Anthony Tommasini’s article in The New York Times on January 7 concerning which composers would appear on his “Top 10 Composers of all Time” list if he were ever to compile such a thing got me thinking about the reasons why rankings can be fun, if not ultimately particularly useful.

I complained about Gramophone Magazine’s list of Top 20 Choirs a couple of weeks ago on this blog.However, a recent visit to the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival auditions at the weekend made me see that ranking can have its place.

For the first time in its 33 year history, the festival instituted an interactive element to the proceedings, allowing audience members to fill out the same paperwork as the corps of expert judges hired to choose some 40 of the 125 auditioning companies and soloists to appear in this summer’s festival.

I was skeptical when I received a pink sheet detailing “How to Play Fantasy Festival” when I arrived at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on Sunday to catch a few of the competing dance ensembles practicing movement styles from geographic areas as diverse as Tibet, Peru and the Middle East. But once the dancing started started, I found that I really enjoyed doing more than just staring at the stage and wondering, in a sort of amorphous general way, if I liked what I saw. (Normally, of course, I would have my ‘critic’s’ hat on and be thinking in depth about the performances. But this time around, with no deadline to meet for once, I was in more of a casual, ‘just sit back and watch as any regular audience member would’ frame of mind.)

The Fantasy Festival game prompted me to think about and score (from 1-5) each act in terms of performance elements, production components, choreography and relationship to cultural origins. Viewing the performances with this criteria in mind greatly engaged my faculties. I’m curious whether my selections ended up matching the panelists.

It’s probably just as well that the audience’s scores aren’t being taken into consideration by the judges in the actual decision-making process — with the biggest dance ensembles bringing many people with them to watch the auditions, the selections would doubtless skew towards the groups with the largest fan bases. But the festival organizers are on to a good thing here by introducing a small and lively interactive element into the audition process. I hope they bring it back in the future.

It was, in a way, very gratifying to turn up at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco’s Mission District on Friday night and have to listen to half of a performance while standing in the cold outside along with a bunch of other people not quite willing to accept the “sold out” sign and hoping that extra seats might open up after intermission. It’s not everyday that the management of a small arts venue hosting a chamber music concert has to deal with this problem. It’s a good problem to have.

The group that attracted such a scene was The Musical Art Quintet, a classically-trained string ensemble which plays original compositions written by group members ingrained with salsa, tango, jazz and klezmer influences. The Quintet is one among a growing number of chamber music outfits working to revitalize the genre by incorporating music from non-classical genres (e.g. The Turtle Island Quartet, The San Francisco Quartet, The Real Vocal Quartet etc.)

In some ways, the Musical Art Quintet didn’t give a jaw-dropping performance. The players’ technique was a bit slap-dash and the music didn’t seem particularly technically-demanding or original in its blend of different musical influences.

But there was so much feeling, love and life to the ensemble’s groove that I’m not surprised audiences flocked to the small arts space to hear them.

We were crammed in to the venue so tightly (when we did finally get inside, my friend Erika and I shared a stool at the back of the room which really tested the strength of our gluteal and calf muscles) that we could barely find room to stand up and clap. But stand up people did. Some of them even found space to dance. Imagine that — dancing to a string quintet!

This year, VoiceBox, the weekly public radio show that I host and produce for NPR-affiliate KALW about singing, has changed its production model from “live-to-tape” to “fully pre-produced.” The first show of the year, which airs tonight from 10-11pm (at www.kalw.org and via the dial at 91.7 FM), welcomes in the new system.

Listeners may perceive a shift in the feel of the show, though it might seem fairly subtle. Changes include more artful fades in and out of the musical excerpts, a higher number of audio samples, many of them shorter than before to maintain the balance between discussion and music, and far fewer verbal splutterings and guffs.

But the change probably means much more to me than it does to anyone outside the process.

There are so many advantages to working with my first-ever full-time producer — the thoughtful, musically-minded and technically-astute Seth Samuel. For one thing, it’s wonderful to have someone other than myself who’s invested in the project to bounce ideas off and share the production burden with. The end-product is far more professional, slick and marketable than before (meaning that I can start going after syndication opportunities and the like). Because I don’t feel so pressured to make the entire recording session fit to exactly 59 minutes in one take, I feel more relaxed (as do my in-studio guests, I believe) and can take the time to ask just the right question and chop and change ideas on the fly and even in post-production, which was not possible before.

