Archives for 2009

Exciting news for the Bay Area theatre community: Z Space, one of the area’s most innovative developers and presenters of new plays, is moving to the 286-seat Theatre Artaud, a venerable old performance building in the Mission/Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. The signing of the 10-year lease on the building represents the first time that Z Space has had its own space.

Theatre Artaud hasn’t been a permanent home for a company in quite a few years. Built as an American Can Company tooling factory in 1925, the shop provided jobs for San Francisco Mission District families through the 1960s. In 1971, a group of artists moved into the abandoned industrial building, naming it Project Artaud, for French avant-garde theater artist, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), who believed art should happen in non-traditional spaces. Today, there are more than 70 individual artists’ live/work studios at Project Artaud, in addition to arts related nonprofits, small artist businesses, studio theaters and galleries.

With this move to a new base, Z Space plans to expand its offerings to San Francisco performing artists and audiences, and curate a multidisciplinary presenting program featuring theatre, dance, visual, and multimedia arts.

Z Space Executive Artistic Director Lisa Steindler will continue to oversee all of the organization’s operations, and will also continue to develop and produce new work. Z Space Managing Director David Szlasa will take on a more active programming role, and will work closely with the artistic community to solicit proposals and curate the space.

On a personal note, I’m thrilled about the news. Theatre Artaud is one of my favorite places to see work. It has a spacious, airy feel to it, and is the sort of space that can easily be transformed to fit the needs of a wide variety of artworks including dance, concerts, straight plays, art exhibitions and multimedia work. Artaus is also very easily accessible public transport-wise and is within striking distance of a bunch of great restaurants, bars and cafes. I can’t think of a better home for Z Space and I wish the company well as it embarks upon this new chapter of its life.

Sometimes an artist’s relationship with his or her company or group can last a lifetime or decades. Sometimes it barely lasts a season. I’ve been curious lately about what it is about a long-term, largely positive collaborative situation that makes an artist decide to move on when there’s no obvious reason at stake — such as a lack of funds or a falling out with a collaborator — driving the decision.

I’ve been in many situations in my life as a musician where a longstanding collaboration with an orchestra, wind ensemble or choral group has gone from fueling me to feeling like a millstone around my neck. What’s interesting is that the change happens so insidiously that it’s often hard to tell what’s happened to alter my feelings about being involved with the group and make me want to quit.

I can look back once a collaboration has turned sour and still remember the excitement I felt over several years about going to rehearsals, the satisfaction of playing, singing, dancing or acting well, the challenges of getting a tricky passage perfect, the fun of meeting other artists involved with the group and becoming friends with them, and the high of performing in their company.

And yet, like a relationship that’s run its course, I’ve sometimes arrived at a point where I absolutely have to move on. I wouldn’t necessarily go as far as to call this a product of “artistic differences” at least in the traditional sense of the term. Then again, I suppose what happens is that I get bored with the way that things are being done and start to feel antsy for a different approach, which in a sense is another way of saying that I have developed artistic differences with the group.

This has happened to me twice since I moved to the Bay Area nearly 10 years ago. The first was with an orchestra, which I loved playing with for years until I started to get fed up with the music director’s slipshod approach to conducting and the fact that we played Beethoven’s 9th Symphony year after year after year and still never seemed to improve!

The second instance happened more recently, this time with a vocal ensemble. Singing with this group has been such an important part of my life for the last few years, but lately I’ve become very unsatisfied with our work. The director misses rehearsals to go on vacation and pays very little attention to detail — including major issues like how to pronounce words. He’s gotten very lazy. The repertoire is wonderful but we are constantly under-rehearsed. And projects sometimes don’t reach fruition — a recording we put together over several very late nights a couple of years ago still hasn’t been edited or turned into a CD. I managed to drag myself through the last set with little enthusiasm despite loving the music we performed. And now I know it’s time to call it quits and find some other musical outlet(s) that will hopefully better suit my temperament.

