lies like truth

In Fado music, the singer’s voice and command of the stage should cut the audience to the core. I don’t speak Portuguese, but when these elements are in place, I feel like I understand the meaning of the words being sung at the deepest level. The most powerful performers, such as Amalia Rodrigues and Cristina Branco, have a way of connecting with people that is entirely visceral. Even the peroxide-topped Mariza, for all her populist appeal, can carry a song by dint of her searing voice and queenly aura.

Such is not the case, as far as it’s possible to tell from a single performance, with the Fado star Ana Moura. Moura was in town last weekend for a show at the Palace of Fine Arts as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival’s Spring Season.

The singer is gorgeous of course, with long dark hair, high cheek bones, limpid eyes and a nimble figure. She looked beautiful in the two identically-shaped tight-fitting, floor length gowns she wore during the performance. But her voice is way to sweet for a Fado singer. She sounds like she’s singing about happy things rather than the bitter-sweetness inherent in the Fado-centric word “saudade”, which stands for longing for or missing someone or something in Portuguese.

Moura also lacks stage presence. She has an annoying habit of wiggling her little hips and shoulders up and down and from side to side. She also – inexplicably – spent half of Saturday night’s performance standing sideways to the audience and pitching her gaze slightly downwards as if concentrating hard on pocketing the black in a particularly crucial game of snooker. The singer has an undoubtedly lovely profile, but all of her energy got lost in the wings.

At the weekend, I had my first exposure to shape note singing (also known as “sacred harp singing”) — an American a cappella singing tradition which took off in the mid-19th century in the church tradition.

The all-day Bay Area shape note singing convention drew about 100 people to a small church hall in downtown Berkeley.

The thing about this music is that it’s so ardent and powerful that regardless of whether you pay attention to the churchy lyrics or not, you cannot help but get sucked in by the fervor and sheer volume of the singing.

For the entire six hours of music-making (combined with a bit of eating and socializing) we all sang at the very tops of our lungs. As is typical of this style of music, every song was sung at a bracing fortissimo. You have to have good support for your voice or you will seriously blow out your pipes.

This happened to my friend Greg, a shape note singing aficionado, who has an amazing voice (one of the finest in the room) but hasn’t quite learned to practice his art from his diaphragm. Greg cheerfully admits to losing his voice after every shape note singing event he attends. He’s got a bit of a cough and I’ve basically lost my voice entirely. I sound huskier than Carla Bruni. My excuse? I went into the convention with a bad cold. The experience of singing this music made me so euphoric that I belted my way through the day despite a sore throat and low energy. And now I’m paying the price! It was worth it though.

What other public radio station would allow one of it’s music programmers to create a show on the theme of yoga and singing whose playlist, over the course of an hour, veers between Handel’s “How Beautiful are the Feet” and “Head Crusher” by Megadeath?

No one expects opera singers to be able to dance. So when, as a director, you have performers who are capable of using their bodies in expressive ways, you should make the most of them.

A world premiere collaboration between Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet and the San Francisco Opera Center‘s Adler Fellows showed off the dancing skills of opera singers Ryan Belongie, Sara Gartland, Maya Lahyani and Austin Kness. The singers moved with agility and grace and displayed a remarkable technical understanding of intricate movement figures. I found myself wishing that Alonzo King, who choreographed the piece entitled Wheel in the Middle of the Field, had made more use of the singers’ dance chops.

The work consists of 14 short movements, each one danced by soloists or small groups of dancers to music sung by one or more of the Adler fellows accompanied by Allen Perriello. What I especially love about Wheel is the relationship between the melodious and well known arias and art songs (which range from Schubert’s “Die Mainacht” to an arrangement of the “Pie Jesu” from Faure’s Requiem for four voices by Mark Morash) and the angular and discordant movement vocabulary. The dissonance between the lush tonality of the music and atonality of the dance seems to speak fundamentally about the way of the world – yin and yang, beauty and ugliness go hand in hand.