Last night, for example, Seth and I recorded a program for January 14 which traced the development of the vocal melisma from the Baroque Period to the overwrought singing styles of contemporary pop stars like Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Davod Archuleta. I realized only when I got to the station that I had chosen a Broadway recording of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess when it would have made more sense to put in an opera version. (You’ll have to listen to the show next Friday to find out how Gershwin fits into this discussion.) In the old, live-to-tape days, I would have had to live with my mistake. But now, all I have to do is source a different version of the track and have Seth drop it into the mix in post-production. Easy peasy.

Still, there are things about the live-to-tape system that I miss. Gone is the thrill and adrenalin rush of having to pull off an hour of radio all in one, as-close-to-flawless-as-possible take. Also, the flow of the recording session used to be much smoother, shorter and in some ways more satisfying. Come hell or high water, the thing would be over in an hour (which always flew by) and my guests and I “lived” the recording session as if it were the live show, listening to the audio samples all the way through and treating the program as if it were going out on the airwaves then and there.

The closest analogy I can think of to illustrate the switch from the live to tape to fully pre-recorded model is that of an actor moving from doing a play at a theatre to working on a television program. The challenge for me, going forward, is to maintain the electric energy of a live show with the slickness of a carefully-honed product.

People are more precious about food and drink in the Bay Area than perhaps anywhere else in the country. The artisanal, locally-harvested, sustainably-grown approach to dining and drinking that was started by chefs like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse decades ago is now reaching a point where soup isn’t soup unless its ingredients have been culled by the light of the moon from hedgerows in Golden Gate Park and bar tenders are arguing about whether cocktail recipes should be copyrighted.

Have things gone too far? Should the making and serving of our daily sustenance be treated as an art form in the same way as, say, dance, drama and sculpture?

On the whole, I think, why not? After all, our senses of taste and smell are no less refined than our ability to see, hear and touch. And I’ve had culinary experiences in this part of the world that are on a par with my most memorable trips to theatres and museums.

On the other hand, a recent trip to a new coffee bar around the corner from my apartment made me question whether the artistry involved in preparing and serving the things we eat and drink might be reaching a level of pretension that’s way over the top.

At the new coffee place, which looked more like a swank cocktail lounge with its high, ornate ceilings, dark wood booths, mid-century modern armchairs and huge paintings swathed in contemporary splashings of color, I ordered a decaf Americano. It was the middle of the afternoon. The barista, who was dressed in a tidy black waistcoat (that’s vest to my American readers out there), a white shirt, bow-tie and smart black trousers (pants!), then proceeded to spend 10 minutes making my drink.

First, he found a small cylindrical steel cup and peered into it while turning it around slowly in his hands as if checking for grubs. Then he put the cup on a counter-top scale with old-fashioned brass parts that belied the modernity of the digital reader. He carefully measured out the right number of whole coffee beans (harvested from a large jar with a scoop), adding and removing beans a couple of times in order to reach the precise weight. Then he ground the beans, timing the action using his wrist watch. Then he messed about with a shiny coffee machine for what seemed like an interminable amount of time, pulling levers and fussing with dials. The machine made pleasing swooshing and gurgling noises. Eventually, he barista handed me a plain paper cup with dark brown liquid in it, and said, without smiling: “That’ll be $2.50 please.”

The beverage was fine, but not exceptional. I prefer the quality of the same drink at my regular morning hang, which takes the barista about 30 seconds to make and costs $1.75.

But if coffee-making can be viewed as a form of performance art, then I certainly got my money’s worth.

I finally got around to catching Darren Aronofsky’s film Black Swan at the flicks this past weekend. The movie falls in line with the long tradition of hard-bitten films about ballerinas starting with the 1948 classic The Red Shoes.

In Aronofsky’s film, which is entertaining to watch at times, cliches of the genre run amok, from bleeding toes to overpowering choreographers equipped with European accents and big libidos. Dancing oneself to death is beyond cliche at this point. 

Most ballet movies are scary when you think about it. I don’t think Aronofsky is doing anything new or unusual with his psychological thriller of an approach to classical dance.

I only wish the film had moved me more, though Natalie Portman acquits herself well in a demanding role.

As more arts journalists find themselves leading increasingly peripatetic lifestyles either by choice or necessity, ethical issues that have always existed in the journalism world become increasingly pronounced and thorny.

