Archives for 2010

Since SF Playhouse allowed a few audience members sitting in a specially-designated area of the theatre to send Twitter messages during last Tuesday evening’s performance of The Fantasticks, an interesting debate about whether this activity should be allowed in the theatre or not has been going on on the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s Facebook page.

It seems that opinions are wildly divided on the subject. The detractors say that people should have their attention on the stage at all times and tweeting can wait till the intermission or after the show. The people who think tweeting should be allowed point out that it has the potential to engage and bring in new audiences. Bill English, SF Playhouse’s artistic director, said in the message thread on the Berkeley Rep Facebook page that the activity is no different from critics scribbling in notebooks all the way through shows, which I think is a very valid point.

I suppose I’m on the fence about the question. On the one hand, I find lit phone screens to be a distraction in a darkened theatre (the same goes for critics who use pen lights while writing in the dark.) And I do think that if a play is truly engaging, sending out tweets should be the last thing on an enraptured audience member’s mind. On the other hand, I don’t think it does any great harm, especially if the tweeters sit at the back of the theatre where their screens and tapping are likely to distract the minimum number of theatre-goers. And if it helps to engage people in new ways, then why not?

I love those spiraling evenings where you hop from one amazing arts event to another. Last night was epic. A brief summary:

1. Bach & Friends: San Francisco Classical Voice hosted the west coast premiere of a new documentary about the great Baroque composer produced and directed by Michael Lawrence at the Sundance Kabuki cinema. The often compelling film features interviews with such leading lights from various musical genres as Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Bela Fleck, Bobby McFerrin, Chris Theil and the Emerson Quartet. The film is dotted with lively scenes and beautiful performances. Among my favorites are an hilarious spiel by Peter Schickele about his fictitious musical creation, P D Q Bach, a scene in which an improviser has his neurological patterns monitored by improvising Bach-like keyboard music in a brain scanner and a section in which a 12-year-old pianist talks about the experience of playing Bach in an elderly people’s home. But the film is about half an hour too long and the cinematography, which revolves around endless close-ups, gets predictable after a while and looks ugly. (Do we really need to have our attention forced on the pores in Simone Dinnerstein’s skin and Joshua Bell’s double chin for 10 minutes? It distracts us from the music.) Another heresy is that the documentary includes exhaustive performances of Bach’s works for keyboard, string quartet and solo strings, but doesn’t even mention any of his choral music. No St Matthew Passion. Not a single cantata. This is a massive oversight. Nevertheless, Bach & Friends provides a touching, refreshing and generally engaging view on the impact of the great composer on our lives today.

2. Silent Film Festival pre-opening reception: Turned up for the tail-end of a reception for this weekend’s Silent Film Festival (at which I will be moderating a panel on silent film composition and performance this Saturday.) The highlight was watching the composer Matti Bye and three members of his ensemble squish together on the bench of a Steinway Grand and improvise an eerie silent film-like score.

3. Bardot A Go Go at The Rickshaw Stop: Spent the rest of the night shaking some tush at the Rickshaw‘s Bastille Day homage to 1960s French pop. The Rickshaw is one of my favorite clubs in town because of the diversity and inventiveness of its programming which ranges from bhangra dance classes to a cappella choral concerts. The crowd was dressed appropriately in svelt little mini-dresses and Jean Paul Belmondo skinny tie cool. The music and video projections were suitably gamine — lots of film footage of France Galle bopping about in her symmetrical blonde bob. My only criticism of the event was the infiltration of tracks with English lyrics on the playlist. On Bastille Day, only French language tracks should be allowed. Vive la France.

This morning, I was interviewed by a couple of marketing consultants as part of a project aimed at helping them pull together a branding and messaging strategy for a local performing arts organization.

The interview, which lasted about 40 minutes, brought up a couple of interesting areas of inquiry, namely:

1. How important is it for a performing arts organization to have a strong identity? On the face of it, you’d think this absolutely key — especially in terms of branding. That in all my years of experiencing arts events under the auspices of this arts organization I couldn’t really describe what kind of work the organization does or articulate anything of its mission is somewhat troubling I suppose. On the other hand, maybe there are cases where having a diffuse identity works. It’s one of the organization’s strengths that it can swing between mounting full-scale productions with affiliated companies, hosting arts salons and visual art exhibitions and incubating new works for the stage. But still, a lack of clear identity does make it hard to think of the company in a strong way.