I don’t think I’ve ever described a work for the musical theatre as “adorable” before. But that’s the word I would most readily apply to Berkeley Repertory Theatre‘s new musical Girlfriend.

Based on Matthew Sweet’s early 1990s album of the same title and directed by the mercurial Les Waters, Girlfriend tells the story of two teenage boys falling in love against the backdrop of Sweet’s lollipop rock soundtrack played with verve by a dykey all-female four-piece band.

The piece is full of expectation, warmth and youthful vigor; it’s the stuff of spring. Whether you’re in love or remember falling in love (particularly for the first time) the work perfectly captures that initial feeling of excitement.

A two-hander starring Ryder Bach and Jason Hite, Girlfriend is on a much smaller scale than some of Berkeley Rep’s other recent forays into musical theatre such as American Idiot and Passing Strange. But it’s got more soul than these other works to my mind and it’s so much more intimate than pretty much any other musical I’ve seen to date.

Theatreworks’ recent two-hander, Daddy Long Legs, a love story of a similar size and scope, didn’t achieve the same level of closeness and freshness. I really hope Girlfriend goes on to be performed elsewhere. It’s a chamber piece though — I don’t suppose it’ll ever make a Broadway show. But it would be perfect off-Broadway fodder.

The Lark theatre in Larkspur is a gorgeous art deco movie house. But it’s no place to hear live music, especially of the unadorned vocal variety. The Artists Vocal Ensemble (AVE), a professional choral ensemble from San Francisco, attempted to sing Benjamin Britten’s Hymn to Saint Cecelia there last night as part of a Britten celebration which included a screening of a documentary about the composer’s life.

I have never heard this normally slick-sonorous ensemble struggle so much. The acoustic was as dry as hermetically-sealed film stock and completely unforgiving. The singers had trouble hearing each other on stage, I gather. Some of the intonation was off. And the voices of the twelve brave singers did not blend as well as they would ordinarily have blended.

I gather that The Lark occasionally runs live entertainment programs. Marrying movies and live music is a wonderful idea in principle. But the theatre is going to have to find a way to enhance its acoustic or present only amplified music if it wants to make this programming truly satisfactory.

And as for AVE, the difficult setting exposed one of the shortcomings of the group’s performance model, which throws a group of singers who don’t necessarily consort on a regular basis together for just a few rehearsals before performing. When the room is this unforgiving, singers need to be absolutely on the same wavelength with one another to make things work. This synchronicity is really only possible when vocalists get to know each other in a rehearsal room over extended periods of time.

Last week, I spent four days working at a conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. I didn’t realize until I arrived what a hub the otherwise fairly nondescript town is for museums. The downtown area is tiny, but it plays home to many institutions including The Light Factory, The Levine Museum of the New South, The Charlotte Nature Museum, the Harvey B Gantt Museum for African-American Arts + Culture and the Mint Museum of Art, to name the main establishments.

I spent a wonderful hour pottering around the Levine Museum, which is free on Sundays and boasts some terrific, interactive installations about life in the southern states over the last 150 years or so. I particularly appreciated listening to old-time local music recordings and checking out what a 19th century sharecropper’s homestead and local hat emporium might have looked like back in the day.

The frustrating thing about the way in which Charlotte has its museum life organized is its lack of accessibility. The museums generally seem to be open during work hours while locals are in the office and the many convention attendees are stuck in the convention center. Weekend hours are limited. And I noticed that the Mint Museum, which I would have liked to take a look around had I had more time, seemed to be constantly rented out to private receptions.

I’d be curious to know how many locals visit the Charlotte museums. The Levine seemed pretty empty when I was there.

The Cutting Ball Theater Company‘s production of a new play by Marcus Gardley, “…and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi” has been extended for a week and is selling out fast. It’s easy to see why. Gardley’s language is tactile and poetic, the Demeter/Persephone Greek myth-based story about a mother’s search for her daughter moves along with the fluidity and depth of the MIssissippi river thanks to Amy Mueller’s rhythmic direction and the cast members act with an arresting sense of ensemble.