It’s one thing for major media organizations to forbid their employees from going on press junkets, receiving free tickets to arts events and accepting gifts etc. But these rules are quite a bit harder to maintain in an environment where media entities are laying off staffers and increasingly relying on freelancers, while at the same time not remunerating these writers satisfactorily let alone covering their expenses.

The issue is exacerbated even further in the current climate of the “journalist entrepreneur” — that is, a media person who decides to step out on his or her own and develop a new arts journalism project without the financial backing of any existing organization.

When a journalist starts to be a fundraiser as well as a reporter/commentator, things get tricky. The obvious individuals and organizations from which to solicit funds are those with a vested interest in what you’re doing. The perceived (and sometimes real) conflict of interests creates a complex knot that is at times debilitating to the growth of the entrepreneur-journalist’s project — not to mention his or her credibility as a professional member of the media.

So what are the solutions to this problem?

Obtaining funding from “neutral” grant-making bodies is the most obvious way to get “guilt-free” support. But grants are few and far between these days and large numbers of organizations are all fighting over the same small pot of money. Startups tend to fare worse in a poor grant-giing climate than established organizations with a strong track-record.

Transferring out of one journalistic beat into another beat that isn’t related to the entrepreneur-journalist’s new entrepreneurial project is another potential way of avoiding ethical quandaries. But why would you go and write about sports or agriculture if the basic reason why you’re starting the project in the first place is out of a love of cultural journalism? Doesn’t make sense.

Simply avoiding covering the work of individuals and organizations that give you money is a third possibility. But many art-makers would much rather maintain the opportunity of getting “free advertising” from a journalist who covers them in an established media outlet than pay to be a sponsor of a new arts media project which is starting out with a negligible audience. So it can be hard to convince like-minded organizations to get behind you. And if you do manage to get funding from some of them, your pool of potential stories diminishes. 

In short, it’s a can of worms.

If you have any good ideas for how to forge ahead as an entrepreneur in the field of cultural journalism, I would love to hear them. Please send your thoughts my way by commenting at the bottom of this blog post. I’d like to work towards assembling an “Ethics Toolkit” for the new decade of entrepreneur arts journos and your help in this regard would be much appreciated.

Plans to spend a week in New York experiencing, among other things, “Three Pianos” at New York Theatre Workshop, “Fanciulla del West” with Deborah Voigt and Julie Taymor’s “Magic Flute” at the Met, and a New York Phil concert featuring Alan Gilbert and soloists from the orchestra, were dashed on Christmas Day when inclement weather (ie blizzards) interfered with travel eastwards.

Rather than wait two days to try to make it to New York (including being rerouted via Miami on a red-eye — urk) I decided to cancel the trip. Instead of rushing around seeing things in a busy city, which is what I do on a daily basis, I spent the week sequestered in the California countryside and mountains. Turns out that this is just what I needed in order to recharge the batteries for the new year. The break also gave me a chance to reflect on what I need to do as an arts journalist in 2011.

A brief summary of my professional resolutions:

1. I need to develop a thicker skin.

2. I need to be more targeted about what arts events I experience.

3. Even in the difficult economy, I mustn’t sell myself short.

4. I need to continue to diversify — but not too much.

5. I need to find a more effective way of balancing journalism with entrepreneurism.

The other day, I received a strange phone call from someone called Igor who works at the Russian Consulate of San Francisco.

I had sent the consulate an email a few days previously to ask if the organization might be interested in supporting an upcoming episode of my weekly public radio show about singing on KALW, VoiceBox. The show in question is about Tuvan throat singing. I thought the consulate might consider underwriting the program. (Tuva is situated in the far south of Siberia and part of the Russian “empire.”)

“We do not sponsor projects. We do not offer funding,” Igor informed me on the phone.

“OK,” I said, “Thanks for letting me know.”

“But,” Igor continued, “We can offer you moral support.”

This last comment of Igor’s was slightly baffling to me but I didn’t want to seem impolite.

“Thank you,” I said. “So what exactly does moral support from the Russian Consulate of San Francisco involve?”

“I don’t know,” Igor said. “Let me get back to you on that one.”

A couple of days later, I received another phone call from Igor. He said he couldn’t really think of any direct way in which the Russian Consulate of San Francisco could support VoiceBox in a moral way, but he wished me success.

Sweet.

When the program airs on January 21, I’m tempted to finish up the broadcast with the following words: “This episode of VoiceBox has been brought to you with the moral support of the Russian government.”