2. What is innovation in theatre? In the Bay Area, we tend to think of ourselves as great innovators. It’s the Silicon Valley mentality. But throwing a screen up on stage with some artsy video or including an electronic soundtrack created by the performers as they move about the stage via specially-positioned electrodes is not innovative in and of itself. Innovative theatre is theatre that connects with the audience in a transformative way. Bottom line: it should make us understand something new about ourselves and the world we live in.

I’m preparing to present a panel on composing and performing music for silent films for the San Francisco Silent Film Festival this Saturday. The program, which is called “Variations on a Theme” and starts at 12 noon at the Castro Theatre, features some of the world’s leading silent film music people and ensembles including pianists Donald Sosin and Stephen Horne, organist Dennis James, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, the Alloy Orchestra, and musician and composer Matti Bye.

I’ve been having a fun time delving into the subject. Who knew that the music of famous operas greatly influenced the early film music repertoire or that many people who were drafted to play the piano to accompany silent movies back in the early 20th century could barely sightread and were in general pretty unremarkable amateur players?

Here are two books on the music of silent films which should be required reading for anybody interested in finding out more about this area of musicianship: Silent Film Sound by Rick Altman (Chapters 13-17 cover music specifically) and Musical Accompaniment of Moving Pictures: A Practical Manual for Pianists and Organists by Edith Lang and George West. The book is available free online here.

No summer in the Bay Area is complete without a trip  to Orinda to experience a production and picnic at the California Shakespeare Theatre‘s Bruns auditorium. There’s something so magical about watching the sun disappear behind the golden hills while watching what are usually high-quality productions of classic plays (and the occasional new take on an old standard.)

It’s true that sometimes the weather and productions fall short of ideal. I’ve yawned and/or shivered my way through several plays at Cal Shakes in the past. But the trip I made to see the company’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession on Saturday night delivered the Cal Shakes experience at its best.

All that was regrettable was the loss of the ruggedness of the picnic grounds, which have lately been souped up to look all shiny. Although the gleaming new landscaping, toilets and snack pavilion give the Bruns space a more upscale look, they sort of undercut the rustic feeling of the space. Concrete and steel don’t in this case add to the beauty of the natural surroundings in my opinion. If it weren’t for the fact that the show I saw was so wonderful, I would have said that the money spent on “improving” the facilities could have been used more effectively on bettering the quality of the work on stage.

But I don’t need to say such a thing because the production was so terrific that I didn’t mind the souped-up surroundings. Under the directorship of Timothy Near, Cal Shakes’ production of Mrs Warren comes to life with an energy and savage humor that surpasses any production I have seen to date of Shaw’s masterpiece social satire which examines the theme of prostitution in its broadest possible sense.

For one thing, the play is eloquently cast. Anna Bullard’s Vivie Warren and Stacy Ross’ Mrs Warren bring out the pathos and claws of the play’s central mother-daughter relationship. The two women show deep-seated affection for one another while at the same time standing up for themselves and doing whatever it takes to push forward their agendas. The men of the cast — Rod Gnapp as the puckered Reverend Gardner, Dan Hiatt as the bumbling Mr Praed, Andy Murray as the oafish Sir George Crofts and Richard Thieriot as the sweet and dandyish curate’s son Frank Garder — create sharply drawn characters that all stand out individually, while blending in with the ensemble.

For another thing, the design elements of the production all work together to bring out the multi-layered texture of Shaw’s dramaturgy. I was particularly taken with Erik Flatmo’s vibrant scenery, which offsets enormous gaudy painted roses against aggressive black furniture. As the play unfolds, a low-garden fence made out of forbidding, black, interlocking spears gradually gets bigger and bigger and takes up more space on stage. By the end of the play, when the darkness of Vivie’s background is fully revealed and understood forcing her to retreat into a state of workaholic isolation, the fence has become a huge locked fortress, completely encasing the stage and, metaphorically, Vivie’s heart. Powerful stuff.

Experiencing the music of the progressive bluegrass outfit Hard Road is the equivalent of reading the poetry of Spike Milligan. Warm-hearted, yet with a mad professorly edge, the group tantalizes the eardrums with its homespun-streetwise blend of fast-strummed neo spirituals and folk songs.

Headed up by mandolin player and songwriter Steve Smith and the guitarist and singer-songwriter Chris Sanders, the ensemble was performing at the Freight & Salvage Coffee House in Berkeley last night.

The atmosphere in the auditorium (which I always find to be way too sterile for roots music) was friendly and relaxed. The crowd was enthusiastic, even though the place wasn’t very full.

My only complaint: Smith and Sanders were joined on the stage by Bill Evans on the five-string banjo, bassist Bill Amatneek, and fiddler Megan Lynch. But while Evans’ banjo-playing was featured quite prominently on the program, Lynch and Amatneek didn’t get as much exposure. I would have liked to have heard more of these tremendously talented players.