Best of all is the a cappella gospel and spiritual singing, which flows throughout the play. I rarely hear such visceral vocal music. The theatre is so small, the actors are so close to us and they singing is so ardent, that it’s impossible not to feel completely drowned in the harmonies from the get-go. I was completely swept away.

On the other hand, the singing and staging make up for the shortcomings in Gardley’s dramaturgy. At times, the play feels like second-rate Suzan-Lori Parks, with its twisted-archetypal characters with names like “Free Girl” and “Yankee Pot Roast” and gender- / genre-bending plotlines and poetics.

Gardley is a talented playwright with an original voice. His works “Love is a Dream House in Lorin” and “This World in a Woman’s Hands” demonstrate his ability to moonwalk on water. He doesn’t need to imitate other playwrights.

The vocal ensemble which I recently joined, the International Orange Chorale, will be performing a terrific, free concert tomorrow, Sunday April 11, in San Francisco. Sadly I will be traveling on business to the East Coast so won’t be able to sing. But I’d like to spread the word, so please forgive the shameless plug.

Also, as a result of my trip, I will be taking a few days off from blogging. You will find me here again starting on Monday April 19.

REQUIEM

by Maurice Durufle

Zane Fiala, Artistic Director
Stephen Lind, Organ
Megan Stetson, Mezzo soprano
Pawel Walerowski, Cello

SUNDAY, APRIL 11, 8:00 PM
ST. IGNATIUS CHURCH

650 Parker Avenue, San Francisco
FREE Admission (donations welcome)

Please join the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco (IOCSF) as we present Maurice Durufle’s stunning and luxurious Requiem. Completely unique in its application of medieval melody, modern orchestration, and comforting treatment of the subject matter, Durufle’s grand masterwork is a welcome departure from this troubled world and a hopeful arrival in a place of peace and eternal rest. IOCSF will be joined by Stephen Lind, Megan Stetson, and Pawel Walerowski for what is guaranteed to be one of its most exciting and not-to-be-missed concerts to date.

A singer friend of mine currently residing in Asia but normally based in Los Angeles, Titus Levi, forwarded me an email he received from the composer/pianist Gene Carl. Titus had asked Gene what makes writing for voice and chorus so tricky. Gene’s response was so thoughtful that I asked if I could publish his musings as a guest blog here at lies like truth. Gene generously agreed. Here’s what the composer has to say on the subject:

Text, small ambitus, rests and the melodic line. Basically. Nadia Boulanger, the teacher who taught Stravinsky’s way of composition to among others, Copland, Carter and Thomson, made her students study the final cadences in the Chorals–unbelieveable how varied. Carter’s account of those lessons was inspiring to me.

With words a composer has to remember which vowels can be sung easily high and low. It’s not forbidden to do the opposite, but singers are very suspicious if they see parts which don’t follow the “rules”. Pink Chinese Restaurants has four songs which form the trunk of the cantata. Everyone says the first song Sun Luck is the best written for voice. The last piece is supposed to be “awkward” cause there’s lots of “i’s” in the highest notes. I think of the problems with West Side Story, also. The minor 7th rise in “there’s a place for us”, or the rhythmic syncopation and change of meter in “Something’s coming” which Jose Carrera proved was VERY difficult in the documentary about the recording of West Side Story with opera singers: Bernstein got furious and called a pause.

Also, the voice is not conducive to large leaps especially downwards. Stepwise is what one’s taught–jumps are seldom used and never in succession. Everytime I write a descending minor 6th I get a lecture from a vocalist. And then the constant use of the descending tritone in Ifigeneia’s final chorus caused innumerable comments—but sounded incredible.