P.S. I am skipping town for a while. I may blog while I’m away and I may not. I reserve the right to recommence operations on January 6 at the latest. Happy holidays!

The San Francisco Art Commission’s current playful outdoor art installation in the mid-Market area of downtown San Francisco demonstrates just how much people like to “publish” themselves. Faces, an interactive artwork by Theodore Watson projects enormous photographed portraits of passersby from The Warfield Theatre building (Market Street at Golden Gate/Taylor) onto a wall overlooking Market Street at 6th Street. Passersby stand in front of a “capture station” embedded in a wall at the Warfield, the image is snapped and seconds later it’s “thrown” across the street to the top of another wall where it is visible to anyone walking away from the downtown area on Market Street.

The installation will be active for the next few months after nightfall (the hours are currently from 6.30pm-11pm). When I arrived on the scene at 6.30pm a couple of nights ago, people seemed completely transfixed by the installation. “I’m famous!” was the common cry as people saw their faces plastered on the wall across the street. Others who didn’t stop to have their picture taken but noticed the changing images on the building, looked around to see where the source was and said things like, “wow, you’re famous!”

Faces makes for a fun holiday / nighttime gimmick and brightens up a particularly drab section of Market Street that can definitely use more foot traffic and interesting eye candy. I also think that the big distance separating the individual standing infront of the Warfield having his or her picture taken and his or her larger-than-life projected image across the street speaks to the gulf separating a real experience from a mediated one. We might delight in seeing our projected faces, but within seconds the image is gone and reality smothers the narcissistic impulse associated with our “30 seconds of fame.”  

Gramophone Magazine’s List of the Top 20 choral ensembles of the world is causing controversy because so many of the choirs that make the cut are British — and all the top five are British choirs. None are American. The magazine defends itself in this interesting Q&A between Gramophone editor James Inverne and NPR writer Thomas Huizenga and published a sycophantic piece by choral composer Eric Whitacre (pictured) about why British choirs are the best in the world.

Here’s my two cents worth: Top 20 (or Top 10 or Top 100 or Top whatever) lists are very subjective and prone to biases of all kinds no matter how hard the producers of these lists try to be neutral (and most of them do not.) I don’t think that the omission of American choirs from the list says that American choirs aren’t worthy of a leading position on the world choral stage. It’s more a reflection of the judges’ predilections. What I find ludicrous is the idea, suggested by Inverne in the Q&A for NPR, that American choirs can’t vary their dynamics as well as choirs of other nations. In any case, I’m hoping that the many fine choral ensembles in the US (e.g. LA Master Chorale, Chanticleer etc) take Gramophone’s list with a pinch of salt.

Speaking of choirs, I’ve attended three choral concerts in the Bay Area in recent days and have comments to make about all of them specifically with regards to the use of space:

1. San Francisco Boys Choir “Bach to Broadway” concert at the Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, Dec 18: I’ve seen several musical events at this venue since it opened a couple of years ago, including a performance by the superlative Chanticleer ensemble. It doesn’t matter who’s singing in the space and whether they’re a cappella, accompanied by the organ or piano, or have a full-on rock band backing them up — the acoustics suck. I’ve mentioned the cathedral’s sound problem in this blog before but felt that maybe I hadn’t experienced the space enough times to make a fair judgment. I think that now, having heard the boys’ voices gobbled up to the point of unintelligibility, I can definitively say that the space is not fit for vocal music performances of any kind. The Cathedral should hire Meyer Sound or some other top sound firm to sort out the grave acoustical issues, or sooner or later the novelty of performing in the space will wear off for singers and there’ll be no music worth listening to at the cathedral.

2. “A Chanticleer Christmas” at St. Ignatius Church, San Francisco, Dec 19: The ensemble spent most of the second half of its concert wandering around the enormous church. I am in two minds about this activity. On the positive side, the choir’s perambulations meant that you didn’t have to be sitting in the middle near the front to get a close-up view of the singers. The walk-through brought them close to lots of audience members, thus creating a more intimate experience for everyone. On the negative side, the fact that most of the audience couldn’t see the choir for long periods of time during their walkabout meant that lots of heads got buried in programs. People seemed to get a bit bored with not having singers to look at and decided to read instead, which was a shame considering the beauty of the music. P.S. the concert highlight for me was alto Adam Ward’s amazing solo in Steven Sametz’s “Two Medieval Lyrics.”