In other news: I’m excited about the west coast premiere screening next Wednesday at the Kabuki Theatre of a new documentary film by Michael Lawrence all about the music of J. S. Bach. More information about the movie, which includes personal reflections on the great man’s sound by the likes of Joshua Bell, Bobby McFerrin, Philip Glass, Béla Fleck, Chris Thile, Hilary Hahn, Zuill Bailey, Matt Haimovitz and Edgar Meyer, can be found here.

A trip to Los Angeles on LA Times business and a friend visiting from London has kept me away from my blog for the last few days.

All I want to say for now is that I love the Hollywood Bowl.

I spent Monday afternoon watching Grant Gershon rehearse the LA Phil and the LA Master Chorale for a Tuesday evening concert of celebratory music which included Haydn’s Te Deum, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Poulenc’s Gloria and the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah (complete with fireworks!). Then I returned the following evening for the concert.

OK, so music nerds like to sniff and moan about the sub-optimal acoustics and the fact that audience members spend their time drinking wine and eating cake instead of paying one hundred percent of their attention to the artists on stage. But really there’s no place like the Bowl on earth.

The trick to enjoying yourself at the Hollywood Bowl is to leave some of your musical pretensions at the door. Bring warm clothes, find a friend to cuddle up with and get together a picnic. Otherwise it’s bound to be a long night.

Since launching a non-profit arts project at the start of this year, I’ve been thinking about fundraisers quite a bit. I’ve attended a few for other organizations and I even mounted a modest one myself for my project last October in advance of the launch.

I’ve come to the conclusion that fundraisers are a crazy amount of work and may not raise a ton of money. But they’re worth doing anyway because of the connections and goodwill you can generate, the pleasure you can give people if the event is done right and the (perhaps modest) amount of cash you can procure to keep your project afloat.

Last night, however, I attended a fundraiser for an arts organization which made me see that there are times when it’s just not worth bothering. The event was, in essence, the worst fundraiser I’ve ever been to in my life.

The organization in question is one I care about, so I went along, even though I received my invitation only the day before the event itself. When I got there, a woman at the front desk barked “We’re asking for $20.” The invitation had said “donations at the door” so I was a little taken aback to be hijacked for a specific amount of cash in such an aggressive way.

The venue where the event was held was soulless — a boring black box theatre space which had not been decorated or changed in any way to make it appear more convivial. There was no free food or drink and the stuff that you could pay for — a few untempting cans and some packets of candy — was not inspiring at all.

Inside the theatre itself, a few people sat in the seats silently watching a singer-songwriter with long hair and a knitted beret sing endless, boring songs about his “darlin'” to the sound of a nurdling guitar. The music was accompanied by video footage of the performer and his friends messing about on a lake and in someone’s apartment. At one point, the musician invited a girl up to the stage to sing a song with him. She was horrible.

What was really weird about the set-up was that the stage area was flanked by long tables at which the organizers of several other non-profit arts projects sat silently with fliers, posters and other materials relating to their projects on display. They looked uncomfortable sitting up there in full-view while the music was going on.

After sitting through the first musician’s effort, the event’s organizer and the director of the arts organization whose fundraiser it was made a couple of pointless speeches. Then another singer-songwriter got up to play his long set. His guitar was out of tune but no one seemed to care. He had, at least, a lively stage presence and some of his lyrics were funny. (His song about a lesbian cocaine party mad me chuckle slightly.)

To make matters worse, everyone was badly dressed. My friend and I didn’t stay for the third and fourth items on the performance roster. We snuck out mid-song with sore bottoms from the uncomfortable seats.

I’ll probably organize a fundraiser for VoiceBox in the fall. I learned a lot last night about how not to go about putting on my event. So at least there was one positive outcome from last night’s debacle.

The upcoming TechnoCRAFT exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts explores the blurred line between designers and consumers in a world where consumers are increasingly turning their backs on mass produced products or at least want the illusion that they are able to do so by being given some degree of creative autonomy in the making of a product by a designer and manufacturer.

Judging by the advanced materials I’ve received about the exhibition, the two most interesting objects that will go on display when the show, curated by designer Yves Behar, opens on July 9, are the ones whose images are shown above. Both the Fragile Salt & Pepper Shaker and the Droog Do Hit Chair demand interactivity from the consumer — an act which is simultaneously creative and destructive.