Also, the ambitus is usually smaller and the use of lots of highs continuously leads to aspiration–los of voice! Have heard it happen.Duke Ellington is one of the only composers I can think of who uses as few notes as possible for each instrument–almost choral writing for Band.

Think of the problems if the soprano is more than 2 octaves distance from the bass. Watch how the soprano relates to the bass–that’s the clue of good writing too whether its close or open harmony.

The rise of instrumental music, and dance music outside of the church music, freed up a lot of composers so they could both write quicker music and not be so concerned with intervals, as long as it was able to be fingered without too much problem.

When I took a workshop on Mongolian throat singing (singing harmonics through focusing and shaping the mouth cavity which I first heard on recordings from Tuva which Richard Feynman was crazy about–you remember the stoned Physics prof at Cal Tech who got TWO Nobel prizes). The teacher gave me a big lecture on the “place” of the vowels and consonants in the mouth and gave me a diagram of this.

For some reason the “latin” countries (Italy, Spain and France) have a greater tradition in singing. Trouveres, troubadores, the first polyphonic music fauxbourdon, Notre Dame School, Hocket technique, Perotin and Leonin, and other developments seem to have preceeded the Minnesangers and other Germanic vocal developments where folk singing was much more important. The English have their own development which often paralelled the continent and especially when composers went to study there or composers from the continent came to English courts. Wonderful history, actually.

The development of polyphonic music hinges on an understanding of how different voices, starting at different moments in the musical phrase, can make sense language-wise. During the Renaissance there was a development of pieces with more than one text simultaneously which shows how composers hadn’t solved that problem and avoided it. The hyper polyphony of Ockegehm and Obrecht, and also Dufay, De la Rue—the canons which were sung with simultaneously different time signatures–are still mysterious to our ears. Kohn gave courses on the multi-rhythmic Middle Ages and Renaissance music where there were really no measures or regular “takt”. Even Bach was re-measured by Bartok in his editions of the WohlTempierte Klavier. L’homme arme changes meters and was the most used “secular” folk song of the time.

We are really square compared to that time. Listening to Pavement (Twilight) gives me a warm feeling cause they use the text and follow thatrhythm, no matter what. Yes, Monk, too. And Joni.

As for NONO: Il Canto Sospeso, is his masterwork, based on letters from camp victims of WWII. His and Dallapiccola’s works are intricate because the syllables are often divided up amongst different vocal lines–an extension and development of hocket technique, really. A word like “mag-ni-fi-cent-ly” would need five singers, one for each syllable. Very difficult to bring off and impossible to understand. PLUS: one singer sings “mag”, the next “ni” and so on—not too nice for the singers. Especially Ha venido for soprano and six sopranos is brilliant this way and a very classical choral conductor who I spoke with, expressed his respect for Nono and Dallapiccola to my shock. He said the lines and the notes which a singer has to take his/her note from are very clear. Cuando stanno morendo is also a beautiful piece where the solution is different than his earlier works. The best was one of the Operas with three Marilyn Monroe’s singing together in intricate polyphony–the name of the Opera eludes me. I saw it once in Holland Festival–70’s.

About guest blogger Gene Carl:

Gene Carl (1953 Burbank, California) pianist/composer received awards as a young pianist finishing his BA cum laude at Pomona College in ʼ75 and was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. At the Royal Conservatory in The Hague he was awarded the Prize of Composition in ʼ83 and in the same year got an award from ElectroMusic Competition in Bourges, France. He toured with Andiressenʼs group Hoketus, with other ensembles and solo including Cageʼs Sonatas and Interludes”. As well heʼs produced/arranged in projects around Brian Wilson and Joni Mitchell. His last composition project was with Robert Woodruff and Toneelgroep Amsterdam for “Iphigeneia in Aulis”. He wrote many articles about Dutch music most notably about the composer/philosopher Dick Raaijmakers, and was guest editor for the dubble issue on Schoenberg in The Netherlands. At the moment heʼs working on a chamber opera based on Tournierʼs The Golden Droplet scheduled for the Chamber Opera Festival in 2011. He has 7 CDʼs and 2 LPʼs out with his own work and is pianist/synthesizer player on othersʼ LPʼs/CDʼs.