What’s all this about? Are my standards getting higher? Am I developing more rigor and proficiency as an artist? Or am I just turning into a cantankerous, old fart? Maybe it’s just a question of boredom. Falling in love and falling out of love is something we all experience. But we generally think of it in terms of romantic relationships rather than relationships we develop artistically over the course of our lives.

For some reason over the past two days, people have been randomly shoving CDs in my hands. Two of the recordings I received by San Francisco artists are wonderful which is why I need to tell you all about them.

The first is a self-titled album by Or, The Whale, a local folk rock band. A mixture of bittersweet ballads and careening torch-songs are melodic and catchy. The band uses a lot of banjo and mellow harmonies. Great stuff for a sunny afternoon drive through the countryside. Or, The Whale is about to embark on a west coast tour with stops in Oregon and Washington

The second is Obey Your Signal, the latest CD by Loop!Station, an electronic music-inspired voice and cello duo comprising of San Francisco musicians Robin Coomer (voice) and Sam Bass (cello). Many musicians are using loop pedals in ingenious ways these days to create polyphonic, multi-layered effects with barebones resources. Coomer and Bass approach their work in an eclectic way. Sometimes the sound is hard and punky with a Siouxie Sioux edge. Other times, it sounds like it’s been inspired by Bach. The duo is playing at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco this Sunday. Absolutely not to be missed.

I ended up having to retract my long-held-to aversion to Jack Nicholson last night following a screening of Easy Rider at San Francisco’s Red Vic movie theatre. I have seen the film several times before. But it had been years since my last viewing. One of the best things about the film is Jack Nicholson’s performance as a drunk and muddled momma’s boy of a small-town lawyer. He brings such vitality and sweetness to the role. His death in the middle is the cruelest moment of the entire film.

I think, perhaps, that there was something inspired about Nicholson in his early years. Then he became typecast as a weirdo and his performances became increasingly one-dimensional. I couldn’t get more than 20 minutes through About Schmidt. Jackson’s approach to acting has become a caricature of itself of late. It was wonderful, through reacquainting myself with Easy Rider, to remind myself that he was once a great actor.

When it comes to developing close ties with audiences, few bands in the history of rock music have garnered a fan base as strident as the Grateful Dead.

“The standard musician-audience relationship doesn’t exist in a Grateful Dead show,” says longtime Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, who will be speaking at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music this weekend after a performance of Dead Symphony no. 6, Lee Johnson’s composition based on 10 of the Dead’s songs.

Members of the band were very open to all sorts of musical styles and educated their fans to listen to long, spiraling improvisations that merged genres as diverse as rock, folk, blues, reggae, gospel, bluegrass, psychedelic rock, jazz and country. But serious fans — the Deadheads — have not always been so flexible. In fact, when it comes to other musicians interpreting the Dead’s music or even appearing in concert alongside the band, the Deadheads can sometimes be puritanical.

David Gans, host of the nationally syndicated Grateful Dead Hour radio show who attended a performance of Dead Symphony no. 6 by the California Symphony earlier this year, said: “The audience was very nicely divided between Deadheads and regular California Symphony subscribers. The music director’s intention was to bring these two audiences together. The Dead themselves and their audience members were known for being open-minded and trying new things. however, there is a certain kind of dogma in the Dead world – the fans are fiercely protective of the music as they understand it. They are hostile to irrelevant interpretations. Hence, the people who didn’t want to hear about Johnson’s symphony didn’t show up to the concert.”

Read my LA Times story about the symphony here. This blog post can also be found on the LA Times’ website, here.

August usually presents a bit of a lull in the local performing arts scene as companies ramp up for their Fall seasons. But the ramp up this year is far from quiet. Here are a few upcoming theatre happenings that I’m excited about:

1. Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at California Shakespeare Theater (Aug 15-Sep 6). Marsha Mason was scheduled to play Winnie in Jonathan Moscone’s production. She suddenly dropped out halfway through rehearsals a couple of weeks ago citing “personal reasons.” No matter. Patty Gallagher will doubtless do the role proud, and so will Joan Mankin, who’ll be stepping in at select performances.