3. Ave’s “Christmas Around the World” concert at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley, Dec 20: The small ensemble led by Jonathan Dimmock sang an unusual shape-note-style version of “While Shepherds watched their Flocks” arranged by Mark Winges with the choir split up into two groups — one at the back of the church and one at the front. I didn’t understand the point of creating this setup when the piece doesn’t seem to require it. There’s nothing antiphonal about it. Slightly gimmicky. The sound the singers produced was lovely and warm throughout the concert though. 

It’s always a great solace to me as a non-believer, that the Bay Area offers so many interesting forms of non-traditional cultural fare during the holiday season.

For instance, one of the highlights for me personally last year was finally making it over to Berkeley’s Cal Performances to catch the Mark Morris Dance Company’s irreverent take on The Nutcracker, The Hard Nut.

This year, I’ve moved from hard nut to hard rock, as the best thing I’ve experienced so far has been a musical by The Climate Theater, a small local theatre company, entitled The Man of Rock. A world premiere written by Daniel Heath with music by Ken Flagg based on George Etherege’s 17th century comedy of mannersThe Man of Mode, The Man of Rock is rather atypical for a holiday season show in that it has nothing to do with Christmas or any other festival. It’s a musical adaptation set in the rock music world of 1980s New Jersey. What makes The Man of Rock great holiday fare (or indeed great fare for any time of year really) is that it’s quite clever and completely entertaining.

Despite a couple of transition / timing issues between beats, a slightly flat performance by one actor (alas he plays the main character but somehow I didn’t seem to mind him being upstaged by the other talented cast members who fully embody their roles) and some glam rock music schtick like jumping up and down from the speaker during the musical numbers which gets a bit boring through endless repetition, the production makes for a lively way to spend a couple of hours on a dank night.

If you’re sick of choral concerts and drag acts and happen to be in the Bay Area this week, head over to the Jewish Theatre to see the show in its closing performances. It runs till Dec 23. 

A couple of musings about vocal music for the start of the week.

1. A few days spent in Yosemite last week took me to the Bracebridge Dinner for the second time and, for the first time, to a concert of yuletide vocal music performed by the Andrea Fulton Chorale, the group that provides the entertainment at the Bracebridge Dinner. My impressions of the Dinner haven’t changed much since I wrote about it last year on this blog and a couple of months ago for American Theatre Magazine, so I won’t add anything new except to say that the production is virtually the same from year to year and the best way to have a different experience of it is to sit in a different part of the Ahwahnee Hotel’s grand dining hall. The view from by the aisle, which is where I sat this time around was much better than last year, where I was close to the stage, but to one side. Being in the middle this time felt more festive and intimate because I got a perfect view of the performers as they traipsed up and down the aisle. The free Pops concert, which the Bracebridge performers gave the night after I attended the Dinner, was great in a way because it demonstrated the considerable talent of the individual performers involved in the yuletide festivities at the Ahwahnee, something that the Dinner doesn’t really achieve except in the case of a few major performers. In fact, the solo and small group performances in the Pops concert were much stronger than the choral pieces because the singers that Andrea Fulton (who directs the Bracebridge Dinner and related events) picks seem to be more geared towards solo careers than happy singing as part of a large group. As a result, there were a lot of warbly, vibrato-heavy voices sticking out of the texture in many of the choral numbers on the program. I wonder whether Andrea Fulton would be better served by picking mostly choral singers for the Bracebridge Dinner with only one or two strong solo voices in the mix?

2. I finally got around to watching Never Stop Singing, a new documentary about the Minnesota choral singing scene, which the producer sent in the mail a while ago. If you sing in a chorus in Minnesota, you will no doubt find the documentary deeply fascinating. But unlike the choral music film Young @ Heart, which appeals to a broad audience because of its humorous and slightly detached / journalistic slant, Never Stop Singing couldn’t be more dull for anyone who isn’t part of the MN scene. The film devotes way too much time to talking about what makes MN such a happy place for choral singing and doesn’t make any attempt to engage with the subject in an analytical way. It’s largely a case of repetitive back-slapping and self-congratulation. Still, the documentary does provide a great overview of many of the different MN groups and composers as well as a potted history of the development of choral music in the area, which is mildly interesting for a vocal music wonk like myself. I’m going to give my copy to the San Francisco Public Library as I promised the producer. I wonder how many people here in the Bay Area will rent it?