Having complained about the snoozing audience at the Auerbach/Weilerstein gig a couple of nights ago, it was gratifying to see an audience wide awake and vociferously responsive at a concert at Davies Symphony Hall which included the world premiere of a song cycle written by the singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening).

To say that Sheik’s Song Suite from Whisper House — a cycle based on songs from Sheik’s latest musical which premiered at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre in January and was orchestrated for the San Francisco Symphony by Simon Hale — did not go down well with the symphony audience is to put it mildly. The crowd here is usually easy to please. They don’t seem to notice when the players are dialing it in and give standing ovations on every night of the week. But this time, the house was positively disgruntled. A guy sitting two seats down from me made protracted booing noises. Another person said “thank god that’s over,” very loudly. And a third shouted, “I don’t see what was so ghostly about that awful piece,” referring to the fact that the songs in the cycle are all sun by characters from the spirit world in the musical.

They were right to voice their complaints. The catharsis was important after half an hour of grinding orchestrations delivered by musicians who seemed on automatic pilot, lackluster melodies, cliched lyrics and the mediocre vocal abilities of Sheik, who delivered all six songs with a gravely earnestness that went beyond the most ardent efforts of Michael Buble.

Even though the cycle has to be one of the worst works I’ve ever experienced at the San Francisco Symphony, I was glad I was at Davies to witness this particular musical aberration. It made me happy to know that audiences are paying attention and can sometimes be moved to make their feelings heard.

Two things to share with you this morning:

1. A friend of mine texted me the other day from New York to ask if I knew of any good blogs about conducting. I thought he was asking because he wanted to find a good writer or two on the subject to follow. It turns out that I was wrong: he wants to start a blog about conducting himself.

This isn’t a bad idea. He’s interested in conducting, has done a bit of it himself on the choral music front and has some strong opinions on the subject. Plus there really don’t seem to be many good blogs on the subject out there — it’s definitely a niche that needs to be filled. That being said, I don’t yet know if my friend is a compelling writer — that’s probably the most important quality a blogger needs alongside expertise and passion for a subject.

His latest text concerned me a little however: “How many followers do I need to warrant press passes?!” he wrote. The “LOL” appended to the end of his message suggested that he was joking about blogging in order to get free tickets to see concerts. But following several conversations I’ve had with arts PR people lately, I’ve learned of the strain that freeloading bloggers place on arts organizations. It takes PR people a great deal of time and energy to check out a blogger’s bona fides. There are lots of people out there who simply blog as a way to get freebies. Weeding out the genuine web-based commentators from the frauds is a challenge.

So while I’m sure my friend has honest motives for wanting to blog about conducting, perhaps he should consider paying his own way for a while…

2. The Lera Auerbach and Alisa Weilerstein recital at the Herbst Theatre last night was a hypnotic affair. So hypnotic in fact that half of the whitehairs sitting in the orchestra seats were fast asleep by about 15 minutes into the program, which featured Auerbach’s cello and piano arrangement of Shostakovich’s Twenty-Four Preludes in the first half and Auerbach’s own Twenty-Four Preludes for cello and piano in the second half.

There was really no excuse for the snores. The instrumentalists brought much passion to their playing. They seemed like twin sisters not just because they looked similar with their wavy brown hair and chinadoll faces, but also because of their subtly symbiotic approach to phrasing and beginnings and endings.

The music ranged between so many different moods and styles that there wasn’t a moment to feel bored, let alone sleepy. I wonder if it’s something about the Herbst Theatre that puts people in a comatose state? Or perhaps the crowd imbibed too much steak and wine before arriving? Or maybe it’s just a question of age relative to the price of concert seating, in which case, the presenter should find ways to encourage more young people to come and sit in the orchestra seats.