2. San Francisco Fringe Festival (Sep 9 – 20). Always a treat. You never know what you’re going to get.

3. Green Day’s American Idiot at Berkeley Repertory Theater (Sep 4 – Oct 11). A highly anticipated rock musical based on the band’s best-selling 2004 album. The box office over on Addison Street probably resembles a mosh pit at this point.

4. Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter at the American Conservatory Theater (Sep 16 – Oct 4). The vivacious Kneehigh Theatre Company from England brings its unusual retelling of Coward’s classic to San Francisco. Can’t wait.

5. Peter Sinn Nachtrieb’s Boom at Marin Theatre Company (Nov 17 – Dec 6). OK, so I’m cheating. This production of an apocalyptic play about human reproduction at the end of time by a brilliant local playwright isn’t happening until just before Christmas. But it’s worth sticking in the date book anyway.

Sometimes you just have to say “it is what it is.”

This is what I told myself as I exited Club Fugazi in North Beach on Saturday night after having sat through Beach Blanket Babylon for the first time. The San Francisco theatrical institution — a sort of kitsch-topical cabaret involving covers of famous rock tunes, cartoonish impersonations of famous people and huge, splendiferously-adorned hats, has been going for 35 years. There have been runs in London and Las Vegas. The San Francisco iteration of the show plays to packed houses twice a night most nights a week.

I have to admit that I’m baffled by the longevity and popularity of the show. I have nothing but admiration for the performers, who put so much energy and commitment into telling hackneyed jokes on such well-worn topics as the Clinton-Lewinsky affair and spoofing Elvis. They’re a talented and highly professional lot. And the costumes and hats are certainly eye-catching. This is especially the case in the grand finale, when the show’s diva, Val Diamond, comes on wearing a hat festooned with San Francisco landmarks (including a working cable car which actually chuffs its way past a model of the famous Painted Lady Victorian houses) that takes up almost half the length of the stage.

But, my God, the show is full of mind-numbing, lowest-common-denominator stuff. I had some fun and it’s not as if the show’s founder, Steve Silver, set out to create high art. He simply wanted to entertain people. But not all entertainments are that entertaining. I was so ready to leave after about 45 minutes.

By the rivers of Beach Blanket Babylon, there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered how short life is to be wasting one’s Saturday evening watching people dressed like lampshades imitating Barbra Streisand, John McCain and Oprah.

It must be an interesting experience for the dancers in the Joe Goode Company to go from performing in the narrow, dark confines of the Ann Hamilton Tower in Sonoma (where I last experienced a site specific work, fall within, by the company earlier this summer) to the airy, open spaces of The Historic Mint building in San Francisco. Everything in fall within was tightly wound and internalized. There wasn’t much room for the dancers to move, so kinetic economy was the mainstay of the piece.

Economy plays a major role in this new work. Not only does the work take place in the beautiful, faded edifice that was once the city’s mint. But the work’s themes are very much tied into ideas of money — what it’s like to have too much or too little; what’s really essential in life, versus what’s a luxury; what the current economic climate is doing to our minds and hearts versus what similar circumstances did to our forebears in the Great Depression.

One of the great strengths of Traveling Light is the contrast between the use of space and light. Audiences move from space to space throughout the hour-long work. Each room we visit is large and airy. One space in which the dancers perform is a courtyard open to the heavens. On one occasion, a company member performs a song and standing way up high in a balcony. We have to crane our necks to see her. But the no-hold-barred freedom of the venue’s layout is sharply balanced against designer Jack Carpenter’s use of light. An enormous follow-spot practically crushes a dancer as she moves under it in one scene, making her look like an insect under a microscope. Long shafts of yellow light carve out and confine space within the otherwise vast-seeming courtyard. Dancers twist and stand in the shadows and corners of a space as much as they spread out into the light.

