer finally made it to PaceWildenstein’s Rothko: A Painter’s Progress, the Year 1949:

Anyone who’s made a close study of Bonnard’s paintings will have no trouble finding traces of the French master’s aesthetic in the pictures that have now been brought together in the Painter’s Progress exhibition, which focuses on the year 1949. This was the year in which Rothko perfected his own mastery of the paintings he called “dramas,” which most of us regard as some of the most beautiful abstract paintings in the entire modern canon.

It has been admitted that Bonnard was an unlikely figure to influence any painter associated with the Abstract Expressionists, who prided themselves on their independence from the School of Paris. And it goes without saying that Rothko never acknowledged the debt. Yet, as D.H. Lawrence once said, “Trust the tale, not the teller of the tale,” meaning, of course, that a writer’s or artist’s work must be judged on the basis of what it is, not on the basis of descriptive claims. Unless prompted by Rothko, I doubt that any visitor to Rothko: A Painter’s Progress would regard this beautifully installed exhibition as a show of “dramas.” But thanks to what we now know about Rothko’s interest in Bonnard, this exhibition turns out to be an even richer experience than it might otherwise have been….

Read the whole thing here. The show is only up through Feb. 23, so if you didn’t go when I wrote about it last month (and if not, why not?), don’t delay.

It rained.

The hour is an enormous eye.

Inside it, we come and go like reflections.

The river of music.

Enters my blood.

If I say body, it answers wind.

If I say earth, it answers where.

The world, a double blossom, opens:

Sadness of having come.

Joy of being here.

I walk lost in my own center.

Octavio Paz, “Concert in the Garden”

Not only did I get up at 4:30 yesterday morning, but I didn’t go to sleep prior to that time (hence it would be closer to the truth to say that I got out of bed at 4:30 yesterday morning). There followed hours and hours and hours of travel, on the ground and in the sky, at the end of which I somehow managed to get to Maria Schneider’s Hunter College concert on time. It was worth it, absolutely.

I’m too tired to go on at length, but the centerpiece of the evening was the world premiere of “Concert in the Garden,” a new piece Schneider wrote for her big band plus Gary Versace on accordion and Luciana Souza on vocals. The title comes from a poem by Octavio Paz (see above), and the music is a Messiaen-like tapestry of idealized bird calls–a full-fledged piece of jazz impressionism, unusually rich and involving.

After the intermission, the band played a revised version of Bulerias, Soleas y Rumbas, premiered last January at Lincoln Center, an occasion about which I wrote as follows in my Washington Post column:

Jazz at Lincoln Center has never done anything more important than commissioning this piece. It’s no secret that Schneider is the foremost big-band composer of her generation, but this powerful large-scale work, in which she blends jazz and flamenco with the skill of an alchemist, is so good that I hesitate to limit its significance by calling it big-band music, or even jazz. It is as tightly woven and emotionally compelling as a symphony, and I think it ought to be seriously considered for next year’s Pulitzer Prize in music. For that matter, I’m damned if I know why Schneider hasn’t received a MacArthur Fellowship. I can’t think of anyone in jazz–or any other art form–who deserves it more.

This time around, Schneider added a flamenco dancer, La Conja, to thrilling effect, and the piece itself was even more impressive on second hearing. If you missed it, the Maria Schneider Orchestra will be going into the studio in a couple of weeks to record a new album, on which Bulerias, Soleas y Rumbas will figure prominently.

Warning: Schneider is no longer selling her CDs in stores, so to buy this one, you’ll need to go to her Web site and sign up. Do it now–and while you’re at it, mark your calendar for March 18, April 29, and June 17, the three remaining performances in the Maria Schneider Orchestra’s Hunter College concert series. I really, truly flew all the way back from Smalltown, U.S.A., just to hear this one, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Next time, I’ll make sure I don’t have to.

“His taste in opera was uncomplicated and robust; he had no time for people who talked opera all day but seemed to find it shameful to accept a simple pleasure simply. Those tedious affairs in East Anglia, that strangulated lieder-singer pretending to be a tenor! Why, in Italy they wouldn’t have let him on the stage. And as for Mozart in Sussex, you could have all of Sussex and much of Mozart. Charles Russell liked good red meat and the closer the bone the better. Der Rosenkavalier–now that was something. He’d been wallowing (his own word) the night before. Bloody marvellous. The Marschallin had lost her young lover and was taking it gracefully as the woman of the world she was, so the three of them sood there and sang it out, no tiresome action, just a glorious noise. Hab’ mir’s gelobt, the knife in the heart as the warm soprano went up and up, they you thought that the orchestra was coda-ing out, and Jesus it wasn’t, the woman had five notes left. You couldn’t take them but you had to, and back you came for more agony, time and time again. Now that was opera, the real thing. Unbearable.”

William Haggard, A Cool Day for Killing

I’m afraid that, like Terry, I’m going to be away from computers on Thursday. My parents are in town for a short visit, I’m taking the day off from work, and we’ll be crisscrossing the city all day. Back Friday with answers to the remaining two of Terry’s five questions, and more. And this weekend I’ll answer my e-mail!

Here’s some recommended reading for the interim:

Maud’s musings on writers and childhood, complete with links to her own off-blog writing.

Peter Campbell in the LRB on late Vuillard.

Jim Treacher hails the “puppet episode” of Angel, comparing it to the tremendous Buffy musical and making me wish I’d never stopped watching the show. Perhaps one of my Angel-watching correspondents will be moved to file a report.

Joan Acocella–surprise!–likes Robert Altman’s ballet film The Company. Robert Gottlieb, another dance critic assigned to review the film, pretty much hated it.

That’s all from thawing Chicago for now.

Color your own Cezanne apples. Or Madame X. Or find your own favorite here.

What famous painting would I wish out of existence? I’m not sure I hate any single painting quite that much. That being the case, I incline toward banishing art whose mind-numbing ubiquity and unharnessed reproduction as stupid merchandise, more than any of its intrinsic qualities, are responsible for making it the visual equivalent of fingernails scraping a chalkboard.