In order to use the chair, which comes in the form of a stainless steel cube, the consumer must first bash it into a comfortable shape by wielding a sledgehammer or other similar tool. Meanwhile, the ceramic salt and pepper shakers, which come fused together, have to be broken apart by the consumer. The break will be different each time, creating a unique shape, just like each finished Do Hit Chair.

I imagine there’s some satisfaction to be gleaned from the end user’s point of view in snapping the thin ceramic necks of the salt and pepper shakers and slamming a metal cube with a mallet to make a chair.

From an interactive perspective, it’s fascinating to see how a 1970s style performance art process (the sort of thing that would have been captured decades ago as a video art piece and put in a contemporary art gallery) is now being replicated by the consumer.

On the other hand, there’s a sort of a shallowness to this “customizable art.” The consumer’s power to create feels too controlled by the designer, who is after all providing full instructions to the end user about what he or she needs to do to make a usable chair or salt and pepper shakers. All that’s required on the consumer’s side is brute force (in the case of the chair) and dextrous fingers (for the shakers). The pieces provide an opportunity for interactivity, but do they promote creativity and artistry or ultimately destroy them?

Yesterday, as we were standing in the vestibule/store at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art (MoCFA) in downtown San Francisco, the museum’s director, one of its curators and I found ourselves admiring a striking view.

An old Catholic church with its severe grey masonry and red brick, a high-rise apartment block decked out in gleaming aqua colored glass and steel girders and the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s hulking black cube structure looked like three conspiring figures, almost blocking out a jigsaw puzzle-shaped piece of blue sky.

“When I look at this view, I feel like I live in a much bigger metropolis,” said Natasha Boas, the curator. I know what Natasha means. It seems like almost every week, I hear someone remarking upon what a small provincial town we live in. We are often quick to point out that San Francisco is not a patch on New York, Paris or London from a cultural perspective. But then we remember that those cities have populations that number millions of people. San Francisco, by comparison, has just over 800,000. For such a hick burg, we’re disproportionately artsy.

It’s not every city of 800,000 residents that can support not one but two museums — MoCFA and the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design — dedicated to the visual arts branch of crafts, after all.

It’s hard to get the right balance with community music-making. As an oboist, I’ve played in groups which take themselves far too seriously and others which don’t take themselves seriously enough.

The too serious groups usually produce a higher quality product, but you don’t have much fun in the process of creating it because the leader or conductor (who tends to view the ensemble as a sort of reflection of his or her inflated ego) spends too much time haranguing the players about every last detail. The not serious enough groups are full of conviviality, but the musicianship often leaves much to be desired because the players are more interested in rampaging through as much repertoire as possible than stopping to think about such crazy stuff as hitting the right notes or playing in tune.

There’s no reason why the two qualities should be musically exclusive though.

The musicians in one group in Oakland with which I sometimes play, have at least a sense of self awareness about their lack of diligence at the expense of fun. At last week’s rehearsal, one of the players handed around sheets of paper imprinted with seven pointers for “How to Play Chamber Music.” The handout, which is currently attached to my fridge, made me giggle. Anyone who’s ever played chamber music in a not-too-serious setting may recognize some if not all of these standards:

1. Everyone should try to play the same piece.

2. If you play a wrong note, give a nasty look to one of the other players.

3. A repeat sign means everyone should stop and discuss in detail whether to repeat that section or not.

4. If the ensemble has to stop because of you, explain in detail why you got lost. Everyone will be immensely interested.

5. If you are completely lost, stop everyone and say: “I think we should tune.”

6. If everyone is lost except you, follow those who are lost.

7. If everyone else has finished playing, do not play any notes you have left over.

Jan Kounen’s mostly insipid, exposition-laden feature film about the relationship between the 20th century’s greatest couturier and composer, Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, is worth seeing for two reasons:

1. The first scene which reconstructs the opening night performance at the Theatre des Champs Elysees in Paris of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on May 29 1913. Although I find it very unlikely that the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky, would have given such basic rehearsal instructions to his Ballet Russes dancers as “follow the rhythm” and “jump” right before curtain, the fretful camerawork and anxious faces of the principle characters beautifully capture the build-up of one the most significant moments — and biggest fiascos — in performing arts history. I also love the contrast between the choreographed “savagery” on stage and the true “savages” brawling in their evening wear on the other side of the proscenium.

2. Anna Mouglalis’ impossibly long neck and serpentine elegance as Coco Chanel. I wouldn’t say that the actress gives a particularly nuanced performance. She certainly isn’t helped by Chris Greenhalgh’s clunky script. But she looks like she was made to wear Chanel’s monochrome, graceful clothes and carries herself throughout the film like a Modigliani painting come to life.