The power of Goode’s piece lies in this contrast. The push and pull of economics, the lightness of feeling unfettered by possessions versus the necessity of having a roof over one’s head, the constant balancing act of life — the choreographer deftly weaves all of these ideas into his latest work.

Traveling Light plays at the Mint until August 9. And on another note, the Historic Mint is currently being renovated for eventual use by the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society. Follow this link to find out more about The Mint Project.

Alec Duffy has taken a lot of flack for his unconventional approach to sharing a piece of music. Duffy (pictured), a Brooklyn-based theatre director, won the 2007 Sufjan Stevens Christmas song-swap contest — a song-writing competition wherein Stevens pledged to send a copy of an unreleased single to the composer who sent in the best original song. Around 600 people entered the competition. Duffy’s song, “It’s Christmas Every Day,” won.

Instead of uploading Stevens’ song, “The Lonely Man of Winter,” on the Web, Duffy, together with his friend and fellow composer Dave Malloy, decided to organize special private listening sessions for small groups of people interested in hearing Stevens’ song. This decision created an enormous backlash in fan circles, who felt that Duffy and Malloy should have taken a more democratic approach to sharing the song by making it available instantly on the Internet so anyone could hear it whenever they liked. The media got involved: several articles on the subject have appeared in the last few months in such publications as The Village Voice, New York Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. And the blogosphere has been bouncing with commentary.

Dave happens to be a friend of mine. So last night, I had the privilege of being part of the latest “Lonely Man of Winter” presentation and listening session — the second such session to take place in the Bay Area. It was one of the quirkiest cultural evenings I’ve experienced in a long time and I fully support Duffy and Malloy’s intimate theatrical approach to sharing the song. Although it’s not as easy to hear “The Lonely Man” this way as it is to download it off the Internet, the setup makes he experience far more special. And it’s not as if the curators of the event are being exclusive about who gets to hear the tune. Anyone can get in touch with them and organize a listening session. Obviously not everyone can fly to New York to do this. But the fact that sessions are now taking place elsewhere suggests that there may be more possibilities to hear the song outside New York as time goes on.

I’m not a huge Sufjan Stevens fan. I went along out of curiosity more than than anything else. Dave and I met for dinner at a Burmese restaurant in the Richmond district (the excellent Burma Superstar) and the walked up the hill to the well-endowed Pacific Heights home of a complete stranger.

Elizabeth, a Sufjan fan of several years, had read about Alec’s song in the Wall Street Journal and had asked him to get in touch if ever a listening session were planned for the Bay Area. She said she would be happy to host. Another local groupie, Daniel, had sent a similar inquiry. With Dave in town to act as host and MC, and both Elizabeth and Daniel instructed to invite one friend apiece, the group (which totaled 7 owing to the unexpected presence of Elizabeth’s spouse) was ready to go.

As soon as we arrived, Dave and I set about making chocolate chip cookies (a tradition of these listening sessions, I’m told.) Daniel made oolong tea in a tiny teapot. Sufjan Stevens music played on the speakers as we busied ourselves. In the course of conversation, we found out that no less then three of us play the oboe. I hear Stevens likes to score oboe parts in his songs, but the number was still exceptionally high by any standard.

Then, when everything was ready, Dave set up his laptop and we connected via skype to Alec in New York. He was sitting in his bath robe, ready for bed, but seemed happy to make our acquaintance. He told the story of the competition and the controversy. He read aloud the letter which Stevens had sent him when he won the competition. We asked some questions. Eventually, Alec signed off and the music part of the evening began.

First, Dave played a recording of the contest-winning song that Alec wrote. It was a lovely, simple thing, with Alec’s voice sailing plaintively over the top of spacious block chords. I was charmed. Then more laptops were brought out. We all put headphones on, and on Dave’s command, pressed play to hear the Stevens’ song. I liked it quite a lot. Sad Christmas songs are more my kind of thing than happy ones. This one was pretty melancholy. Sleigh bells entered at one point to give the thing a slightly festive feel. In general, it left an odd mixture of warmth and chill inside me. We listened twice.

I looked around the room as I listened, hoping to catch my fellow audience members’ eyes. But no one looked up. Everyone kept their gaze focused on the floor or middle distance. It was really hard to read the expressions on their faces. Daniel looked the most blissed out. But other than that, people gave nothing away.

A few minutes after the song finished playing for the second time, we all packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes and ambled out into the foggy night.

I hadn’t heard of the Italian Renaissance composer Adriano Banchieri (1567 — 1634) until the directors of the early music ensemble with which I perform decided to mount one of the Italian Renaissance composer’s pioneering madrigal comedies, Festino nella sera del giovedì grasso (“Entertainment for the eve of Carnival Thursday”) this summer. A madrigal comedy is a collection of madrigals strung together to present a comical story.

And the Festino is pretty nuts. In one of the movements, we all make different animal noises. I’m not talking about the flittering, rhythmic birdsong of a Janequin chanson that makes the listener think of owls and sparrows and cuckoos, but could just as easily not be about birds at all. I’m talking full-on dogs barking and cats meowing right in the middle of a piece of music.

Local music scholar Jospeh Sargent wrote a sweet little preview article about our concerts for San Francisco Classical Voice. Click here to read it. And click here to buy tickets to come and see/hear San Francisco Renaissance Voices perform Banchieri’s carnivalesque Festino on August 8 (at San Francisco’s 7th Avenue Performances in the Inner Sunset) and August 9 (at Alameda Presbyterian Church).

The Santa Fe Opera Festival does things so right. In one respect though, my few days of opera-going at the Festival last week were marred by the sudden and unexpected intrusion of extreme wrongness in the shape of misguided scenery.

In Chas Rader-Shieber’s production of Don Giovanni starring Lucas Meachem, blood red paint boldly turned what would otherwise have been idyllic, old-fashioned provincial village scenery into something artfully demonic. But the effect was ruined in the final scene when scenic designer David Zinn decided to introduce enormous cupboards which protruded from the stage like strange Martian growths. The cupboards opened up to reveal an eerie white light like something out of a science fiction film. When Don Giovanni made his final exit by jumping into one of the cupboards I couldn’t help but laugh. Not sure this was the desired effect.

Chantal Thomas’ powerful set design for Laurent Pelly’s production of La Traviata starring Natalie Dessay followed a similar pattern. I was completely sucked in by the set overall — a series of granite coffin-like boxes layered on top of each other which reminded me strongly of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Death ingeniously hung over the production throughout the party scenes thanks to Thomas’ scenic theme. But in Act 2 Scene 1 set in Violetta’s country house, Thomas introduced one of the ugliest bits of scenery I’ve ever seen — a lumpish, fake grassy green knoll. Not only was the snot-like appendage an eyesore, but it also made no sense in terms of the plot. Violetta and Alfredo are supposed to be living beyond their means at this point in the story. But the pastoral schtick spoke of “the simple life”, especially as played out by Dessay and Saimir Pirgu as Alfredo, dressed as they were in unadorned, frumpy country garb.

Then there was the Hildegard Bechtler’s set design for Jonathan Kent’s production of Paul Moravec and Terry Teachout’s new opera, The Letter, which left much to be desired all the way through. Bechtler recreated the 1930s colonial look through lots of bland, off-white interiors, which trundled endlessly on and off-stage hampering the pace of the action. Flapping muslin curtains to one side of the proscenium created a fine sense of balmy nights in the jungle as well as a supernatural feel to the piece, which enhanced Teachout and Moravec’s ghostly reading of Somerset Maugham’s more prosaic original short story and stage play. But the effect was over-used. It also unhelpfully obscured the big opening moment where Patricia Racette as Leslie Crosbie shoots and kills her lover.

Maybe the services of a production dramaturg would be helpful to root out these scenic misfires…